Electoral Board Meeting   10/30/2025

It's.

Thank you.

It's a two-way street.

Most days.

It's a merger of everybody pulling the wagon together and it needs to be said and I'm sorry we aren't getting it.

just what is required.

and Paul Seven.

Bye.

Yes, fine.

At this point, what actions should I take if any?

That's what the state board does in these types of situations.

I think the email should go today.

I agree.

I assume we have somewhere her email address.

Would you like to do that, Jim?

I move that she be sent an email telling her that she must put an obligation on her signs.

Correct the signs, she'll get a fine.

She thinks she has to take them down.

She doesn't have to take them down.

And maybe she can do that and everything will be okay.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

I think that has to be, the Commonwealth Attorney does that.

I don't know.

That's not on our heads.

So Albemarle is designated as the leading locality.

Can you point me to the code section?

I can't, I can't write, it's in chapter...

And it talks about size of the state board in a public hearing shall determine whether to find a violation of this chapter and to assess a civil penalty.

And I would be happy to, I'd be happy for you to have a conversation with Tammy Alexander.

Yeah, that would be helpful.

We've all read the same section you're quoting.

There's just no reference in that code section.

No, there's not.

So there's been some guidance.

Alex produced the old documents, and I'm sure we all have changes we'd like to make to that.

I emailed you all, I think five, and then Bucky expanded on those, added some, and turned it into the document that we had.

This is a starting point, not a final product.

Any specifics you'd like to discuss, I think we ought to discuss now.

and I'm thinking we should either take them all out of the cages or instruct the chiefs not to use those, but taking them out of cages is probably the cleaner solution there.

Does anybody know how they got?

But then the other document,

That piece of paper.

Alex, do you know where it originated?

It came with 3A.

So when you printed it from the state website, the forms warehouse, it automatically printed with the 3A.

So this does come from the forms warehouse.

Correct.

I don't really know what 3A ever came from.

and this is a fairly significant box.

We certainly should be using the most current.

We will put three labels on every box three that have the signatures of all

We have in the past, but somehow it didn't come through this time.

But if this has been the form since 922, I can assure you, since 922, we have not used it.

So maybe we need to change in the instructions that it's actually put in.

If we simply remove that document from what's in the page.

Remove that document.

What is the difference between those two you have in your hand other than the change?

Yep.

That's what we used to have.

So this is addressing your new equipment.

And we still have no idea why they have appended an A to three because it's box three.

That machine is no longer in use anywhere and has not been in use anywhere.

And it should reflect in your instructions that it is 3A instead of 3.

So halfway down in paragraph 3, where it says affix a form 3 to the end of each box, the voted ballots should say affix 3A.

Correct.

And remove that other box.

When there's a new form, the old form becomes obsolete.

And should have been removed from the Department of Elections forms warehouse.

But there's a lot of stuff.

Exactly.

It's just this one is saying that you could do it from the AVC advantage and the optical scan.

Where is the one that says how many ballots are in the box?

It's in there.

This extra form says number of ballots in container.

And I'm thinking that maybe the best way, even then we don't have to worry about the risk limiting audit, but let's say they have, nobody's gonna have more than two boxes of counted ballots, I don't think.

Let's say Baker Butler has two boxes.

My suggestion would be to wrap tape around both of the boxes, making it essentially one container, so that when they say how many ballots are in the container, it's how many ballots are on the public count of the GS300.

And the practice is that we must keep ballots so we know how to mark the ballots, so they know what's in the boxes.

So we don't want them sitting there counting out five or six of the ballots.

I think that suffices.

One thing I had concern, I will mention one other thing that is on this list.

Jim needs, for the minutes, is there a number on that?

There's no separate number on this.

There's no identifying.

It doesn't have an elect X, Y, and T on it.

and I think it would be very helpful if we, and I'll be happy to do it, send an email to elect saying maybe the one, the single three envelopes should be deleted from forms warehouse and this form should be deleted because we're not the only ones.

Should be included in all their instructions that go out.

nor if they even if they were we wouldn't want clicking on that so i simply have an instruction to disregard that please don't click on it last paragraph and that's why and it's it's there's nothing unto award here they've all been updated to the level of software both the operating system version that the software requires and we don't want to go to the next level of software until we're ready until the company tells us they're certified on that version of the operating system

So any other ideas or changes that you see and you want to send, I'm happy to get those and put it in the final version.

All should attend to this today and get something to email and include everybody at this table, the registrars, the election manager, us, so we've got a final document on tomorrow morning.

Yeah, I'll distribute the final document to everyone.

It's well worth its money.

Printed old books and absentee lists.

But he said he would hopefully have my ready by 10.

Actually, I might give until 10.30, because I don't need to be here till noon.

Jon Lee and Scott Lee, because we don't want them to be upset that we're there at 10 o'clock asking for something that they're trying, I'm being facetious, like we're trying- So poor people who are vital so often get the stick that offering them just a little bit of care is usually appreciated.

You're talking still about the absentee applicant?

The emergency pole with absentee list outstanding.

That won't be done.

I can't print that till after Saturday.

We found the stamp.

Okay.

Ah, okay.

Nes, can I help you?

I thought we had one.

And not knowing why those people had been removed, it seemed that it might be the right time to have the rules we expect to be followed for that written down.

Amen.

I did, I think, since the last time I distributed it directly to the board at item 14, which basically says we can amend Cismont and revise or delete the policy in whole or in part by a majority vote of the board, which is how you would create such policy in the first place.

So going to give us some time to.

If you don't want to do it today, we don't have to do it today.

I did not see it.

It does not have the urgency of the last minute instruction.

and anyone who wants to make any amendments.

Please send me any suggestions.

Send them to everybody.

That's correct.

Yes, we do.

We may need to have a cleanup meeting because primarily we may learn things during the election process and the election certification process that we actually want to talk about in a meeting.

And we should know early in that week and we can cancel it or postpone it.

Under other items.

Okay, next one is Electoral Board polling place list on election day, Jim.

Visits.

Visits.

I was happy to have him do it.

Okay.

I suggest we do what we did in June.

Sounds good.

and it's broken up by Magisterial District.

I had Sammy Miller in Scottsville.

I went to Scottsville.

Just see if I can pull it right up here.

Yeah, so everybody knows that you're sending it out there.

Yeah.

They're kind of both that way.

Rue 2 is Rio and Rivanna.

I know I started there, those places.

There was a great discussion with having the new guy have to go out to Porters, and Scottsville, and all the places down there.

I have Weibull.

And then what's Route 3?

Route 2 is Rio and Rivanna.

Who is their responsible EB member?

Okay.

So if you're there, you can't be somewhere else.

So I had about 11 on my fixed list and I think I'm into 17.

I had 270 some miles going.

And you think we should not use a sheet that we that form that we used the last few years you decided that was

Unless someone disagrees.

I still got them.

But I think we should be taking notes, because we'll have useful information at the end of the day, exactly.

I mean, a formal sit down,

A lot of those comments will be personnel-related.

Does that seem reasonable?

If not before, yeah.

I mean, I think we've got them to say grace over.

We will have had the hot wash by then.

Well, we may not.

We set a date for that six months ago.

So maybe we need to do it.

It makes sense to do that.

It makes sense to do it.

So let's look at this later and see if we need to have another meeting.

Electoral Board, review time.

I'm not going to say that on tape.

We're taping.

I changed the network I was connected to, and it's just become stable.

It's a miracle.

I don't know why.

OK, next item, support from NO-INC and ES&S on election.

This was raised in here as a question, so I put it on there.

Well, I didn't know this existed.

Let's do ES&S first.

We'll go back to slaughter.

We made plans long ago that Tyler Links would be here on election day.

I'm just asking.

Exactly.

So you talked to Tyler about that.

I talked to Tyler, yes.

I couldn't be happier to have Tyler with us, particularly on the first election, the first general election that we're using all new equipment.

I understand you said general election.

Yes, there's a very different volume that will be processed next week.

So I'm just madam registrar, your comments are welcome.

Not germane to what we're trying to buy.

That's the deal.

Let's put a gun to your head so you can pay for this.

And so we're really questioning that.

I said somewhat helpful.

Tuesday- I don't think I've ever heard an officer, a chief ask a DS-300 question that any of the board would imagine Richard couldn't answer.

So if we have a question, leave it on Tuesday, why not use that service as well?

So that makes the half-day Monday, the half-day Wednesday have a context to make sense.

If that is travel time.

I would too.

Jim, correct me if you want.

Take one of the spares.

But the point is, we've got a spare.

I will remind you of the early part of early voting, where we suddenly had a machine that wouldn't scan.

But he was in there quite a bit.

I understand.

And that's when we found the gel.

And- I believe that was when Tyler was here.

No, it was not.

He was down there working on it.

But the timing marks, not matching, didn't matter.

Well, I'm just getting back to saying he wasn't in the room.

Can I address that?

Then for years following, we'd give ourselves some options by training.

Just not this election.

I'm going to agree with that.

I just want to clarify, I'm not in this camp because I'm old fishing buddies with the guy involved.

Thank you.

That's irrelevant.

And I would agree with that.

They talk back and forth.

No, no.

So I would say in the, you know, obviously you can make your decision for this election, but in the future, that is an expense that is really not gonna be necessary.

They have their own in-house.

So we had our own tax and it was a very valuable

I think it's an excellent thing to develop.

The same as a cap or in-person absentee.

We really haven't discussed it very much.

I think we need to let ES&S know that we think this is a lot of money.

What Jonell has said, it sounds as though we have already done that.

They either weigh whether or not we're going to do this, but now that we've decided to do it, I could just come back and just say just a little bit more that yes, that we would like the in-person, on-site support that they offer.

Yes.

No.

All right.

Okay.

I think she was, but I'm not sure.

We had a second meeting with him.

We didn't have it on the June primary, so you were going to check on that.

Now, if they did not do it in June, to me, this should be our free.

We don't have a copy of our contract.

We can't swear to you that we didn't have a copy in one of the multiple laptops to which we do not have access.

So you have the contract.

That's me.

Did you talk to her?

I haven't had a response yet, so.

I have voiced the street file multiple times.

loading up the poll book pads because Taylor from the city of Charlottesville came over and built our election and loaded our poll books in June.

But I think someone from NoEAG was here also.

I wasn't around, but I know from where that nobody from NoEAG helped.

Nobody.

Kelly.

And then in the future, again, they have a wonderful election day call in and they'll be right there.

Are you giving us a free day or not?

I'll do that today.

If my memory serves me well, we could have election days.

I know I remember discussion of street files and building the election on election day.

And hands-on training.

Two days of hands-on training.

OK, if we can get settled with them.

Thank you.

You can give instruction about exactly how to do it.

Yeah.

With looking at that list, you can build the election, but if you don't have the final data, you don't have the final data until Saturday.

So that's getting things ourselves.

Generally, like I know in a smaller locality, we push it out on Saturday.

As soon as someone just turns them on.

Are we going to do it in a room A?

Yes, but all the pole pads and all the cases are in the warehouse and we'll have to distribute them to the chiefs from the warehouse.

Okay.

plus it's a secure space that they can be configured in right now, so.

And there's a lot more space back there that they've been done previously.

And you do want us here roughly at 9 a.m., is that correct?

On Sunday.

That's what I'm asking.

Jim, you've got an agenda.

It doesn't need to be in this meeting.

I had a, which you'll definitely be involved in, I had a good discussion with Andy, if I may, Madam Chairman.

Please.

Is this an election off county?

Yes.

as a standard language.

And so it's turned over.

Maybe we'll need to put some money around.

And what this heart, you know, indicates for our future.

Absolutely.

So that will revolutionize your

We have been categorically refused access to the budget.

Traditionally, we have taken off Thursday, not done Thursday, partly to give the staff a chance to have a rest from us, and partly for us to have a rest since we're all old geezers.

I'm not taking on geezer, and I'm sure Mike is not taking on geezer.

Because if that's true, we basically don't have anything we can do on Monday.

All the reason for provisionals can be assessed on Monday, because we will have gotten all the absentee ballots back by then.

Well, we could adjudicate the reason for's if we wanted to.

There will be hundreds to go through.

So that if somebody, provisional ballots, yes.

They don't do absentee, they do same day.

That's why on the provisional ballot envelope, there's a time, time and date that that ballot, that provisional ballot is marked.

That's for same day registrations only.

I don't think they do.

We are the ones who have the data on that by Friday at noon.

We don't have it Friday at noon because we don't have that data.

That is a reasonable time to move forward.

Debbie, you've been through this.

We don't know.

We're going to have well more than a thousand, maybe more than two thousand.

I just didn't want to, you know, if we had nothing to do.

Nobody wants to waste time but I think we could get to work on those.

You might want to find out whether this Monday night thing is... Yeah, I haven't seen anything in the email.

The last I heard was Monday.

They're still telling you all you got to finish by Friday at five, is that right?

Monday, but they don't give us time.

Is that what you're saying?

We're not aiming for.

Well, now I understand why I hear this Monday night.

Where are you hearing Monday night?

I heard that from Jim Nix, I think it was.

I haven't seen anything.

But I can see if they're giving you until Monday morning, then I can see why that scares me.

and we can change our dates and our schedules as needed.

I would say let us aspire to taking Thursday off.

right there with you, no point standing around doing nothing.

Tuesday.

It is.

It's irrelevant.

Well, if you did, you should be getting it for election day.

Don't work on Veterans Day, whether it's Friday or Tuesday or Monday or whenever it is.

If we had nothing to do, I would support that.

I think that's going to happen.

Big if.

So just want to select if that's in the works as well.

So if that form is handed directly to us, that's one last step of a mistake.

Handed directly to me for the eyeball.

So we should do it, but we want to verify everything before anything gets posted.

Because as a

previous director of various services and make sure, not verify, make sure everything is into the computer.

Well, by precinct.

By precinct.

No, no, no.

so that there's not a chance of a number being wrong getting posted before we are actually able to check all that.

And if I understood you correctly, they jigged the system, so now they just want a total provision.

Total provision, yeah, we don't have to break it.

Wait, no.

So the next day, I guess we do the rest of it.

Which is nice because I know in the old system we had to have everything on there.

Electron.

On the last site, which crashes inevitably on election night.

We'll do our part.

And I would not be surprised to enhance crashes on election night because.

Is it a fully separate system?

So we had an election night.

They had it a couple of years ago.

It's a third party.

And then, am I correct?

We're doing that, but we're also doing the detailed, the precincts as well.

Precinct election day precinct.

Just election day.

I'm going about that.

Let's do it.

It's just the total.

The dashboard is only totals.

But that's what I needed to know.

The two of you are working on a spreadsheet, Canvas.

And we should be able to see easily what we need to see.

I would have been appreciative of that argument working.

I'm happy to give you anything I have.

so you can all see exactly what that dashboard looks like and then I'll do one for a precinct so you can see what the precinct is going to look like and it's what you described it's vertical so and um and before we go I wanted I said that I was going to give you your election day packets um and then we have all the sheets in here that you and Alex have put together so this one um everybody oh is there another well

Alex about this because we don't have a cat.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

And he's been working on it, he just said.

So just to let you know that all of that we're gonna set up on paper, but also people will be set up computer electronically and quickly get information.

You need it ultimately.

But we will not be asking for that information.

Okay, so we're just- But we want to fill out that information.

reasons on there because we want them to look at it again it's another double check because then when we get the logs we can see but you said we don't want the finders to ask for the reasons no i don't think we do need them do you i'm okay okay yeah no because better numbers are what we produce because they they always okay then throw something in

Total number of provisional ballots.

They won't have a total number of provisional ballots.

And I would just bring it on there.

And someone mentioned that you're going to have someone

copying provisional ballot logs.

Wednesday one.

Yeah, as you're collecting them.

Does Jim even need to see them?

because there's always one that has done something way wrong and I want to get to that person before they get out of the building.

And all their signatures leave.

Alex is voicing a question.

It's on Tuesday night, so you know our jobs are going to be very stretched thin.

As soon as those numbers are called in.

They'll do that.

She said she doesn't have anything else, so she's basically a disposal of helping wherever she can.

I mean, for as long as we've been thinking, and it's, it can be streamlined.

I've already reached out to a lot of the chiefs, I'm missing about eight, I forgot who I'm missing to reach out to figure out their times, but a lot of them are coming for the first part of the week, so.

I'm sorry, coming for the first part of the morning?

Oh, picking up their stuff, sorry.

Now we're on the same page.

There are hundreds of people who show up on Monday to vote.

The large paper?

I would submit that you need several.

A big sign and I've got poster paper that I've kept from other uses.

Early voting ended Saturday.

It goes on that door and it goes on the front door, the front door of the building as well as the...

Speaking of signs, let's not forget we got to put a sign up at the Elsdale Conference Center saying there's nobody here.

Yeah, he could do it for another election.

We moved the first two signs for that.

You just have to let them know.

You have to let them know.

I mean, it's required by law, so if they don't really get a say-so in this, it would be polite to let them know, since they booted us out of there.

They're supposed to be a civic-minded organization.

Thank you.

I'm still got slaughtered.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, Jonell.

That's what I thought.

Our personnel?

Andrea, am I hearing you?

What are the three things to closed session?

Is that your question?

Yes, that was, that's fine.

Okay, my question, and Bucky, maybe, I think it's my question.

You asked for this to be on the agenda.

the director of facilities for Slaughter Rec last year when we were talking about making sure that the room, the two rooms that are side by side, the dividers could be opened up so it's one big happy room and that there would be, I don't remember, I remember what he looks like.

He told me that he was, I don't remember.

And their word in the email is, it would inconvenience 100 students if we let you in there on Monday.

What?

It's called voting.

And apparently, they didn't.

Well, the only thing I think that we can do now, Mike has the name of Jeremy's boss.

May I have Jeremy's boss's name?

I don't have it.

Okay.

And sometime after the election, we set up a meeting with Jeremy's boss and say, look, this can't be.

I think we should send a letter.

Yes, I do.

Facilities guy, the boss of the facilities guy, and the dean of students.

I agree.

And if you'd like to talk about our concerns, we'd be happy to do that.

Absolutely.

Because we need to get going on getting a new polling place set up if we're going to have to move.

And what is his title?

It's on somebody's computer because I...

I thought you had been talking to Mike Merritt, okay.

It's just off of Aldermen.

What does it do when it's not a poet?

It's a continuing education.

Does it have a big conference room with a flat surface?

You know where St. Thomas is?

I do.

So it's something to think about because otherwise it's a little more inconvenient for the students, but not that much.

Is Jeremy the person with whom Mike Merriman has normally dealt?

But I don't propose to take more time now.

So I'm happy to follow up with this clearly.

Zimra Hall would be advantageous.

Or was that the week after the elections?

That's a question we could still be working to certify the election Thursday, November.

13th?

whatever the Thursday after the election.

Okay.

Now has

My question was... Will you want to first move the officers that we appoint?

No, I move we appoint Kristin Allen-Miller and Kishore Pandagane.

Second.