Electoral Board Meeting   11/20/2025

Good morning, everyone.

This is the first regularly scheduled electoral board meeting after the election November the 20th.

It's 9.30.

Meeting is called to order.

We have quorum established with three members.

I call the meeting to order.

Anyone have any additions that we need to put on?

Otherwise, all in favor of taking the agenda forward, say aye.

Aye.

The brief announcement for the registrar is going to come when the registrar gets here.

She is currently on the phone with the elect, going over our

election results, and when she comes in, she has a fine window of when she can come in and deliver her information and then go back and finish.

Jim Heilman and I were there helping her yesterday, pretty much all day, Jim, going through, re-going through, and the

The upshot of, and she will explain this in greater detail as she feels that she needs to, when the localities submit their results to the Department of Elections, then the Department of Elections has people who go over it again.

And apparently a change, not apparently, but a change was made a couple of years ago to include

undervote tallies, meaning how many people did not vote in a particular race and those numbers, thank you, Lori, those numbers had to be posted on election night and in

The busyness, do you notice how I've looked for the right word on that?

The busyness of election night, some of the undervotes may have been either typed in or not saved.

The process of election night, enhanced election night reporting.

If you talk to the 133 registrars in the Commonwealth, you will have,

so many expletives that we would not begin to be able to count them all.

The election night, enhanced election night reporting, it is a kerfuffle.

But if you're putting in changes, you have to save it at one place.

Most of us would think, okay, it's been saved.

Oh no, you have to then save it in another place.

and I suspect that what happened, although I don't know because the registrar was entering the election night, both registrars as a matter of fact, we had two, and I suspect that that's probably what happened.

A one number, one under vote didn't get saved.

And so bless her heart, Jonell is going through all of these tapes to reconstruct, to find the,

as I said, that mostly undervotes.

So she'll come in when she gets off the phone with elect, but that's the upshot of where she is.

As you know, we always have time with this electoral board and I think we should be duly proud of the fact that the Albemarle County Board has always accepted public comment.

There are boards that do not.

We think the public is entitled that we can be at the meetings both electronically and in person, and that their comments are welcomed.

So at the beginning of our meeting, we have open comment by anybody who wants to make a comment.

We ask that you identify yourself.

And if you have an affiliation to an organization or party, you disclose that.

And that you have a three minute period.

We also invite comments while we're in the midst of discussing something.

Makes sense to me and to this board that

If you got a comment about something we're about to take a vote on, you ought to make a comment before the votes take it, rather than at the end of the meeting, which is how they do it at other places.

But before I forget it, Jim, I see your hand.

I want to ask everybody to be, we have a very long agenda, as you see, and a short time to get through it.

So if we can all be very cognizant and careful to be recognized before we speak,

Then we will talk over each other and everybody can hear what's being said.

I'd like to also welcome our legal counsel, Andrea Ruege, that I see is once again on our call.

Thank you Madam Counselor.

We really appreciate your all of the work that you have done for this board and for the common for the Commonwealth and for the county.

much more than you ever thought you were going to have to do when you accepted the job in Albemarle County.

But we appreciate your standing up and helping us.

So I think we need a round of applause.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's my pleasure.

Jim has a question for a comment.

I'm going through minutes by October 30th there, but also the end of November.

But the other, the comment that I wanted to make is that when all is said and done, it appears that Albemarle County had a 63% turnout, which somebody told me was the seventh or eighth highest in the state.

Okay, the open comment is here.

Oh, wait a minute.

Before we go to open comment, this slice lady has reminded me that I have a public service comment, chairman's prerogative, public service comment from the Albemarle County Extension Office.

I think we want all of our voters, all of our citizens, but particularly our voters, to be healthy and to be aware that their drinking water, if they live in the county, probably comes from a home owner moderated and functioning either a well or a cistern or a spring.

And the extension office in Blacksburg

authors testing in all counties, not all counties do it every year, but Albemarle County, the extension office in Albemarle County with Kerry Swanson has worked very hard, very, very hard to get testing for our well water.

It's usually done in May, but this year they had some reorganization in the lab in Blacksburg, so it was done in November.

It will be done again in May next year.

200 kits have been allocated.

And then another 200 kits will be available in November.

So Albemarle will be one of the few counties to have two testings a year and a lot more.

We've really worked very hard on that.

And I will tell you that you wanna probably get into the May testing, particularly if you didn't do the November testing this year, because the testing next year,

The kits are gonna be returned the day after the election.

I think that's a correct date, I'm not sure.

It's either before or after, but it's right at election time.

So those of you who are working the elections, cast your order in May.

Thank you very much for that.

It's important because you don't know what's in your water unless you test it.

And you don't test arsenic, you don't test mercury, you don't test copper, you don't test E. coli, all of which can do you great harm.

Sorry, Jim, go ahead.

Okay, open comments for everybody else.

Thank you.

Nobody's got a comment or a question.

My name is Tom Bowditch and I live in Earlysville.

and I'm not a registered Democrat, I'm an independent.

And my interest in coming here is I think the 2026 midterm will be conceivably one of the more important elections in the country, in the history of the country.

And I think also it may end up being a contested election because of the vast and increasing

to the current administration.

So my interest is in seeing how a local board like this prepares and contemplates the possibility of contention in the election if they do envision that at all and what measures and activities are undertaken to better protect the integrity of the election.

Thank you for your comments.

I will tell you that the Albemarle County Board

endeavors in any election to have free, fair, safe, and legal elections.

We work very hard and it doesn't matter if it's a soil and water election or congressional or presidential.

We show the same respect for all elections.

So I would allay your anxiety on that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Do we have soil and water coming up next year?

I think it's a four-year term.

OK.

But it's one of those vote for two when you've got three names.

I had three quick comments about it.

Okay, Jim, go right ahead.

This is the Democratic observers would be less than what I didn't have to do to report for us of their findings from out in the field from all their observers.

They have shared that with us.

I was

Happy with all the compliments that our election officials got that are on the first page of your work.

You mentioned that our three failed optical scan machines that you have not been informed why they failed.

That's because we have not been informed why they failed.

as much as we've got.

I think I should clarify, I know it's mechanical and it was not, my understanding is it was not.

It wasn't user error.

No, no.

Or any outside influence because there could not be any.

Exactly.

The message on the machine was a message she said he'd never seen before.

My final comment, you mentioned that one observer asked for a total vote count and the chief called the office evidently and was told that you're not allowed to give that out.

which was very wrong information and it disturbs me when our office gives out incorrect information.

I just wanted to mention that part disturbed me.

This particular precinct was very chaotic, and the observers felt it would disturb the voting process to go up to the machine, and in a rush to look at the numbers, so they were asking the chief, which has always been how we were told to communicate, and the chief said, I'm not allowed to give you that information.

So anyway, that's how it was resolved.

We have work to do there.

It shows because you used what I would have used.

No.

It was university.

It was university.

Thank you.

And it was a chief that had not been a chief before.

Just for clarity, which has been stated, but as I like to say, if you hear something said twice, it's probably really important if you hear it said three times, you underline it and take notes.

The public and protected ballot counts are right there on the screen.

Anybody can see them.

It takes

a couple of seconds to read the number.

And that's how many ballots, not how many votes, how many ballots have gone through that machine at that instant.

So it's a real easy number to have.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

At a university, many of the votes were provisional.

And to be clear, the number of provisional ballots that have been processed or completed at any given instant

Particularly in that setting, it would be very difficult.

Not precisely, right.

Only the number on the machine.

That is not an optional machine.

Okay, any other questions, comments?

Okay.

And the chair would like to recognize the secretary's diligent work for keeping a running open minute

The other minutes that I'm moving approval of are November 5th through 14th that there were more meetings that we were involved in doing with the official canvas of results and the provisional ballot meetings.

So we're both.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

I needed a new toner for my printer.

No keyboard's doing all right.

And before you scan them, they're going to be changed.

Of course.

They're getting updated hopefully today.

Let me give you the one.

The report I have on that, maybe we can put it to bed entirely.

I was speaking with Jonell about this earlier this week.

She's ready, willing, and able to produce those reports and ask that we can start that at the next meeting.

That's what I would plan to do.

OK. You're talking about the list maintenance now.

Oh, finance.

The ADA inspections, I can report that we have collectively, the board has done all the inspections we need to do, and I will, unless anybody has any addenda or changes to what they've already turned in, I will send in the report to the state.

Do you know, do you remember which ones were they are?

Keswick, you did Keswick.

And I did Keswick.

If you think about it, call me, because if it's something that hasn't been done, that I thought had been done, I'll run out and get it done.

New business.

Electric board policy on deal.

Yes, we have this attached to our minutes.

It's a one pager front and back.

We'll try to capture here what we'd actually do.

so that that can be communicated to all in attendance so that there are not any confusions about putting EOs into our database, taking EOs off of our database, signing EOs, and announcing that without talking to the board, et cetera, et cetera.

And the last item, we can change our mind, is basically what that says.

Lori, go ahead.

I'm sorry, Lori Jones of the Democratic Party of Amarillo County.

So I may not have all of what we do.

That's what I've seen so far.

That's what I was trying to get.

And there are two places in here I just, as you said, memorialize what's in the code.

Sorry.

That's all.

Yeah, Rick Garnett, Republican Party.

Yeah, just two comments or questions.

Number five was it here?

I'm wondering if you should refine the wording here because the way it's written, it could be interpreted that if you only work for one year, then you won't be reappointed.

Ah, that worked for the past two years.

It worked last year, but you didn't work the first two years.

I would comment, if you don't mind, this is a new document.

The Lord may have seen it, but we haven't deliberated on it.

And so I think in one of our EO

meetings, so maybe it's done in closed session, maybe it's done in a planning session.

No, we can do it in a plan.

I mean, it kind of yields a lot of other stuff.

You've been very productive.

You've used a lot of stuff.

I have a question.

Actually, we want four lists.

We've got the one-year appointment list and those to not reappoint and the three-year those to appoint those not reappoint

I'm sorry Jim, could you say what you just said again?

One year, people have one year appointment whether they go forward to a three year.

I wasn't addressing that issue.

That's another issue.

Okay.

I was addressing the issue.

I'm saying actually four lists.

Well, that gets to another issue.

Sticking with that and those not recommended for appointment or reappointment and the three-year list recommended for appointment and not recommended for appointment.

And we don't do two-year lists.

We did that one time.

And I don't believe that our newest people

For instance, the people who just served November, they don't automatically go, at least in the past, they haven't automatically flipped to a three-year appointment.

Some of them maybe do, some of them just get re-upped for another one-year appointment because we usually like to see somebody in action for more than one election before we do that three-year appointment.

So now we're up to three.

What's your fourth list?

Three-year appointments recommended for reappointment.

Three-year appointments not recommended for reappointment.

I'll rewrite this.

I had one more question.

Please.

Two questions.

Please.

On item 12,

OK, so to clarify, the chair of the parties would be able to get the full list of the names of all the people who have been appointed and not appointed.

But to clarify, Rick, the Code of Virginia says that the parties or candidates are entitled to get the list not later than 10 days before the election of the rosters of the assignments

Let me finish.

So everybody understands.

The offices of election who have been assigned to the individual polling places with their names and their party affiliation designations.

The code further in that same section earlier says, as you know, that the list of appointed officers of election shall be available in the registrar's office as soon as they are appointed.

meaning that when the election, the electoral board votes on either reappointment or a new appointment, those people are immediately, not immediately, but within a reasonable period of time, the next day, whatever.

All of those names are added to the constantly increasing list, we hope, of officers of election.

And that list with the name, all that list is,

The name's Clara Belle Wheeler.

It doesn't give any other information about me.

And that list is available to the general public.

So any of you could walk into the registrar's office or send an email to the election manager and get that list.

Let me clarify my question.

Number 11 seems to indicate it's only including the people who have been assigned.

Number 12 talks about those who have been assigned and not assigned.

So I'm trying to make sure that that number 12 includes the chairs can get the full list of everyone who's not only assigned but not assigned.

The general public has that list.

The assignments?

No.

I'm talking about assignments, not approvals.

I'm talking about who got assigned to work in a precinct, which we get just before the election, right?

Not later than 10 days.

Right, right.

But number 11 seems to talk about those people who were actually assigned to work.

Number 12

doesn't necessarily include the people who were not assigned.

See what I'm saying, Bucky?

I just want to make sure that the chairs have access to the list of both the people who were assigned to work and who were not assigned to work, who were approved election officers.

Name and party, is that what you're saying?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The only time, to your point,

The general list of officers of election, of people who have been approved, appointed by the board to be officers of election does not include their party affiliation.

It's just the names.

A party affiliation is not available to the general public.

It's available to the parties or candidates.

But further to your question, and Alex brought this up to me before the selection, because we were wondering getting calls from people such as yourself and others for officers who had not been assigned and it seemed

several months back in the summer, back in the spring, at some point before we started getting into this election, the election we just had.

There were people who had been appointed by the board, but their names had somehow gotten lost, gotten misplaced.

Right, right, I understand.

And that's why I bring it up, because we know.

Thank you, I'll look at this language.

If we see someone wasn't assigned, but we know they were screwed, if they weren't assigned, we're trying to find out, did they not turn their paperwork in?

What happened to those people?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The other question that you may ask is that because of

policy, privacy, or privacy information.

We are not allowed to give out contact information for offices of election.

So we can't give you their address, or their telephone number, or their email, or their birthday.

We can give out their names, which makes it difficult if you're in your position, or Lori's position, trying to get more information.

But you, I might add to everyone knows you all helped a lot last year by changing the form.

When people responded, you had the little check mark.

Exactly.

Would you be willing to allow the party chairs to contact you and if, right.

Okay.

I have one following on number 11.

Sure.

Upon request and at a reasonable charge.

I don't think we've ever charged.

The code provides for that.

You can't argue the reason.

Yeah, engraved on silver sheets.

We got to charge on that.

Thank you.

Hotwash plans, logistics agenda.

Hotwash is a term that the Albemarle County Board has been using to my personal knowledge for years, maybe longer.

It indicates an after action review by the people who participated and the people who've helped them.

And for our purposes, Albemarle County has always had

sometime after the November general election, not after every election, but the November general election, an invitation to the chiefs and the assistant chiefs to gathering room A and

have food, sometimes it's been on a Saturday afternoon, sometimes it's been an evening meeting, it varies.

We've tried to make it as soon after the election as possible before people's memories fade of what they really needed to do.

So we try to do it in December, hopefully not getting into the snow problem in January.

And all the chiefs and the assistant chiefs,

are there to learn.

The board is there to learn so that the officers can tell the board what they saw, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The board can tell the officers along with the staff, the registrar staff, what happened that they saw.

And it's a big learning after actions review.

It predated, that term predated Wikipedia.

Originally was a military term.

That is a weekday, so I assume we were having it in the evening.

Correct.

The last one we had

We had a, I'll call it a cocktail hour, although no cocktails were there in room B, and then marked everybody down to room A for dinner and talk.

I think we need, I think we need to,

either go through this, and I was going to suggest that the planning for the hot wash may not have to be done in an open meeting.

I mean, this is a training session, if you will.

It is a training session, and it might be to get all the logistics, etc., that we meet with the registrar staff, registrar boards, because I can tell you the expense for that

extravaganza that was last year was amazing.

And I understand the poinsettias where it was, I'm gonna be constrained.

I think that we need, and we need to talk as a board on how to orchestrate, how to make sure that we give the officers information.

But more importantly, I think the officers need to give us information.

And I see officers and chiefs here.

Yes sir, Rick.

It was one of the things on my list was to see to it that the operations manager and or registrar, whosoever should be sending out such an announcement, gets that out to the EOs.

We have the room at that time.

I would suggest we just start in room A. I would not concur with that.

We can keep the cake that you're going to jump out of in here, then we look down.

We can leave you here all night?

Yeah, well, if you don't, you know.

We forget.

So since it's December the 4th, is it OK, guys?

It's going to be dark.

Hopefully, it will not be snowing.

Last year we were sparsely attended compared to previous years.

Yes.

And we want chiefs, if they can attend for whatever reason,

And when you send out the notice, since we do have some new assistant chiefs, do it real quick.

We're going to have a hot wash. That is a review of the election.

Just let people let that go.

Who will be provided?

Yes, Lewis has it.

I'm sorry, Lewis, I can't see.

That's okay, two questions.

The place here or?

Yeah, but no, we wouldn't all fit.

It would be very uncomfortable here.

Alex, I would suggest that we all look at, we talk, we look at whatever you send out, because Lewis would approve of that.

Okay, anything else?

I think that's a great idea.

I would suggest that we have a working meeting.

I know next week is Thanksgiving, but the week after that is the 4th.

I would suggest we're going to have a couple of other things that we need to do as a work group.

And maybe, is everybody going to be in town?

Don't anybody throw anything.

For FOIA purposes, you need to give three days notice.

This is a teaching.

So if we set it for Monday or Tuesday, even if you called it,

This is a, let us get organized for this teaching session because that's what a hot wash is.

It's a two-way street of teaching.

Oh, and Andrea, you are invited.

The 24th at 11 a.m.

That's important.

It's a fun thing.

They have good coffee, Jim.

I've been there before.

Let's not back it up into your windshield.

Pretty much.

It's the same problem.

Okay, we're going to Tuesday.

The 24th is not a good day.

Unless we did the afternoon of the 24th.

you won't be able to talk and you may not be able, okay, 25th.

25th.

25th at nine o'clock.

You want to start at 8.30?

No, no, no, I don't want to start at 8.30.

I knew that, I knew that's what he would say.

Nine o'clock.

Next item, do we have anything else on the hot watch that we need to talk about?

Okay.

This is an item that we've all discussed, but it's got my name next to it.

And Counselor Jones brought it up as delicately as possible.

We need to talk about university polling place.

number 202, I would be less delicate than the naval counselor.

And I would say that when I went in there, it was not organized.

It was chaotic.

I know for a fact that there were many officers of election who had come to one of the four

hour plus long same day registration and provisional ballot voting we taught.

There was a room, a second room that has been opened and available in the past and it was not being used.

I personally had a conversation face-to-face with the Director of Facilities Management for Slaughter Recreation last year.

We had a very pleasant, collegial, this is what we need, yes ma'am, this is what we can give you, everything was fine, we shook hands, and then it, somehow we got

The board got an email from the University of Virginia facilities management telling us that we would not be able to have the rooms, number one or number two, that are divided with petitioners.

So you just slide it back and it becomes one big giant room.

On Monday, the cages could be delivered, but the officers could not be in there on Monday afternoon to set up

or evening period because there were some sort of classes, dance classes and the phrase that was used by the University of Virginia was that we would inconvenience a hundred students on Monday and then in the next paragraph

For your community event.

I am so pleased that I was alone when I read this email.

My mother came down and wrapped her angel wings around them and said, calm down.

This is after I had had

a face-to-face agreement.

I guess a gentlemen and a ladies agreement doesn't count anymore.

But either the university needs to get on board and realize that they requested a polling place on grounds.

And they chose, along with a whole group of people at the university,

and I have subsequently spoken to the lady who helped us with our election day security who is part of the fire safety rescue, she leads it, about if we need to do a different precinct location, we can do a different polling place.

Yes, we are, this polling place

563, 564.

I've seen so many numbers in the last, I believe, at the request of the university.

So their students can find the polling place.

I think the board really needs to

But at a previous meeting, we said we were going to send a letter to certain people, including the dean of students, discussing our concerns.

I've done several emails hoping

That would be a favorable response.

Well, I talked to the safety lady.

I talked to the guy that was the facilities manager, hoping that he would understand and we wouldn't have to escalate.

And

I haven't gotten a response, so I'd like to send a letter to all the people.

The university's sort of busy with other shiny objects right now.

Are we agreed that if we could get, and the parking at Slaughter-Wreck is awkward.

It's adequate.

It's adequate, but it's awkward.

Gee, what a novel idea.

So I think, are we all agreed that if we can get Slaughterwreck to give us the room Monday afternoon, Monday night, and all day Tuesday,

that we should make every attempt to leave it at that location.

Before we go to that conclusion, in talking to the officers there, the setup time on Tuesday morning, some of them got there at 4.5 to get things set up, they were actually set up quite quickly and it was only a couple of them.

So my thinking is like many precincts, perhaps there is no setup they need to do the day before.

I would say that the setup for that polling place was inadequate.

You've opened a different door.

The chief, in her notes at the end of the day, concluded, we should have set up the second room.

That was a mistake.

And I should have had more people.

I should be running this like it's two separate activities, a registrar's office and a polling place.

And she's spot on.

She is.

And so with that and two rooms,

But I still think that a letter, we'll have to compose it too, saying that we really need to be able to set up the day before.

I agree.

I agree in principle.

The setup that they used, does anybody else, you weren't slaughtered, you were there.

But I knew, and I said to her, what happened?

Why are you in one room?

And she said, well, I don't think we need the other room.

She did not say facilities wouldn't let me have the room.

And I also know later, facilities did try, and they talked about opening

And there were, because of the setup, there were barriers in being able to do that because, you know, they had to thin move machines, which I completely understand and our observers watched them have the conversation.

So I 110% agree that a letter needs to go to the Dean of Students and their cooperation is

absolutely they should be joyful that we're coming and doing this for them like 110 percent agree with that.

Yes that's that's my only let me let me question Jim okay I spoke with the officers who were going to be not all of them but

I think they didn't think turnout would be what it was.

Well, I don't know why you would not.

I agree that it was a poor conclusion, but that was when I talked to the chief and I said to her, we fought to get you a full room because it used to be in a smaller room.

Like this is a big deal to have the big room.

And she said, I don't think we need it.

I have several comments.

One, it was chaotic, but I think it was controlled chaos.

Students, as you note in your report, had to wait 10, 15, 20 minutes.

Yeah, overnight.

So 15, 20 minutes.

Doesn't bother me at all.

I've heard stories about other universities like VSU where students were waiting two to three hours.

So that doesn't bother me, and the students didn't seem to mind too much.

The other room should have been opened.

When I talked to the chief, she said that her officers didn't want to open the other room.

So I don't know what the final story on that was.

I think the letter needs to be written.

I don't have, when we, and I don't think you were on the board when

Are we on the board when we?

We looked at other places.

Yes, you did.

And the other places just weren't gonna work.

We didn't think slaughter was the one that would.

What I would like to also do, I'd like to meet or talk to the chief or assistant chiefs, the electoral board of the city.

because Venable, which is no longer Venable, what is it now?

Trailblazer.

Trailblazer has almost the same number of SDRs that we have.

They have a larger, their space is larger.

The major problem at, thank you, Rick, thank you.

The major problem at university at Slaughter is that we had the two rooms.

They have used two rooms in the past, which worked very well.

You put the same day registrations out of the way of the people that are just voting.

The other thing that we taught, all three of us taught and emphasized

the careful distribution of live ballots.

And when you give a voter a provisional ballot or same-day registration provisional, that they fill out the green form, front or back, whichever one it is, and then the officer of election or an officer of election,

gets the ballot from the ballot table.

He gives it to the student or the voter.

And what they were doing up there was the students were filling out the green form and then getting up and going to get a ballot, going to the marking.

So now they're back in the milieu or the maelstrom, if you will.

And there's no way to keep track of them.

I'm not saying that

A ballot got on the optical scanner when it shouldn't have.

But it was very confusing because they had two, I think two, maybe there were three, of those regular tables end to end.

And I'm telling you, the officers of election were sitting on top of each other.

Yeah, and you can't do that in that space.

If you had one officer at one table, you got a voter here, a voter here, a voter here, maybe you could manage three at a time.

Peyton Wilson, very much a worker.

Thank you.

The other, to their credit, they did have a very nice

bless her heart, officer of election who was outside in the line when they came in the building and mercifully it was a nice beautiful day so nobody was out in the rain and she was going up and down the line reminding students that they needed their social if they're doing the same day they need their social security they need their address and it would be really nice if they had an ID back and forth back and forth back and forth

It was another woman, officer of election, who was actually running between the same day registration provisional ballot tables and the ballot table.

And she was doing a great job.

But then the student would get up and go to the carrels where they were voting.

I think that it would be a really good idea for this board, while all of this is fresh in our memories,

to meet with the university officers, chiefs, and assistant chiefs, and as many of those who can be there be there.

This is not a cast aspersions, tell you what you did wrong.

This is how can we make this better?

What do you need to do your job?

It doesn't pertain to any other polling place.

Exactly.

Well, if I started to say, what do we have here that's actionable?

With everybody.

What I'd like to do is draft up my idea of what the layout ought to look like and how they ought to run it so at least we have something to throw stones at.

And you may or may not find that in writing, but we've gone, we've done that when you had the two rooms before you got on the board.

I agree.

I agree.

The other, on many occasions in this board meeting, or a board meeting.

Ann Brubaker, just

You know, I mean, my career seemed to have what I thought was a lot of provisionals.

You did.

I was going to say preventionals.

Preventionals.

We had 45, and I thought that was a lot.

500.

I cannot imagine that.

I'm assuming that they have certain people that are assigned just to do SDRs.

How many people do they have?

No, let me go back to what this board has heard.

You asked me, would you go to university?

We know that.

And when we were running up into this election, there were nine officers, nine assigned to university.

And I said, oh no, that's not enough.

We need to have twice that many.

And was told, oh no, that'll be plenty.

the former chief said no, but her point is you have to have in any polling place adequate numbers of officers educated to do the job that they need to do which is one of the reasons we encouraged

I'm just saying that precinct seems to be

I was going to say almost like their own special training session that's just specific to them.

And they need a large team.

Yeah.

They do.

We appreciate that.

And finally, we managed to, with Alex's help, we got 16.

and getting somebody, because everybody knows what it's like at the meeting, the officers anyway, begged people who were experienced, there were some new people there, which means they probably will never come back, but there was some experience and we said, please, will you come in and bring your expertise?

And they did come to the classes.

University, I'm sorry, Jim, go ahead.

Well, I was going to try to bring this to a conclusion.

I did want to mention one problem we do have is projecting what the turnout's going to be.

They're gone.

Do they come out for just the presidential?

Are they gonna come out for congressional?

You gotta be prepared because you can't.

I will say the same thing that I've said about other highly advertised elections.

This gubernatorial election was highly advertised.

And there were candidates and parties who

made great efforts to get out the vote.

Yes, sir.

When Cotton and again, I'm sure everybody agrees with this, the university is one place that you clearly need to overstaff.

Absolutely.

You don't understaff.

Never.

and meet with all the officers and chiefs and assistant chiefs we can get.

Sometime in December.

Okay.

Next is Election Day reports and I'd like to call the registrar and see if she's hopefully been released from a limit.

This is, like I said, too big of a con.

Sure, please.

I was trying to get to the website for the Registrar's Office, and I know there's been a lot of changes.

No, no, not the board, the office for the Registrar's Office.

Oh, yeah.

The slacker who updates the website just hasn't gotten it.

That's why we want the Registrar.

She isn't

The registrar is in the process of hiring staff.

She's been hiring staff.

Job descriptions, which need to be updated.

This is, I don't want to steal her.

But her name isn't even on the website.

Right, right.

I know that.

Just to be clear, I didn't take the previous registrar's name off of the website.

There just wasn't a place to put it.

That's why it hasn't come up in the things I needed to update.

And then the final comment is this right here.

With this election, as always, you've got your governor now.

What is the process now for the electoral board to be moving forward?

The code is very clear.

The code of Virginia is very clear about how electoral boards are staffed.

They're all three-member boards.

Each member serves a three-year term.

The code says that the party of the most recently elected governor has two members of the board.

the party of the candidate who received the second highest number receives one.

Both the vice chair, currently Bucky Walsh, and Jim are in positions that have nothing to do with that distribution.

I'm in the position that is tied to the governor's race.

So I will go off at

11.59 p.m. on December the 31st, and a Democrat will come on at 12.01 a.m. January the 1st.

The party, the Democrat party, Democratic party, sorry Jim, will send three names to the circuit court judge by the 15th of December, no later than that, say please choose one of these

three names to be appointed and sworn in to the electoral board.

We began the term for three years, January the 1st, 2026.

And that term was changed by the General Assembly several years ago because the term used to start March the 1st, which was very awkward in a presidential primary year because you'd have a brand new, branch of the electoral board members beginning their term the day before a presidential primary, ideal.

So those names will go forward to the Chief Circuit Court Judge and the Circuit Court Judge actually makes the appointment.

And at that meeting the code further says, Jim uses the correct term in the code, reorganizational meeting, the three

then current members will decide who's the secretary, who's the vice chair, who's the chair.

The chairman and the secretary should not, according to the code, should not be representatives of the same party unless one of those people says, nope, I don't want to be the chairman, nope, I don't want to be the secretary, I want to be the vice chair, you can't make me do anything else.

In which case,

You'll have two of the same party as the chair and the secretary.

Otherwise, the chairman and the secretary should be from different parties.

Any other questions, Beth?

Okay, is she?

Give her five minutes.

Give her five minutes, okay.

Let's schedule our next meeting.

It seems to be- It's already on the schedule.

It's on the schedule, but with everything else that's going on,

Does anyone see a reason why we should not meet on Thursday, the second Tuesday of December?

We're set for 9.30.

I understand.

I'm asking if we wanted to... Just notice, Jack.

I hope you were going to say that.

Okay, I was just trying to get you out of here in case you had another...

Okay, so...

At some point, we've got to figure out when we're going to do the university pre-seed evaluation.

And because we're doing on November the 25th at 9 a.m., a hot wash evaluation.

Do you want to do it at the same time or a different time?

How much evaluation is a, you know, preparing materials for a training session?

So we'll have to notice that.

And we have other things that we have to do before that.

Well, we don't want to wait until the 11th.

Because that runs us right.

I'd like to give people in the holiday spirit as much notification as possible, these offices of election chiefs who would like to come to that meeting as much time as possible, rather than saying, you got tomorrow, you're going to be here tomorrow.

And if we don't do it until the 11th, we're not doing it the week of Christmas.

I figured that.

I think we need to have as many people who are aware of the problem, who have tried to work on the problem.

So I would submit, maybe try to set a date.

I can't see why we wouldn't set a date.

because that person will not, unless it's somebody who's been an election officer or voted, probably not voted, but that person will be at a disadvantage.

And it gives dissipation of vivid memories.

If you have it on the 11th- If you want it on the 11th, I'm okay with that.

Okay.

It's not a castigation education.

I'm afraid it turns into that.

No, no, I agree.

It should not be a castigation session.

Jim, I think you can solve problems in here.

Thank you, Rick.

I know where you're going.

I could hear my voice getting quiet.

Thank you.

I think the people who worked in that polling place need to have a voice.

I totally agree with you.

Well, I don't think it should.

So let's add it to the agenda for the 11th.

I would put it at the end of the meeting.

It's not a work group.

I'm sorry.

I think probably better towards the beginning of the meeting just if we're asking them to come to a meeting and they come at 9.30 and we don't get around to discussing them until 10.30.

I'm so happy with that.

okay yes ma'am just clarification so this conversation is going to take place during the board meeting yes there's no other way to involve all of us and them yeah i didn't know there was going to be a separate board no no so thank you ma'am okay so we're so please please join us and we have one one item we're closing on so before the announcement we ask alex to invite the uh

That's what I'm trying to say.

Alex, if you'll send out an invitation and let us see it before you send it out to all the offices of election who worked on November the 4th at the university and advise them that we are going to have an electoral board meeting beginning at 9.30 on Thursday, December the 11th and that we will

Yeah, OK.

I think we want to have the room across the hall.

And if you could check and see, and if you can't, I've got an inside number to the person who actually controls the room to get room B-boy.

Thank you.

OK, now I'm registered.

Yes, so excuse me for coming in.

That's all right.

We've explained that you were on the phone with elect, that you've been straightening out the numbers that were reported, that most of these were simply undervotes that were not reported as undervotes, which were votes for nobody.

So now, again, thank you.

to let folks know just a little bit about what's happening in our office since I've been here.

So we found out during the election, as we brought people in, we didn't have enough place to put them.

So we are rearranging, reorganizing our internal space in order to suit everybody when we become full staff.

When the interim registrar and I first came here,

and then Alex, obviously Alex was here, there were only three of us that worked full-time and so we had, everybody else was part-timer.

So I have several jobs to fill.

Those will be posted before the year is out.

We'd like to go into the new year with the full staff.

That means we have five full-time people, two permanent part-time and then some other people working temporary part-time.

So we're looking forward to that.

Did we talk about the canvas or?

No, we did not.

Okay, gotcha.

What else do you want to know?

I think we're doing well.

We have new people on staff now.

They fit in quite well.

Everybody's learning new things.

We were improving on some things that need some improving.

Right now what they're doing is rearranging fun while I'm not there, but I think we've done really well.

I'll have to say it was a tough election for us.

When I came just two months ago, hit the ground running, and it was nonstop the entire time.

So, and the same for the, I'm not sure, she was here, we just never stopped, we never really took a breath.

So now that we're in the,

the stage where we're reviewing the results.

We've slowed down a little bit, but we really won't be done.

We won't be finished with everything until our abstracts.

Those are the results that we send to the Department of Elections are completely finished and the State Board of Elections certifies.

But as a staff, I believe everybody

Not yet, she will be.

And Andrea?

Andrea, not yet, she will be.

Yes, we have, I can tell you our permanent part-time, Elizabeth Sugg is permanent part-time,

Rooklyn Eubanks is permanent part-time.

Christina, Andrea, and Sharon, Cecil.

So I'll be working with HR to rewrite some of our job descriptions.

They're a little bit uneven,

And then as well, maybe since we'll be able to have five full-time people, I'll be able to spread out the work a little bit better.

I think some positions are overloaded because of what was needed when there was literature.

and I'll be able to even out.

So people who are familiar with folks in the office, you'll see new people and you're gonna see some of the same people doing different things.

So that's gonna change dramatically.

Brenda is Cecil.

I'm sorry, thank you for saying that.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Brenda, she's Cecil.

She's Cecil.

Yes, it is.

Yes, it is.

Good luck.

Can you just explain to us the difference between permanent and seasonal?

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

The permanent part time, they get vacation time.

They can accrue vacation time.

They can accrue sick time, and they are guaranteed a certain number of hours a week.

It's a set number of hours per week.

They can go over, but they will at least have those.

And temporary is just on an as-needed basis.

We're on the election run.

Yes.

Can you say again the number of time?

Five.

Five.

Including my position.

And then the other one too.

Because nothing is permanent in the employment space.

Please tell me if you'd like me to not go down this road.

But this is your office.

You're the Registrar and Director of Elections.

You know the work that needs to be done better than anybody else.

You know what jobs have to be completed in what order.

And therefore, that's the reason you are rewriting the job descriptions.

because some of the job descriptions may have been written by HR.

What do they know?

They're basing a job description on something that took place in Loudoun County.

Well, it's not the same.

So I think we all should be very grateful that you're gonna take the time and the effort that you are taking time to reorganize the office so that everybody knows what their job is.

It's really hard.

Thank you for bringing that up.

And I felt some of that when just in the role that I initially had in here as a chief deputy.

And so I'll just spend just a little bit more time on that.

The five full-time positions outside of mine are, so there's the registrar, then we have the chief deputy registrar,

and the second person.

Then we have a senior assistant registrar that's full-time.

Then we have the election manager, which is Alex.

And then we have the assistant election manager.

So those are the five full-time positions.

So the four other positions, I'm actually writing them all at the same time so that I can move around in ways that make sense.

The job descriptions right now, there's too much overlap.

And again, some jobs are really overloaded.

So I'm going to even those things out so that people don't have to work so much overtime.

But then also, you said that there are clear areas that people can own.

but then there's gonna be overlap where I need to be able to say, hey, can you help me with this today or can you help us with that today?

Absolutely.

And I would like to say a few things about the election manager position.

Just a bit of history and I'm not sure

You even know this.

Most localities do not have a physician and election manager.

We were the second one, I think, to have that position.

And that position was created by the electoral board, not by the registrar, and was hired by the electoral board in about 2005 or somewhere around there, and reported directly to the electoral board, not to the registrar.

So the election manager and the registrar were kind of on equal footing.

In about 2015, HR came to us and said, you're the only board that has a county employee reporting directly to you.

That really is weird.

And at least they second counted employee.

And so they suggested that election manager position put under the general registrar position.

And so that's the way it's been.

I would add to that the Code of Virginia, which governs what we all do.

The Code of Virginia very clearly states that the electoral board hires the registrar.

The electoral board can determine the number of people who work in the registrar's office, but the registrar hires everybody who works.

So we have to follow the law.

So the registrar hires her own staff.

Yes, any more questions?

Did I understand you correctly that Albemarle and maybe one or two other places are the only localities that have an election manager?

Correct.

Yes.

You've got really dramatically different sized organizations around the Commonwealth.

You have counties with 5,000 people in it where you have a registrar and no other employees, and you have

Counties like Fairfax where they have a huge department of people who do all the registrar's activities and they manage everything.

So that has some bearing on it.

But- Just a general question.

Perhaps you can answer my question.

What is the status on Debbie?

She has completed her term.

She is now no longer employed by the county of Albemarle.

The general registrar was sworn in the day before the election.

It's called jumping into the fire.

But they had been working in tandem carefully as a team.

And we were very grateful that we had a team because we needed a team.

There were many things that we found Debbie and Jonell and other members of the staff

found that needed to be reorganized.

And so now Debbie has gone back to her life before.

She is working part-time in Waynesboro.

But we hope, and this is Jonell's call, it may be that

that Jonell will find that she needs Debbie because Debbie knows a lot.

There's a lot of institutional knowledge in that little head.

And so now that you've mentioned that it is and it's across the board.

So it affects pretty much everything that we're doing is the record keeping.

but we intend to, our timeline is, I'm working on the assumption that there will be an election in March.

And so we are, so our pace is that, and our preparation is that.

And if there isn't one, then we'll be well ahead.

Yes.

So just so I'm clear,

I wanna make sure I'm not missing anybody.

Am I right that the deputy registrar, the senior assistant registrar, and the assistant elections manager are not filled yet?

And we have a question.

Yes.

Speaking of Debbie and her experience, you came out of Newport News?

Yes.

No, no, I was working different capacity altogether.

I'd been an election official for

12 years, quite some time, and a chief for most of those years.

I did work part-time in the Registrar's Office before I became an election official.

And one of the reasons that this board was so favorably impressed

was her managerial history in business, managing large numbers of people in office settings that were, in many respects, time constrained, deadline specific.

So you've got to provide, you've got to perform, you've got to have your information in.

Yes.

The abstracts will need to be rerun, all of them.

We do that in the context of a meeting.

So, yes.

I'm sorry, maybe this is part of what you're talking about.

No, just the number 12.

That's exactly what I was talking about.

That's what I thought.

Answering these questions for elect and did that leave any provisional meeting activities that the board had to take care of or Canvas activities the board had to take care of and signing the

That's what you're talking about, just signing some things and you don't need to.

No, we've gone through all the conversation.

Correct.

Even though they're not.

Yes, they want all 12 of them.

It doesn't actually cost them any effort at all.

So why not?

I have one agenda item that somehow didn't get on here.

And I failed to notice that it didn't get on here.

And we said we were going to talk about it at the beginning.

And that's the DS-300 malfunction.

And I would like to have this discussion while the registrar is here.

If you can stay briefly.

If you need to leave, by all means, just say,

Albemarle County purchased brand new DS-300s for all the folding prices.

They went into service in the June primary and we had no problems.

We did the LNA testing with a representative of ES&S with us for all of the machines.

We fortunately,

and a machine for, we determined that we could do with one machine in each polling place, one machine in the in-person absentee and then in cap, one machine for the pre-processing and election day cap, one machine for the delayed after election day, the current mailed absentee ballots for Friday afternoon and a machine for the

provisional ballots because we expected more provisional ballots and we thought we were going to count by hand.

So those were additional, plus we had additional backup machines which went through the complete LNA testing for all precincts so that you could put a ballot from any polling place in any of those.

And we thought we were okay.

And then early,

Before the polls opened, one of our DS-300s didn't open.

Fortunately, it got fixed and it opened and it did not have any more problems.

about 8, 8.30, I think it was, a DS 300 in the middle of voting, voting had started, ballots had been placed into the machine, and a warning light, a warning message that nobody had ever seen.

None of us had seen it.

The ESNS representative didn't know, but the problem was,

that was a warning light that said you can't use this effectively.

You couldn't get it fixed and continue.

No, Hollymead.

Then about 11 o'clock, whoo,

Same thing happened.

Another warning, can't use this machine, shut it down, no more voting.

And that was at Mountain View.

And then, and we had another machine to go into place.

Then, about 2.10 in the afternoon, Baker Butler, which is a very busy polling place, same song, same warning.

I was there for two of those.

I think Bucky was there for one of them.

I was at Mountain Dew.

I was at the others.

And we got another machine.

Poor Alex is driving around in his car delivering machines.

And I met him in the parking lot.

And we got the machine out together and rolled it in.

And I devised giving out instructions for everybody.

This is how you have to handle the emergency ballots.

We all know that the DS-300s and all optical scan machines in Virginia have an emergency ballot box.

Code of Virginia, and the best practices is that you don't count those ballots until the end of the day, because if voters see you putting ballots into another place, they become upset.

So you wait till the end of the day, and two offices of election, one R1D, put

the emergency ballots through the machine, whatever machine you're using.

But because there were so many ballots that either had already been voted or were voted while we were trying to get a new functioning machine, you had to open the machine the same way you would open any machine at 5.30 in the morning.

You open it up, you run a confirmation tape, configuration tape, a zero tape, public ballot count is zero, and you start feeding machine ballots in.

They waited until the end of the night.

They filled up the ballots in the emergency ballot box.

Then we had these big black

boxes that locked that had a slit in the top that used to be the emergency ballot boxes that had information in them that we used as releases.

Took all that out.

They were emergency ballot boxes.

And nobody really knew what happened to any of these machines.

But there were a lot of questions, a lot of phone calls, a lot of blah, blah, blah.

Bottom line is those three precincts worked incredibly well and diligent.

Baker Butler Chief did not get back in until 25 minutes after midnight because they had a lot of ballots they had to feed.

And despite what you may hear about the DS-300s, they may print tapes more quickly than the 200s, but they don't process ballots more quickly.

So it's slow putting them through.

And someone who's done it is nodding her head.

So they got those back.

We still did not determine.

Then we had a machine that we had to put into service.

We needed another machine for provisional ballots.

So we did the three, the board members did an LNA testing to get a zero for that tape, for that machine so we'd have a new thing.

Okay.

We're saying, okay, what happened?

So I called

the president of the SNS, whom I know.

Hi, emails back and forth.

We have some questions, please help.

And I talked to him.

And it turns out from talking to registrars and electoral board members around the Commonwealth, there were other places in Virginia that had problems with the DS-300s at the June primary.

We did not.

but we didn't know about those problems.

Nobody said what they were or that they even existed.

In the course of doing the LNA testing for the new machine that we needed to do for our provisional balance, the ES&S representative said, oh, well, you need to have the light blue USB sticks

Bucky and I looked at their, what?

Actually what he said was Carolina Blue.

Because all the sticks that we used when we were doing LNA testing were dark blue.

I thought they were black, but apparently they're dark blue.

So when we did the LNA testing for the replacement machine for cap and for the provisionals, we had a light blue,

Stick, and it works fine.

So I've talked to the president of ES&S yesterday.

We've had a very pleasant.

We need some answers.

We're here with three machines that had to be shut down and placed in the middle of an election, and we need to know why.

and we need to know why we were not advised of the problems of other localities in RICO.

Unfortunately, you weren't there.

So how would you know?

And other places had problems in Junie.

Other localities in Virginia had problems on the other of the reports.

I don't have a full comprehensive list of those, but it sounds as if there were similar problems.

ES&S had a big meeting of its people yesterday.

And I asked that we get a full explanation of what they determined was the problem.

Yes, ma'am.

There's also been a request on behalf of Admiral County

to not pay the huge amount of money that y'all approved to have them out there?

We were waiting to see.

Our community.

The community.

The EOs is who I'm thinking of.

I am thinking specifically, and that's why I specifically mentioned why,

That particular chief didn't get here until 25.

I'm surprised that they were done by then.

They did a really good job together.

They did an excellent job.

And I will push through.

Absolutely, because you had to do, we all know, it's slow going, and they had, I think, 1200, I'm not sure of the number.

It's a lot.

But we have a grid sheet,

of how to, because it's gonna happen someplace else.

And I think other people, other localities, we had to be absolutely certain of where all the ballots originated.

Were they out of the bin on the broken machine that had already been processed that needed to be counted because they weren't on the tape?

Were they in which emergency ballot container?

So you knew the origin of all the ballots that went through

after 7 p.m.

But to your point, we are waiting to see what their explanation is before we enjoin, is that a good legal term?

Before we enjoin them to give us compensation.

The other thing that I would like to use the right word, this board never approved the purchase of the DS-300s.

We were not consulted.

And Jim and I were on the board.

I'm merely talking about the amount of money that I know y'all hired the representative to be there on site, which was a good thing.

But I'm just encouraging it was a community member.

to ask them if they would reimburse that.

So tailing with your efforts, I had some input from the registrar, a list of actions that we needed from ES&S in writing to them earlier this week.

Andy.

Okay.

I would note that thank you for that, and that's why I went to the top of the floor, because Tyler's a salesman.

One of the sticks.

Two questions.

Are these not generic thumb drives?

Are they specially designed thumb drives?

Please.

Follow me.

We had thumb drives that we have been using that we were told we could continue to use, even though the company provided us with a whole new set of thumb drives.

But they said the old thumb drives will work.

And so we were using our old thumb drives.

Yes.

And one to your

Reading behind what you said, one would assume there's going to be five new equipment that's been upgraded the latest and greatest.

You would think, and in fact, ES&S did upgrade their new USB sticks.

Confounding the question a little bit is the fact that the soul machine that was in early voting

We ran 17,000 voters through that machine.

No problem.

Other than giving a little ink on the scanner on day two.

With the old sticks.

With the old sticks.

Lots.

OK.

Yes, sir.

OK. Should that have been a troubleshooter?

Well, it was.

We've commonly had him.

Commonly, we have one or two machines that do a problem.

He goes out there.

He fixes it.

Does the registrar need to say anything?

Thank you.

We are.

Unless anyone else has any other comments or questions.

Okay, then we will go into a second session.

this particular failure that you didn't shut down and couldn't you couldn't get the results from it so you had to rescan those ballots and take them out and put them in another machine at the end of the day okay so they were counted yes sir yes sir and and we had them count we knew how many were there they were held out we have a spreadsheet that shows how many came out of the machine ballot thing how many were in the various

And you're still waiting for resolution on the failure?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.