Electoral Board Meeting   9/10/2025

OK.

Thank you very much.

The September the 10th meeting of the Albemarle County Electoral Board is now in session.

We do have a quorum present.

All three members are here.

Yeah, I just wanted to revisit our idea of division of labor.

Okay.

Okay.

Madam Chairman, I'd like to take off under approved minutes, the September 8th minutes, which is in the two-day interval.

The Secretary has not had the chance to get them.

I can't imagine that.

Thank you.

That's all right.

We will postpone that until

Is that okay, Jim?

So if it's not ready, it's not ready.

Hey, we're all overwhelmed.

Whenever you get to it.

Thank you, sir.

Announcements of the board.

I'd like to announce that the in-person absentee voting registrar's assistants were duly educated yesterday, and the new registrar was introduced to them with ruffles and flourishes.

Anybody have any comments?

And I want to say that I hope Rick is feeling better.

Yesterday, your poor little voice is still decrepit.

I hope you'll maybe let Karen speak for you today if it's necessary.

Just a real, real quick question.

Yeah, registrar staff.

As far as the training yesterday, it went well.

And we had

Great turnout.

We have two training sessions.

One was in the morning and one was at six o'clock last night.

So we're very comfortable with our early book people being trained in that.

They're going to also be able to come in and work on our whole paths once they're set up, which is going to be the 15th.

No, they're not going to be helping with that, but after that point we're going to have one set up in the office so that they want to come and look at hands-on because they were used in June is my understanding, but there's quite a few people who did not use them

but you're not here.

And then again, it's six months and it's always, everybody's always more comfortable if they are able to see them again.

So, and that's up to them as they can and we'll just make sure.

And then as far as the office, we're up and running well.

We have good coverage.

I do have a really exciting announcement and that is that we have hired an elections manager

and he's right here, that's Alex, who has been working as the Assistant Elections Minister.

He is taking charge of doing things with the early vote and doing things with all our election workers.

So he's up and ready to go.

And I am actually going to be leaving shortly.

I'm conducting an interview in the office.

So we're going to have everything.

We're going to have a full office staff.

And we have people who work in there part time or giving extra hours.

And everyone is just pitching in and helping

So any other?

Can you add a little more detail to what people are working extra?

Okay.

Yes, she is.

She's one of your election officer chiefs and she is working at the front desk.

We don't have our person who is there.

So she is answering the phone, transferring calls,

answering questions for people at the front desk, and she is taking in applications so that we have that covered so the office is inviting.

We have Margaret, and Margaret is actually dividing out, they have kept their FPCAs in one notebook, so that's everything.

However, because of the way we're going to be handling the absentees being mailed with Print Elect and the enhanced voting of the email ballots that will go through the State Board of Elections, we need those divided out so that we can verify our lists and verify our numbers.

And so she's in there doing that now and making sure that anyone emailed is highlighted in this title and anyone that is mailed is highlighted in this file.

I believe you will have union records there, and then I'll run the report and check it against that to make sure we have all of them, that nothing- And Brenda and Brooklyn Elizabeth.

Okay, they are all willing to give, most of them have said an extra, Brooklyn still, she works every day basically for part-time.

I think she's in there four hours a day.

which is about her maximum on that.

But Brenda has offered another hour, another day come in and Elizabeth has offered another day and extended time if needed.

So, and they are actually doing voter registration and scanning and making sure that all the things coming in on the hopper

which is where we get our OVAP, the ones that come through state board and also the abcities.

Those are all processed through their desks and they are all working together and everybody is working in the office.

We don't have anybody working outside the office because we all need to be able to share and

see what's going on.

So I think, again, it's a team effort in there and we have a great team.

Thank you, ma'am.

Okay.

And with great, we're sad to see you go, but we know that you have busy things to do and back to your office.

Okay.

Bucky's trying to say something.

Okay.

I'm almost certainly out of order, but it's timely.

We can put it up front and it certainly gives the registrar a chance to say her piece and go back to work.

I'd love to stay, but thank you very much.

Thank you.

Well, for today, we don't.

So we've moved it now.

From now on, it will go into brief announcements, board and registrar.

Alex, can you stay for the rest of the meeting or would you like to go back and do the work?

You want me.

We'll leave you under new business because you've got some things for me.

Public comment, we ask that the people who are either on the remote or in the room limit your time to three minutes if you can.

At the beginning of the meeting, if you have a comment

or a question during the course of the agenda, please raise your hand if you remotely go through.

And if you raise your hand, you'll be recognized.

When you are recognized, please state your name and any affiliation from which you may be speaking.

You don't have to tell us that you are our director someplace that's really not your name, but I see Rick Garrett's hand up first.

Go ahead.

Garnett, what did I say?

Garret.

Rick, that was an in, Bucky does, no, no, no.

Bucky does not understand the inside joke.

It's Karen Yule Nelson speaking.

I didn't hear who the welcoming person was that they have assigned.

When Debbie was talking, they said someone's gonna be welcoming, I guess that's replacing Steve.

Who is that?

Oh, Sharon.

OK. She's a chief officer of election.

No, but for the rest of the people.

She's a chief officer, and she has worked part time in the registrar's office for years.

Usually sees elections.

We are having some staccato sound in your voice.

It was the same thing for Karen.

So if you will maybe speak slowly until we can see if we can get the sound, we'll still be able to hear you.

That's okay.

I heard Karen fine, so it's definitely on your end.

The UVA Democrats were putting out some information for their students on how to vote.

And they mentioned using the electronic UVA ID.

UVA is now issuing

and electronic ID to first years.

The guidance from, we are aware that the University of Virginia has issued electronic name badges for their students.

Jim spoke with somebody, or Bucky, somebody yesterday, had spoken with one of our offices of election who was helping move-ins, and there were some problems.

with the electronic devices.

They were not working as well as they should have.

We have gotten no official communication from the University of Virginia.

The Code of Virginia and the guidance from the Department of Elections stipulates that wherever electronic IDs are issued by college or university in Virginia, they are to be accepted as

the ID for that student.

The problem is we don't have a master list for all the colleges and universities that use electronic.

Now, we have a lot more students at the University of Virginia than we have other students.

We know that they have them, but we have not been given any information

from the university.

And yesterday was really this weekend when students were using them to check in at the university.

So we appreciate your advising us.

And sometime between now and the first day of in-person absentee voting, we will be in communication with the university to give us some information and find out if indeed they have fixed the problems that these students are having with their IDs.

So I have checked a couple places.

One is obviously from a press release from UVA saying these are now there.

I am awaiting a return message from the Associate Vice President of Student Affairs verifying that these aren't there.

Nothing has been said about not working in the way that we need them to work.

We don't know.

What's not working for some of them is getting indoors.

Badges aren't opening the doors but the electronic badge is still, it's got the information on it that we need to have then they are, to my opinion, ready to go.

I'm still awaiting word from

We need to know what a student is going to present.

What's it gonna look like?

How does it operate?

Because there are electronic badges and there are electronic IDs and our officers, we can't teach the officers what they're gonna see unless we know what they're gonna see.

So,

We're not saying we're not gonna accept them.

But what we are saying is we need more information from the university so we know what to tell our officers to expect.

It's the same thing with the mobile IDs.

It's not just walk up and show your phone and Bucky yesterday for our in-person absentee staff,

went over and showed people exactly how to use it and what it looks like and even printed out a paper walkthrough instructions, which we'll have for people in in-person absentee as well as on election day.

We need a similar set of information guidelines from the university.

So if I may, I wanna make sure I understand what you're saying.

Obviously, they are acceptable by law because the law doesn't say you have to talk to UVA first, but in order to train your EOs, you need to get some information from UVA as to what they look like and what information is on there.

Is that an accurate summary?

There's another piece to that, Lori.

When the student comes up to check in on the poll pad, if they just hold their phone out with something on the screen,

That could be a picture of something.

And so the application where they verified who they are and they bring up that information, that's an acceptable form of ID.

But we'll need them to demonstrate that they're using the application.

in some fashion.

And we don't know what that looks like yet.

So we'd like to be able to give our EOs some information.

Obviously, we don't want the EOs looking at their password or trying to fiddle with their biometrics or something if that's what's required to unlock it.

But the same concern came up with the Virginia mobile ID that the DMV issues.

It's exactly the same concern.

and we reminded the Democrats that as well to tell the students they can't just take a picture of their ID.

Great.

Any other questions or comments at this time?

Old business.

Well, we have put it on the agenda for today.

Yes.

And I printed off some things to bring a little focus to that.

The state's expecting to get a letter from us on a local letter bed.

Yep.

And they have an advisor here.

And apparently what's required is a review between our registrar and our director of IT.

saying that we've done all the things that we need to do.

Yes.

I would suggest that we set, I can make the call to set a meeting with

whoever the representative is from IT.

They have a lot of people that do different things, so we need to speak with the right person.

Yes, Jim.

Well, no, I just am not sure that this particular item of those security plans requires IT to be involved.

The other one that was mentioned there, which has the acronym of that,

which I'm not sure what LESS stands for.

I believe that's the one that IT...

basically does the whole thing.

I don't think they will do anything with the system security plan.

If I recall correctly, this relates to where are you storing your machines?

Any machines that you have?

Are they under lock and key?

That's a different type of security.

That's the hardware

Security.

And that is one of the security plans we have to verify.

Just act like what you described.

But we also need to go through our own, particularly after the kerfuffle that we had with the primary of cybersecurity.

And Albemarle County has still not issued an all clear

Everything's been straightened out for the cyber and we are back into the state system.

But as you will remember, because Albemarle was hacked, Albemarle had problems.

We could not, Albemarle County Registrar's Office could not get into the state system.

because they didn't want us bringing whatever was wrong with our system into their system.

And we were delayed and it was a problem.

So I think we need to have, the prudent thing to do is to have an IT meeting with the registrar, with our election manager, with our staff, with us,

to know what we know and know what we don't know.

And I would agree with you that there are two different security systems.

One is locking down and securing our hardware.

The other is

And I think the voting systems, when I was saying I think the voting system security plan does not deal with the IT part of it.

They deal with the equipment part of it.

But we need to find what we have filed before and see exactly what that voting system security, we don't know what it looks like, right?

But just because it was filed before,

It would be a good start to find it.

Madam Chair, if I may, I just looked at the two statutes that are referenced in the letter.

And 24.2-4, 10.2 does refer to the electronic IT systems.

24.2-625.1,

The second one is the one that I think this is.

Perhaps talking to Angie at the elect and saying we have a template because right now we really need to look at what was submitted last year and see that's what we've done before.

and see what modifications we need to do on what was done last year.

Nobody sitting at the table knows because it's somewhere in a laptop, etc.

None of us has access and neither does the registrar.

But we can certainly look at it, but the only thing

We have to look at, as ABLE Council just quoted the code, what I just said before that, there are two separate security plans that we have to certify.

Carry this football down the field too.

Is that okay?

Sure.

Thank you.

The ADA inspections and certifications, they were not done last year.

that does not, Bucky's the only person that can't, doesn't have to hang his head.

Jim and I have to hang our heads.

Wasn't done last year.

We have discussed this and assumptions are always the ruination of any plan.

But we have assumed that if we're using a county bill such as a school, they've met ADA.

I would suggest that

contact person for the school system be contacted so they can provide the ADA facilities report that the schools are, and the doors and the rooms we use are ADA compatible.

And if the county certifies that, then we may be able to do a quick run-through on schools.

The other buildings that we use, we're gonna have to divide up amongst the three of us and go visit those and actually go through it.

That's correct.

We go with that person or that person's

designated representative, and visit each one of these places and get it done and get it over with.

If we can get that done next week, that would be lovely.

Or the week after, I know.

Bucky, I'm- As soon as we can.

Yeah.

I'd like to see if the county ADA person

We'll actually go to the non-school places and check them out.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

I think we, I think, I know I have it.

And we, I think we did it for Harvest Church because we all went over there.

And they certainly were gracious in coming that day.

Two of them came.

So,

I'll check with facilities AD living person.

The division of labor.

Yeah, we had talked before about this so that

Everybody is trying to do everything or nobody is trying to do things that need to be done and I still think that it would be a good idea to have some division of labor in terms of us just having some oversight of what the staff is doing and going on and different

Bucky had listed out different things, DS 300 preparation, poll pad preparation, ballots, cages, election officers, training, early in-person voting administration, absentee ballot testing, Monday pick-up and Tuesday drop-off,

We're not going to have that this year.

Well, those people aren't going to be available, but somebody can help them do that.

Ensuring polling places are ready for election day, the calls that need to be made to polling places saying, hey, November, November 4th.

Yeah.

One that I was going to offer to have oversight on simply because I live so close is the early in-person voting administration.

I can come up here in the morning and make sure everything is done.

Well, I'm talking about oversight by the electoral board.

We all understand what the board does, but it's the registrar's, it's the registrar's office.

If the registrar wants to ask one of us to help, whatever, she certainly can do that.

But that's what I'll offer to ask her if she would like my own help, for all means.

Does anybody else want to?

I don't want to be here for early in-person voting, early in-person absentee voting.

But I see you as the poll pat.

The registrar has spoken to me about working on poll pats.

And Alex has already spoken to me about helping to load his cages with the DS-300s.

But I think that had more to do with brute strength than my electoral board position.

I would suggest that we all look through that list and by Friday sort of think of what we might be best suited to do and capable of doing and run through that list there.

I will say that regarding the cages, we are all going to have to help load the cages we have never done.

I know it is done

by the electoral boards in many other localities.

There's a lot of material that goes into those cages and a lot of material that has to be checked.

We have checked because I've done it, Bucky's done it, previous board members have done it.

I have it, but I will now.

Thank you.

We need to go down and make sure after it's all loaded, but we need to help

go down there and put the stuff in the cages.

Get the scanners in.

And then we can put all the other stuff in.

But there's a lot that goes in there.

Exactly.

And your weightlifting, you should point it out.

So let's look at that list to be prepared at Friday's meeting to take responsibility for whatever.

Yes.

Absolutely.

That's all right.

I was waiting for you all to finish anyway.

That's fine.

I'm a little concerned because I may not be hearing you properly.

but it sounds like Jim is recommending some form of oversight to a registrar who just walked into office and Alex who has never held this job before previously and you're gonna wait for the registrar to ask for that oversight and as a public member I would like to know that the electoral board is keeping track of what's happening

to not only offer assistance, which is of course super important, but to make sure that these individuals are going to be able to do the job.

Let me respond to that.

The registrar that is here now is not new to her job.

She may be new to alcohol.

But she's done elections as the general registrar in Harrisonburg for 12 years.

And she's been doing general elections and special elections while working part-time in the registrar's office in Waynesboro.

So she knows what needs to be done.

The Code of Virginia, and I would offer you that you read 24.2-700, specifically and expressly says that the in-person absentee voting for 45 days takes place in the registrar's office, or a satellite of that office, and that it is under

the supervision, control, auspices, those are my words, not the code's words, but it says supervision in the code, of the registrar.

We were invited to help with the teaching last night because it was one thing we could do with her there to help.

but if the registrar is responsible for and always has been and is in every locality and this registrar is clearly up to the task and if she wants to invite- Maybe I didn't state this well.

If she wants to invite us and we certainly can offer but we don't want to overstep our bounds.

So maybe I-

Go ahead.

What we're saying is that we will ask Debbie, do you want us to assist in some way with this particular task of the many tasks that are involved?

And if we would like our help with it, then we can give help.

But we can't give help in everything, everybody.

for the division of labor.

One more pile on there, Lori.

As a practical matter, we're in the office every day and have been for quite some while and probably will be for a while.

Well, and that's, Bucky, that's, I think, exactly what and maybe I didn't state my question well.

I want to reassure the public that there is oversight, not necessarily that you're doing her job.

That's not what I suggest.

I want to make sure that as the electoral board has oversight over the registrar, you hire her, you do her performance review, you do have oversight and you will have oversight because this person is brand new to our county.

We don't know her.

She has experience and that's fantastic and I expect her to do a wonderful job.

I have, I'm very optimistic, but I think the public, after the whole office under this board's leadership has been decimated, the public would like to know that the electoral board is going to have some oversight.

Oh, yes, ma'am.

Is there any- Name for the record.

Sorry, Diane McNeil.

The registrar is hired and appointed by the electoral board.

The responsibilities of the interim are no different than the responsibilities of

a full term registrar?

Good answer for my question.

Good question.

No, the interim is something we applied to make it clear that this is not the permanent registrar.

That's all.

But otherwise, you could read this just as registrar.

but where the registrar is appointed on a four-year basis, terms expiring as fixed integral the next one I think expires in June 30th of 2027.

We don't expect that this appointment will last that long.

Yep, thank you.

One I would just like to ask briefly earlier this morning, but since today is the deadline for the big files of our permanent absentee list to intellect in North Carolina,

And I can elaborate on that also.

The September the 10th deadline was set by Printelect.

That's their deadline.

When that deadline was set and agreed

by the previous registrar.

No one had any idea of the upheaval that was gonna take place and all of the jobs that needed to be done and completed.

And so if we have to extend that deadline to print elect, and I have been on the phone with print elect.

I know Debbie, the registrar has been on the phone with print elect.

Alex has been on the phone.

They understand our circumstances.

And we have to have a valid list to send to them.

And that's the problem, getting a valid list to send to them electronically.

And Debbie and Alex are working on that feverishly.

I don't understand why we don't have to evaluate the list.

Gina showed me where the report is embarrassed.

She said that's the list it has to be sent to.

That list has been reviewed and it may not be as reported to you.

sphere of knowledge.

That is up to the registrar.

No, I took it upon myself to say, where in Veras is it?

Right.

But you have to figure that the list is only valid if the data have been properly maintained.

If you've got all your deaths and moves and move-ins and new registrations all updated and in there.

I could imagine some of that didn't happen, but honestly, I don't know.

A follow-up question.

Once we do get them the biggest, then between now and September 19th, do they want us to send them a daily update of that?

The code requires that all of the permanent absentee ballots that have been requested, someone's put in a marked form that says, I want a permanent absentee ballot for all elections.

has to be mailed by whatever organization is mailing it, whether it's the registrar's office or a third party.

They must be mailed by close of business on the first day of in-person absentee voting.

That's code.

Any other request that has come to the registrar's office before that date must be mailed

for this year it's September the 19th, the first day of in-person absentee vote.

So it doesn't matter whether they go in, they go into whoever the mailing organization is, whether it's the registrar's office or third party, as soon as the ballots are ready to be mailed, so as soon as they're available,

and that depends on filing deadlines, candidates meeting their filing deadlines.

As far as we know, our ballots are being printed because there are no filing deadlines.

There's nobody waiting to file.

They can't file.

They can't get their name on the ballot.

They're going in.

And print elect has said, we will take your first batch.

But right now, people in the office

That's not at all the question I ask.

I ask a very technical question as to once we've sent the big file, then do they immediately want daily files up to and then after September 19th?

Or do they want us to wait for weeks

The update, the new file that they would take care of then.

It's really not.

...followed up with the registrar's office after the meeting?

Because we don't know.

I know.

We'll cut it out.

It's not our responsibility.

Okay.

Next.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

I was wondering if you were headed to executive session.

No, no, no, no.

I would just talk about the next meeting.

Next meeting.

I think we do.

We've got a meeting on Friday.

Everybody look at your calendars.

I would strongly suggest that we schedule something, additional meeting,

right right that's okay we're tied up by the 15th so 15th we're knowing all day that's about three days not including the day of thank you always good to have councilor with us so three days would be 15 we can't do 15 because we're doing both that just to

16th is the first day we can schedule a meeting.

Do we want to schedule a meeting for the 16th?

What do you try to think that maybe we will have things we need to clean up since we've been working a week all day on the 15th and wait until the 17th?

I forgot.

I forgot.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bucky.

I'm sorry.

So, how about the 18th?

Jim?

Okay.

Nine o'clock?

Jim?

Yeah, let's remember that's the day before the IP starts.

Yep.

We've given some setup there.

Well, that's a week.

The...

When are we going to do that?

And that's one of the topics on the Zoom call with no ink this afternoon.

Okay.

All in favor?

Anybody have any objections to 9 a.m. on the 18th?

Thank you, thank you.

While he's typing, I think we all need to say again how grateful we are that Bucky actually has IT expertise and he has taken over the job that was previously done by the deputy, chief deputy in scheduling rooms and getting the Zoom.

We have the room scheduled all day on general elections as the room's scheduled the whole day of the 18th, so it's ours.

Which room?

Which room?

No, this is room C. I'm sorry.

We've got room B, right?

We're in room C. Yeah, but which one do we have?

We have room A, and out of the goodness of our hearts, we let the police have room B that day.

Okay.

But we have room C. We have room C all day.

Oh, good for you.

Good for you.

Done before my time.

OK.

So we will be in the big room across the hall.

No, let's work on this again.

This is room D. This is the room we have.

Thank you.

Room C. OK.

Anything else we need to do?

New business, other items, when once.

We scheduled our next meeting.

Suppose that we go into executive session.

It's based on the code section 2.2-37 parenthesis A-1.

We will go into executive sessions for

Jim wants me to read the exact verbiage.

I move that the Albemarle County Electoral Board convene a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-3711 parentheses A of the Code of Virginia under subsection one to discuss and consider applications for prospective candidates for employment position of general registrar and to discuss and consider personnel matters, review of officer of election applications,

and assignments.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the Albemarle County Electoral Board is back in open session.

Time is 10 22.

Pursue it to the code section.

2.237-11-4.

We are coming out of closed session.

We all affirm that we only discussed the matters which we said we were to discuss, personnel matters, officer of election matters, and only those people who were supposed to be in the meeting were in the meeting.

All in favor, aye.

Aye.

We set our next meeting, as we noted before we left, for Friday and then another one for next week, all at 9 o'clock.

I thought that was what I said.

Aye.

Great.

Thank you.