Electoral Board Meeting   9/12/2025

for September.

It's nine o'clock and we are going to open the Albemarle County Electoral Board meeting for its duly called September the 12th meeting.

I see that we can establish a quorum.

All three members are here and I am going to take the chairman's prerogative.

I've spoken with several other, many other

electoral boards, registrars, et cetera, and we are going to open our meeting with prayer.

I generally, Father, we come to you this morning with grateful hearts for being with us and guiding us in our recent times of trouble in this office.

We have moved on.

We are particularly grateful that we have a new general registrar and new staff

and that you are helping us get through this election.

Dear Lord, we are particularly in prayer this morning for our country.

We ask your guidance and your peace because of the constant violence that seems to be invading our country.

Most recently, the horrible murder of a young man who had your faith in you with him

and all he wanted to do was spread that and spread truth and freedom in your country.

Dear Lord, we ask your continuance, guidance on this office and our country.

We pray this.

Amen.

Thank you.

Actually, I'd like to change the agenda.

LNA item for ballot on demand printing to sort out.

I'd like to put it on new business.

And I have one other item for new business.

The topic is on EO approvals, but it's not going to be specific EOs.

Okay.

And I've got one of those also.

Great.

So what we thought was going to be a brief meeting, we may have some good things to do.

Any brief announcements from the board?

I'd like to restate that our registrar is active, engaged,

We invite you to go into the office and see the transformation.

She is working extremely diligently along with staff to get our ballot orders into Printelect this morning or this afternoon so that we can send out all the requested absentee ballots or at least send the list to Printelect and they will print and deliver and mail our ballots.

So that's why she's not in the room, but she has her able, brand newly announced to be sworn in today, election manager, Alex Branch, who is the representative from the GR's office in our meeting this morning.

Thank you and welcome.

Correct.

He's being sworn in after this meeting.

And our registrar will be sworn in.

And when the chief deputy registrar is put on board by HR on Monday, she will be sworn in.

And the reason that these people are sworn in is that they are handling balance.

They are handling sensitive information.

They have access not only to look, but to change in the Virginia Election Registration Information System, which is hopefully the last election we will have verus.

The new system has been paid for and is being test-driven.

Hopefully it will be on board if we have a primary next June.

Hopefully it won't just wait until the election.

I'm getting that.

The new chief deputy will be Janelle McFadden, and this is a lady who now lives in Newport News.

She has family in this area, and she'll be living with family until she gets her transition, but she can't actually start working until HR finishes her paperwork, which we have been told is Monday.

So we hope that will be the case.

She brings with her a lot of managerial experience, not only in Virginia, but nationwide.

So then she's a vassal with computers and her people skills and writing skills.

So I think the registrar has made a really good decision on this lady and you'll meet her at every meeting.

As I said, it's mailing our first delivery of mailed out absentee ballots, which are everybody who is on the permanent absentee ballot list, as well as anyone who has put in an application for a mailed out absentee ballot.

The deadline for those being postmarked is the same day of the first day of in-person absentee voting.

and the list will be sent electronically to print elect in New Bern, North Carolina where they will print the ballots because they print all of our ballots.

This year they will mail all of our mailed out absentee ballots which is a great burden lifted from the staff in the office.

We will of course continue to get the mail returned to this office and the office will send an electronic download every day

two print elects so they'll have the updated, because the code requires that mailed out absentee ballots go out within 24 hours of receipt of request.

Once the absentee ballot period starts, so not now.

No, no, yes.

The deadline for sending out the first- You send a request today, you don't get a ballot tomorrow.

Not until after the 19th of September.

They will go out as soon as Printelect has this first electronic download.

But they have to go.

And when will the download be sent?

Today.

Thank you.

so that they have time to print the labels.

There are three labels that go with every mailed out absentee ballots.

And they can't do that until we have a list.

We don't have to do that.

Very glad that we don't have to do that anymore.

Thank you, Peyton, absolutely.

Alex, you have anything else that I've neglected to bring from the ready chart?

Okay.

We do have open public comment in our meeting

We ask that you introduce yourself and whether you're on the remote feed or in the house, let us know who you are and if you represent any particular organization or party.

We ask that you keep your comments to three minutes.

We also remind you that our meetings are open and transparent and we like to have interaction with the public.

So if you have a comment as we run through our agenda,

Does anyone have any public comment now?

Yes, sir.

Well, it's not a comment.

Can you repeat, Lewis Charles, can you repeat who's gonna be sworn?

The general registrar.

Today,

But not the interim general?

Yes, yes.

She is right now the general registrar.

Her term is interim.

Karen has unmuted.

Karen, do you have a hand?

Yeah, I don't know where the hand is, but I do have a question.

My name is Karen Nielsen.

Karen?

We can hear you, but it sounds as if you're speaking through some sort of muffler.

So if you'll speak slowly, we'll try to put the sound of your voice together.

Go ahead.

All right.

My name is Karen Ewell-Nielsen.

I'm with the Election Integrity Committee of the Republican Party.

And my question is, is the board still considering new chiefs and assistant chiefs for both parties, the Democrat and the Republican party, for this upcoming election?

Or is that process completed?

There's a yes and no part of that.

When we go into closed session, we are going to review the list that we have been trying to fill

for the chiefs and the assistant chiefs.

And there's some moving around of chiefs and assistant chiefs.

That should be completed at the end of the meeting today.

When we come out of closed session, we should have a completed list for chiefs and assistant chiefs.

We should.

I think we already have.

People who weren't chiefs.

I think we have a sufficient number

I'm not sure you are speaking correctly.

Well, we are going to go over the list again at the closed session.

And when we come out of closed session, we will be better able to answer your question.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Hang on a second.

Have you had a chance to read these?

Yes, sir.

OK. And we talked with you yesterday about some additions.

OK.

Aye.

September the 8th minutes are approved.

I spoke with IT and received a copy.

We'll continue to work on that.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Yes.

We have two.

Not readily and easily findable.

So we appreciate your diligence in finding it.

The ADA inspection, anything else on that,

The ADA inspections and certifications, we agreed that I would contact the school system.

I put in a call to the facilities management and to the schools to get the person who is in charge of ADA compliance.

And hopefully I will hear back from that person today.

The same for the schools.

And then we're gonna divide the list and send out a roster as soon as I get that comment so we can get those people to go with us when we go to our individual polling places.

We need to have verification that on record the school system has two people.

Any other old business?

All right, we're gonna do a brief work session.

Anyone like that?

Andrea Ruege.

What about FOIA?

Anyone like a handout?

And while Ms. Ruege, as Councilor Ruege is handing out, I want to again thank her publicly for the record.

Because when she came to Albemarle, she probably had no idea that as many hours of her day and night would be devoted to elections.

But we appreciate your assistance.

My pleasure.

My name is Andrea Ruege.

I started working for the county in June.

I was with the City of Chesapeake previously, so not new to local government work, just new to Albemarle County.

I did want to, just very briefly, I don't expect this to be a lengthy presentation at all.

Just before you start.

Yes, sir.

For purposes of the minutes, I can just say you conducted a work session.

Yeah, and just make sure that that's an attachment to the minutes.

Okay, and I can get you another copy of that.

Just a quick overview.

The Electoral Board and the Elections Office, there's a little bit of a unique structure different than some other county departments.

The Electoral Board appoints a General Registrar and they set the number of employees that work in the General Registrar's Office.

It's then up to the general registrar to hire all of the employees that are within their office.

The general registrar sets the duties for any deputies in their office.

And they also have the ability to remove anyone who's not able to fulfill their obligations with the roles of their position.

So that's kind of an overview of the structure.

The general registrar reports directly to the electoral board.

All the deputies report to the general registrar.

And it's somewhat of a unique situation in that

The registrar themselves is not really a county employee.

That's a position that's state funded.

So what happens, the checks are cut from the county, but we get reimbursement from the state to pay for the general registrar's position.

But with all the deputies, they are purely county employees, which means that they deal with and interact with

County HR.

So and Jim, you might want to write this down.

Matthew Lawson is the HR liaison for the Elections Office.

He also is the HR liaison for all county partner agencies that discuss HR in their memorandums of understanding that they might have with with the county.

So

Again, I'm new, I'm still learning all the partner agencies, but as an example, one of the other partner agencies that Matthew works with is the Emergency Communications Center, the ECCs, the 911 dispatch center, essentially.

So he does HR for them and other agencies.

He also is the HR point of contact for county IT, and then our CDD, it is the department that handles development components.

So he has a pretty hefty portfolio

And Alex, if you could maybe just relay this.

I know there's a couple of open job postings right now.

Typically what happens when a job is posted on HR's website, if there's a closed date, HR will accumulate and gather all the applications as they come in.

And then once that position closes, all the applications are sent over at one time.

Because of the nature of needing to get people in and hired, we've had the positions posted as open until filled.

So if there's a, and I know they've been sending things over, but if there's been a few days that you haven't heard anything or haven't received any applications, just be sure to reach out to Matthew and ask him to send over any applications.

I've worked with him before.

He's a really, really great guy.

He's very, very good at his job.

He's very thorough.

He's very, very responsive.

If you try to call him and are unable to reach him, and he's got a pretty hefty portfolio, leave him a message, send him an email, or he's really very responsive to your teams.

I found him really very quick to respond, so unless he's out of the office for some kind of reason, I cannot speak highly enough of Matthew.

I've been very impressed with his work since I've been with the county.

So that is a quick little overview of county HR and what county HR does for the action model.

Now I wanna turn to FOIA.

So FOIA, just some basic FOIA information.

FOIA stands for the Freedom of Information Act.

It's a Virginia law that ensures basically transparency in government.

There's a federal version as well.

I believe every state has a version of FOIA on their books.

So it's just difference in nuance between different states.

Really the idea behind it is that the affairs of government are not supposed to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy.

That's directly from the,

FOIA specifically applies to public records and to access to public meetings where there's business that's being taken place.

And unless there's an exemption that applies, every public record or every public meeting is supposed to be open to the public.

And we'll talk about exemptions in a minute.

With respect to meetings, the code of the applicable code section is 2.2-3707.

and again with limited exceptions all meetings of public bodies are supposed to be open.

Notice must be given for all public meetings.

You're required to provide the date, time, location and remote location if that's something that the board has opted to do.

Obviously we provide remote access to our meetings so that is something that must happen to give proper notice under FOIA.

Notice should be posted on the website in a prominent location where notices are puff posted.

I believe the door constitutes that here.

And then we don't have a clerk of this public body.

It's a very small public body, but like for the county itself, there's the county clerk.

Things are posted there, but then at the office of the chief administrator of the public body.

Notice of the meeting needs to be posted at least three working days before the meeting.

So the day of the meeting does not count.

So that means if a notice were to be posted today for a meeting, the earliest that meeting could happen would be Friday, Monday, Tuesday.

So Wednesday would be the first day that we could have a meeting.

Generally I recommend if the further out you can schedule meetings the better because we don't want to run into a time that we're crunched for time.

If something were to come up today and we're unable to post the meeting today then now three days can't begin running until Monday because it has to be working day.

There are certain exceptions for emergencies, special meetings, or if there's a meeting that needs to be continued for any reason.

These meetings are early and thankfully do not go for twenty-five hours.

But in the event of, I came from the city of Chesapeake and I'm still saying city council and it's ingrained in my brain.

So the board of supervisors, if their meeting were to go very long and they needed to continue to another day, they can do that.

But notice in those events needs to happen reasonably and as soon as possible.

And that is a very limited narrow exception.

The code does define what an emergency is.

There's no definition to my knowledge of a special meeting.

But again, that would be something that would need to be happened quickly.

And that notice has to happen contemporaneously with the notice that's given to the public body.

At least one copy of the agenda and all documents have to be available, that are given to the public body also have to be available to, yeah, to the public body have to be available to the public.

So I know obviously I just gave you handouts.

I just gave you something to give them to the board.

We know we have copies of the agenda that are here for the public to look at.

So that's how we fulfill that requirement.

And then meetings have to be taken at all open meetings.

So Jim is our diligent secretary.

He does a great job within minutes.

They have to be in writing.

And there's a couple of requirements that have to go into the minutes, but Jim has well satisfied all of those requirements.

Closed meetings, so this is where, when I mentioned earlier, an exemption for a public meeting, an exemption would be a permission to go into a closed meeting or executive session.

Virginia Code section 2.2-3711 is the applicable code section.

During closed, as you all know, the public can't sit and observe those meetings.

We turn off the recorder, and it is just the

Board and any staff that maybe need to participate or if I need to participate, it's limited to the business that's going to be done in close, which has to be done for a particular purpose that we'll talk about in just a moment.

Public bodies are free to schedule meetings for the express purpose of going into closed session.

So actually when we're doing a hiring process, as a great example, so if we knew we were going to just be doing interviews, you could schedule a meeting in the open and then move right into closed session.

This question on that, say we were having one of those, that's all we were doing.

That's a good question that I'd like to look into a little bit more for you.

You're not required actually to provide an electronic access, obviously by providing electronic access to meetings you're ensuring

I'm not required to.

You're not required to provide access to Zoom.

I do think it's a good practice and I really commend you all for doing that.

Obviously, that was something I think that really took off during COVID because people physically could not be in the same room.

But I will look into that question a little bit more closely for you, Jim, if the purpose is just to go into closed session, if you're going to open and the immediate business that's going to be taken is a motion to go into closed.

Comment, in the transition that we've gone through in the registrar's office, only one person who is no longer an employee had the ability to get us into the Zoom, excuse me, and get us out.

And Bucky, our able vice chair, took it apart to make all those transitions.

So he's got the ability, which I'm sure he will,

Convey to other people so that if he has a flat tire, I'm sure, I understand, so that if he had a flat tire and were late, somebody else would have the ability to get us into Zoom.

So it's not labor intensive.

Yeah, I agree.

I think providing Zoom access to meetings, again, I think that's a very good idea.

It allows for greater public participation in meetings.

It allows for greater transparency.

Technical difficulties.

Exactly.

And that also is an important point, and thank you for bringing that up.

If there is a technical difficulty that prevents something from happening, it's not a FOIA violation if there's not public access via Zoom.

provided that there's a public meeting please.

So as I mentioned, the code is very, it's limited.

It's a long list of exceptions that allow a public body to go into closed session.

I think there's about 55, 56 exemptions.

So I'm not gonna go through all of them because all of them are not relevant.

the electoral board and honestly even all the ones I included in this training may not be relevant to the electoral board but just for purposes of education so the one that the board has been relying on most frequently is section A1 and this is the exemption that allows the board to talk about personnel matters that are going on in the

Elections Office.

Additional exemptions that I noted are A7 and A8.

Those allow for me as counsel for the electoral board to, one, provide legal advice on anything that may be going on in the office, and two, hopefully this never happens, but if there were litigation that were going on involving the electoral board, this would allow me to discuss litigation with the board in closed session, so they don't jeopardize the board's position in any sort of litigation or settlement discussions.

Finally, specifically for the electoral board, section A34 allows the board to move into closed session for discussion or consideration of voting security matters that are made confidential under other provisions of the law.

So if there are any questions about that, I'm happy to talk with anyone about what constitutes a closed meeting.

As people have heard, there's a motion that's read, the board votes on it, and then if anyone stays, when we move back into open meeting at the end, once the closed meeting has been concluded,

They will move the meeting back into an open session, and then they have to vote on any business that was discussed during closed.

Again, business can't occur in secret, but they need to be able to discuss particular matters.

Personnel matters is really a great example, right?

And the way we've been doing it all along, let's say all we're doing is looking at applications to be election officers.

We've got 10 of those.

And when we're in closed session, we approve those.

And then when we come back into open session, somebody has to make a motion to approve those 10.

That's the way we've been doing it.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a vote.

And then also too, when they come out of closed session, there is a certification that's made that basically says that the electoral board agrees that the only thing that was discussed during closed session were the things that were included in the open or the closed session motion.

So if there made a motion to go into closed to discuss personnel matters,

at the conclusion of the closed session when they move back into open, a certification is made that says that the only thing that was discussed during closed were these personnel matters and then the board has to vote on that.

Requests for records, I don't know if there's much interest for this from the

at this point in time, but it's a really important part of FOIA, so I wanted to include it here.

Like meetings, unless there's an exemption, that applies.

All public records are deemed open and citizens should have access.

Additionally, any representatives of print media that have a circulation in the Commonwealth have access to public records, as well as representatives of radio or television stations that broadcast in the Commonwealth.

Access is provided by the custodian of records.

He's a gentleman in my office.

His name is James Douglas.

I've included his email address below.

But FOIA requests can be made to anyone and there's no particular form that they have to be made in.

You could be speaking with an employee and say, I'd like to see records about X.

um that's considered a FOIA request and then that employee should notify James Douglas in my office and then he goes about he begins gathering and looking at the records um but records have to be requested with reasonable specificity so if the request is i want to see all board of supervisor meetings where minute or um records where they approved a planning item

That's a massively huge request and it's not very specific and it would take a million years to do it, not really, but it would be very lengthy.

But if you were to come back and then say I'm looking for records from this meeting about this parcel or even really just this meeting would be specific enough to give James the information that he needs to begin gathering all that.

Public bodies have five days to respond to a FOIA request and there are four responses that they can give.

They can either say that the records were being held in their entirety,

that they're being provided in part or withheld in part.

So if they're being withheld in part, that means that they're redacting anything that can't be given over because an exemption applies.

The third response you can give is that the records can't be found or do not exist.

Or then the last one is that it's not practically possible to produce the records within that five-day work period.

And if the locality invokes that, that gives them an additional seven days to get the records.

in the last jurisdiction where I was sometimes we would get these very very large FOIA requests and we would then have to go back and negotiate you can do that as well negotiate with the public body to ask for additional time I mean if someone's requesting huge huge amounts of records which does happen that is something that is available hopefully doesn't have to be used too often but every once in a while there's a doubt

Anyone on the board has a doubt whether or not a FOIA request is made or Alex, anyone in your office, if you're like, I'm not sure if this is a FOIA request, let's send it along to James and he can make some decisions and figure it out.

And the reason why this is important is because anyone who feels that their FOIA rights have been violated, they can petition the court for a writ of mandamus or for an injunction, which basically says that the records were not produced and should have been produced.

or that meetings weren't conducted in accordance with FOIA and there are ramifications for individuals that do not afford people their FOIA rights.

If there's a petition that's filed, there must be an affidavit filed in support.

In any FOIA case that is broad, it's the public body's burden of proof to establish that an exemption exists.

So traditionally in a case when a plaintiff files a lawsuit,

Burden of proof is generally on the plaintiff to make their case.

It's a little bit of a unique situation because the plaintiff would be filing an action, a FOIA action, and then the burden of proof is on the local body to say, we didn't produce this because we have this exemption that's allowed to us under the law.

So it's a little bit of a different situation, but that is how these kinds of cases operate.

If the court determines that a FOIA violation has occurred, it can impose civil penalties between $500 and $2,000.

If there's a second offense, the penalty rises from a fee of not less than $2,000 to no more than $5,000.

And those are levied against individuals in their individual capacity.

It's not a- The county doesn't pay for that.

The county does not pay for that.

There are additional fees and penalties that can be imposed if there's an allegation that records have been destroyed or if there's a knowing and willful violation so it's really important that we are getting people the records that they need

$5,000 is not a significant amount of money.

You know, quite frankly, I would not like to pay $500 because someone didn't get some document that they wanted.

So, you know, it's really important that we comply with FOIA.

And again, if there are any questions about FOIA or its requirements, please reach out to me, the electoral board, or Alex, anyone in your office.

and again, any requests for records, just forward it along to James Douglas and he will be able to help you out.

Are there any questions?

Thank you.

This is Louis.

I just need some understanding.

I think I understand the duties of the registered office, I understand the general registered

That is a very good question.

There's a code section that will answer your question.

Karen Yul-Nilsen again.

I think there was one, and that just, and one in the time that I've been here, that's it.

So I can only speak from June to now.

So I apologize.

I can't give you any additional information before that.

You want me to attach these to them?

Yep.

Any other questions for council?

I can't, does somebody have a hand up?

No one has a hand up.

Thank you.

We appreciate that.

Succinctly and well done, we appreciate it.

Next item on new business, division of labor.

This was for the electoral board.

If you tuned into our meeting three weeks ago on August 21st, I suggested that we might consider this because if two board members want to get together and talk about something, we have to have a meeting.

So it would maybe be easier if we just assigned each other areas of responsibility, and then we could just go without having a meeting with the others about that.

However, in the intervening time, we hired an interim registrar.

Our job for many of these things has changed from doing to oversight.

So, Jim, you wanted this on the agenda.

Where do you want to go?

So, as you say, we're not tripping over each other

I thought it was a good idea to kind of say, okay, I'll do it on this part.

You do it on that part.

DS 300.

Just, well, I think that the, I'm sure I'm ready for our, said we really need to inventory those ballots we got in.

The ballots for this election you're talking about?

Yeah.

Okay, the absentee ballots under code will go out no later

the first tranche, those that have been requested, and then they will come back in, the mailing return address.

I'm not sure, I don't understand.

What about the S300s?

If there's anything else that needs to be handled with the S300s, I don't know.

The LNA, I'm just talking about the balance that we,

Early voting oversight, because I live eight minutes away, somebody needs to come in in the morning to help get things started, come in in the evening to help close things out.

I'm not going to say that I'm going to come in the morning and evening five days a week, but I said I could do that because I'm the closest one.

and polling place readiness, and that's just a matter of calling particularly our non-school, non-public school polling places.

Hey, remember, we got an election on November 4th.

I'll be ready, that kind of thing.

Okay, B.

Makes sense to you all.

The in-person voting is code-driven under the oversight of the registrar at the registrar's office.

It's happening technically in the registrar's office, even though it's down in the A.

So thank you, Karen.

I realize that your able husband is not here to give me the high sign, that I was not speaking loudly enough.

So I heard him in my ear, so I'm going to speak more loudly.

Can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

So I think we have to ask the registrar, now that when she gets through getting the ballots to Printelect, which is her major job right now, what type of additional help?

I mean, we stepped in and helped teach the staff because there was a lot going on.

But now we've got to wait for her invitation, if you will.

But I mean, I agree, we need to be ready to do that.

The pole of place readiness, we're all gonna be assigned with our ADA.

And if one of us is making contact with the Elks Club,

Pick someplace.

Then maybe what we ought to do is have that person, so it's one point of contact.

I mean, I'm going over the contracts to make sure that everybody's got a contract, but I need to talk to Andrea, excuse me, Councilor Ruege, thank you, ma'am, to go over.

Alex found a box hidden back away, and I've started going through it, and some of those contracts are out of date.

So we've got to do that.

But I mean, does that make sense to y'all that the person who's gonna be doing the ADA compatibility?

They've got a point of contact, that the contact information is correct, because we've got to talk to each one of the polling places as we visit it.

And of course, the school system will provide additional,

We have an ADA responsibility.

Yeah, we do.

I understand.

I understand.

I say for the time being, these things make sense.

Well, we're trying to get things up to date in River City.

I would assume that poll pads would be taken on by our esteemed vice chair.

And since you're bringing up poll pads, the board had a meeting, a remote meeting with our poll pad vendor.

We didn't need you to improvise your phrase there.

We did not have a meeting.

We didn't have a, we had a work session.

Our vendor contacted us.

That's correct.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

We engaged in conversation with our vendor and we are going to re-engage with an in-person making sure that our pole pants are ready to go on Monday.

It's not a meeting.

It's a vendor coming on site

to make sure that his equipment works properly.

So that'll be Monday.

The AB ballots we've talked about, they will be redelivered and the registrar is, would like to change our mailing address from,

That's a registrar's question.

So the ballots will come back.

The registrar's office handles the return to absentee ballots because they must be checked into various.

And then if the need be cured before they go to in-person, excuse me, pre-processing.

And we have the CAP chief right here.

It will go to you.

Yes, we are.

Thank you, ma'am.

We're having some difficulty with the mailbox delivery, and we're looking into that.

She's looking into that.

You had down here Verus access.

That was on the list I put forward three weeks ago when none of us had any access and we didn't know who would, but we're making sure someone got access to Verus.

That's off the table.

That's been rectified.

And the staffing for pickup and drop-off for elections, I'm working on that with the registrar and with

When I say the registrar, I mean Alex, who is the election manager, and the election manager.

Right, yes, I am saying.

So we're working on that.

Okay.

That's something, okay.

No, no, no, no.

This is not a one-man band.

For those of you who are officers of election and assistant chiefs, I see at least one.

Two.

All of the materials in addition to the DS-300s

that come to you in the cage.

There's no little magic wand that's waved that all that material gets put in the cages.

It's hands-on.

And it falls to the responsibility of the election manager.

And I'm certain that he would like some help in getting all of that equipment into the cages.

In the past, two members of the electoral board

have gone through on the checklist to make sure that everything is in the cage.

Everything is in each of the little boxes.

But we're gonna try to help the election manager this year by all three of us being down there to get the equipment into the cages.

So that's a three person, everybody's gonna be engaged.

I think you kind of asked.

Supervised is not the right word.

Yeah, but I just thought of that.

Yeah, all the materials that we put forth for that ended up in Lauren's care.

Alex is saying something.

Thank you.

But I would suggest that if you take a look at those and decide when we're

as we get closer, yes.

Okay.

And bring a slate to everybody for evaluation.

That's for election day.

You've got a little time.

Okay.

Well, that's all that I wanted to do there because I think it was a good idea to kind of separate a few things, and once again, as far as just

Manual labor is appreciated.

Right, Alex?

Yes.

Okay.

We had LNA for... Yeah.

I'm sorry.

One more item, hold on.

At the beginning, we added LNA for the ballot on demand printers.

And I propose that we print precinct ballot styles for the number of precincts that we have with the state.

Exactly.

And that's what we have discussed

with so moved.

Thank you.

Well, we don't need to do all of them, because we only have two that would ever be printing at their own ballots.

Only the ones for early in-person voting.

But the five ballot on-demand printers that we have are all used in early in-person voting.

That's a different thing.

We will be doing LNA testing on the print-on-demand.

Correct.

Thank you.

So that's what we discussed.

Madam Counselor, what we are proposing is not a board meeting.

It's element testing.

So we can do it on Tuesday, even though today is on Friday.

Well, the reason I'm asking is would you like me to come up with what we want to mark on those ballots?

Sure, and what the result ought to be.

Well, but one of the things we have to check in the ballot on demand is that our totals are correct, not just on a per precinct basis.

And so you'll be able to see a one, two, three scheme in the overall total that you might not see on a precinct basis.

OK. OK.

So out of 31, how many votes did each of the two governor candidates get?

Well, one should get half of what the other one got.

For the next two you would shave the second candidate for governor.

Jim, there are state guidelines.

You might want to take a look at the ones from the lab.

And we can go through this when we talk to

are whole pad people on Monday.

The second item I had was with regard to officer reelection and approval.

It is the case that from time to time, this is a procedural thing, from time to time, the board is presented with officers of election to approve, we approve them, and some number of those never respond back to any further inquiries from us.

And my suggestion is, is that after a period of three months has gone by, despite the manager of elections, excuse me,

Those folks should be, I don't want to make them not off the phone in the election because it's harder to vote them off the rolls, but simply marked as inactive and not considered for assignment and no longer pursued.

Typically, these are folks who only get a one-year appointment.

So your proposal is that here I'm sorry once we have sent them their notice that they have been appointed

Despite the best efforts of the elections manager and their staff to interact with these folks, after three months the election manager takes no further action on this activity.

We simply leave them.

We don't try to follow them for the rest of the year.

But we leave them on the

And Bucky brings up part of the way the Albemarle County Electoral Board has always handled

the appointment of election officers.

When someone puts in an application, we know nothing about that person.

Their name, address, Alex kindly or previous office have put where they're registered to vote, maybe Fairfax, maybe Precinct 101 in Woodbrook.

Maybe they give us some work history, maybe they don't.

We get the year of birth.

That's really about all we know.

So we have traditionally always appointed people for one year because then they get to work.

Their initial appointment.

We appoint them for one year and then we either not appoint them again or we reappoint them the following year.

And as Bucky says,

It's much easier to just not assign somebody than it is to rescind their appointment.

Yes, ma'am.

Sue Lewis.

I'm sorry.

I haven't seen your hand up, Sue.

Well, it's showing on my screen.

It's not on our screen.

Go ahead.

We see you now.

OK.

Thank you.

This conversation that you're having until Clara Belle you started speaking did not understand one word of it.

Bucky needs to speak louder into the microphone or whatever but I have no idea what you all were talking about until Clara Belle you kind of

clarified, at least for my purposes, what you were talking about.

I suppose I can wait till the minutes, but there wasn't much of anything I know Bucky had intended to put something in as an addition to this particular topic, but not a clue until you spoke.

Thank you very much for that reminder, Sue.

We appreciate it.

We'll try to do better on the microphone.

If I can repeat it, because I wanted to repeat it for purposes of getting it correctly in the minutes.

What our vice chair has proposed is that for people that we have newly appointed to be election officers, if they do not respond to us in three months,

Then, and I've put it this way, they are considered inactive and not appointed.

I'm not assigned.

Inactive an all right word to use?

Inactive.

Not sure about inactive.

I think maybe just not assigned for the next election.

It doesn't matter the word we use.

The point is we don't waste any more time on them, and out of the 650 people in our database, we don't consider them part of that.

So we have 650 folks in our officer of election database, probably only 450 of which will ever work in election for us in the future.

This enables us to clean that up a little bit.

There's nothing, there's no real term.

Inactive does not exist in

the verbiage and the code for an office of election, either they're appointed or they're not appointed.

And so if we choose to simply not appoint them, we can do that.

And more importantly, I'm directing the elections manager and their staff not to spend any more time trying to chase this person down.

Indeed.

I have a question before you vote on it or comment.

Yes, ma'am.

We can.

Much better.

I believe both parties could be a big help to the board and the election manager by allowing both the Republicans and the Democrats

to review those lists of people who have been approved but have not responded.

The letter that goes out is very confusing.

It says, congratulations, you have been approved.

And I've talked to a number of EOs who said, I thought I was done, I was waiting for a phone call.

So I think there could be some miscommunication and whenever that is possible, perhaps we can help by clearing that up, by allowing the party chair

to get those lists and say, look, we approved this person and we never heard back.

They never responded.

And allow us the opportunity, because it's hard to get good qualified people to apply, to give us the opportunity to reach out to them.

Now, I'm not saying we're gonna be successful.

We might well fail in that effort, and especially if we don't have contact information, which I know you are not allowed to give us.

Although I remember several months ago, I proposed and it was approved

that you would ask if you declared yourself either a Democrat or a Republican if they would allow the party to reach out to them and share contact information.

I have yet to receive any contact information.

So I'm not sure what happened to that proposal.

But I'd like you to consider allowing the parties to reach out to these people who have not responded.

It's baffling to me.

No, I understand the issue.

And we've got counsel in the room.

We are not able to release, and I understand your question, but for the other people on the call and in the room,

When someone applies to be an officer of election, they do give us their name, their year of birth, their address, but that's considered personal information, and we are not allowed, and council, please feel free to jump in here, we are not allowed to release that address, or sometimes we get a phone number,

We are not allowed to release that unless they give us specific authorization to release that to the parties.

What about their name?

Just their name.

The name, and we are, I cannot explain or justify anything that's happened between

the office staff and the parties in the past.

But I can tell you that the Code of Virginia provides that there should be available to anyone, any member of the public, a list of all of the appointed, approved officers of election.

So if it's 500 or 600, you get the whole list of names.

Wait a minute, Jim, I know Jim is just waiting to talk, but let me finish.

I would like to think that we could, the names are approved.

Once they are approved, the names are available.

And party or public can ask the election manager to send them the list of the names after every meeting of people who are approved.

So you have an updated ongoing list.

and then you can ask for the list of all of the people who are approved as offices of election.

The problem is we can't send you their contact information.

I know that.

We can ask if they authorize, they may choose not to.

Jim.

In the past,

When we have approved, let's say, 10 new officers of election, the names of those people approved have been attached to the minutes.

This process has fallen by the wayside, unfortunately, but we are going to reinstitute it starting with this meeting.

so you'll see everybody that we approved as soon as the minutes come out thank you thank you for bringing up the question it's confusing for a lot of people um any any more discussion on that okay other items this ties did we want to actually vote on the motion

Aye.

Excuse me, before you go on, I did have a question directed back to Bucky.

Go right ahead.

It's more so a technical observation with the pole patch

When you fire that pole pad up and someone could have a senior moment, someone may not pay attention to how they were trained.

IDs for voting?

Yes, sir.

It hasn't happened yet.

And before we move on to other business, I have an answer for your question earlier.

The appointment statute is 24.2-106.

Appointments are done by the chief judge of the locality, so the Albemarle chief judge of the circuit court.

If there's a temporary vacancy, if there is a temporary disability or inability to serve on the board, the chief judge does that, as well as the more permanent vacancy.

Obviously, the board composition is designated by a political party.

So if there's a vacancy, it would need to be filled for the balance of that unexpired term by the same party.

The statutes to remove

Officer or excuse me, electoral board member is 24.2-233.

There are very limited reasons why it hasn't done through a petition to the court.

There's limited reasons why an electoral board member can be removed.

Things like neglect of duty, representation of certain types of crimes.

Any such petition has to be signed by 10% of the voters.

It's the number, 10% of the votes that were cast in the most recent election.

Sorry about that, Ms. Peyton Walsh.

Going back to the election official discussion with the term active,

We're not going to use that term.

I understand.

But it seems to me like there is a disconnect at the parent's point about the letter that goes out.

And I have been face to face with voters that come in to discuss, how do I become an election official?

You're active if you've worked an election.

How do you overcome some of those election working hoops

And I could not, to go back to the previous discussion, I could not agree with you and Karen more.

And it's written here on this pad of mine to talk to Alex, who is now the election manager, to rewrite

The letter that goes out to the officers to clarify.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you.

I've got it already written down after Karen.

Rewrite approval letter.

Now I'm going to add Peyton next to it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Speaking of officers of election,

our officer of election who have worked, and you point out, did they work in election?

Many people who normally work the general election or even a special election in November or March or whenever they are are good, reliable officers, but they can't work in June.

Primaries, you know, it's June.

There are lots of reasons why people can't work in June.

So we don't hold that against them.

Just because they can't work in June doesn't mean they're taken off the list.

So we're going to go over with the election manager the numbers of people who are assigned to a proling place.

Because clearly in a presidential, you need lots of people, not so many in a primary.

And we're gonna work on the number in

November.

So we don't have, again, people tripping all over themselves.

Doesn't mean they've done anything wrong.

Polling places, we commented on that when we were signing.

I'm looking at the contracts along with the registrar's office with thank you, Alex, for finding that box.

Getting away.

Point of information to the CAP chief who is here.

We are looking at the spreadsheet.

No further discussion.

We have a CAP spreadsheet that can be used.

Well, it is if we're going to do it.

This is not meeting business.

Fine.

Yes, again.

I'd just like to say that discussion has happened about the new UVA mobile digital electronic ID.

And we now have visual statements from UVA about this ID going into place.

Any other items anyone else would bring before we go into confirmation for our next meeting?

Okay, the next item on schedule is scheduling of next meeting.

We have a meeting already scheduled for the 18th at nine o'clock, Thursday the 18th at nine o'clock.

that's already been previously scheduled, posted.

I would prefer Tuesday the 23rd.

Two out of three.

Okay, nine o'clock on the 23rd.

Thank you, Jim.

Thank you, Bucky.

Okay.

Is there any other business that we want to go before we go into closed session?

Okay, session meeting motion.

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 the subsection one to discuss and consider applications for employment for the position of permanent

registrar to fill the unexpired term and any other personnel matters that we need to discuss.

That's personnel.

Yes, sir.

We're accepting the amendment.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

OK, the electoral board is back in open session.

So moved.

All in favor, aye.

Passes.

No, no.

Four.

We didn't have 10.

Why did I write 10?

Good job.

Good job.

Whoa.

You got our attention.

Did you see that?

I wrote 10 on the top of the first one.

Four?

Yes.

Lucky's got four.

Aye.

I'll wait for a motion to approve.

The slate that we have presented for all the chiefs and all the assistants for all the polling places as it stands today with the foreknowledge that it is, as all of our offices of election, a fluid document.

So you're making the motion?

I am.

OK.

And I'll second that.

Moving approval or what's the term?

Correct.

Is that okay with everybody?

Now you've got it written down correctly so it's done.

I have a handout for each of the board members.

I think that's correct.

I think that's correct.

Oh, I bet 972.

I think it's 972.

But I will check immediately and text you.

How's that?

Thank you.

Suspected spam.

Anything else?

Anyway, Bucky's thinking.

Nothing else.

We're ready to go?