Electoral Board Meeting   12/11/2025

And I'd like to welcome also our registrar, Andrew Ruge.

And elections manager.

I call for a motion to approve the final agenda as it stands.

Any objections?

Whatever you need to say, please do, and don't need to go back to your busy schedule.

I just want to say a little bit about that.

The accounting, though, is to look at how we are doing this year against our current budget.

I understand that that's what that was.

But looking at how are we tracking against our current budget.

OK, gotcha.

So about this.

Yesterday, we had a meeting face-to-face with the space management experts and the county.

They were from facilities management?

It's not going to be a complete overhaul next week, but with us in election mode, we are tearing off the piece that's most important that we really need done for the election and planning to get that done before the election, before we hit the hottest part of it.

You see Mr. Strather seemed to be very receptive to your priorities and you outlined to him what you needed done as soon as possible and what could wait on the file.

Is the outcome going to be expanded space or just reconfigured space?

So that's a ballpark number of new registrations that we have.

Who do the SDRs fall into?

They just moved over into the active category.

They turned up and voted.

They actually pre-registered, but they're.

If they are going to be 18 by November, then they can vote in the primary, but that wouldn't allow them to vote in a special election that is not related to the November election.

I know other groups have it, but I know Fairfax does.

Is there one particular piece of information that was missing?

put down that they were born in 2025.

Read the question wrong, I'm sure.

They have to be answered if they're answered, actually.

I think that's a great idea.

And if we get them, that'll guarantee a life changes the form.

All right, any other questions from me?

Have you been able to pay our BBA membership fee that's normally handled by the office?

Or just, because that part I need, what do I need from you all?

Okay, gotcha.

The nominations have to have gone through, yeah.

All right, so I will ask.

I just wanted to make sure that people just really, we're going to really miss her and I just wanted to know how much I really appreciate what she did.

Absolutely.

And as you said, Brooklyn is going to Brooklyn.

Once you've got one done, you've more or less got the other one done.

I appreciate it.

Yes, ma'am.

So from henceforth, we're always going to use the whole room, and I don't think.

I was very glad that I was alone in a room.

I'll fix that quote a little bit because they didn't refer to election day, they referred to your community event.

Election Day is a community event.

And we're, of course, grievously interfering with dance class.

As someone who took 23 years of ballet lessons, I understand dance classes.

Well, you're always pliéing.

Go ahead.

Can I amplify that?

It's an essential difference that requires an essentially different approach.

So Chief, we hear from you first.

The other thing is that I met with a couple of EOs at their request, and we definitely will always need the whole space, not just half.

We saw that in your notes for the day, that that was a conclusion at the end of the day.

And how we organize that, I guess it's kind of still

You basically need two different operations, recognizing that you have two essentially different populations that you're working with.

We could have used a couple more people.

and I also will admit I didn't think you were going to need that.

So I think we worked that main thing out.

I've never been in a cage fight.

I have never been in a cage fight.

Yes, ma'am.

But I mean, we think there's a little more needed for us in terms of all the dorms and where everybody is.

So maybe maps that would outside before they get to you,

You all did have a map that showed the line very clearly.

We didn't have it this year, though.

But that came like it happened.

But it was in our office.

Yeah.

Gina's office, I know, it was up on the wall.

I understood that it was going, okay, thank you.

This poll watcher did everything it was like.

Yeah, I think it was the same sheet that was on the wall in Gina Pace's office.

So it is difficult for the students sometimes and it's difficult for us.

We've never heard that that's a problem.

But even when we log into the University Guest Network, it's inspiring.

Thank you.

Jim.

I'd like to have a few minutes, if I may.

Not more than five.

But I think she- We have a lot sent back to us.

with a little slip of paper saying I'm registered for next year there but you know they said I should come vote here.

And these are the kind of things they have on their instruction sheet.

The last, the number three on there, many students, and we want to hear from y'all, so we need to stop talking and listen to y'all, but they don't all know their social security.

If they mess up somewhere else, they've got the instructions, it's their fault.

Then it's not going to count.

They are then given a ballot and they are sent off to marking booths and they never come back to an EO.

You should know.

So it never comes back to the EF.

Now the provisional- Because we have to do that log.

When the student gets their green envelope, she also has made Avery labels that match what's on the left side of the provisional log and the student fills out those labels.

Oh my gosh.

I'm guessing they don't have the timing marks in them.

All the ballots are supposed to be the same, Jim.

because that way the student tries to put it in the optical scanner, the optical scanner will not accept it.

Our technique is folding, which I think is foolproof.

Yeah, look at these.

And there's a comment, Todd Barstow.

And so just a couple of comments to add to what Jim and the others have stated.

You're muted.

Unless somebody has any questions about what I have.

I'm sorry.

Under the bridge satisfies the requirement.

Well, under the bridge, under the bridge, you have to specify which bridge.

Indeed.

massive people trying to get in line would it help if you had a list of all the dorms most city and county divided county dorms university precinct dorms these are the dorms that are university precinct and this is their address yes not just a map a handout

There's the name and then there's the street address and they're like, uh, you know.

We don't understand that the name of the dorm is not really an address.

Those door names are in our street file.

I understand that, but that requires another look up by the officers.

And so if you put some- The method used at Trailblazer is hoist that off on the students.

I agree having a handout would be lovely, but you're talking 1,000 handouts.

At the EO.

I'm just telling you what goes out.

We used an app from the state and Alex created a QR code for that.

They could presumably read and write.

I think the better and the better we will feel about the work we do.

Well, it's really good.

So I'm just wondering if we might not be able to leverage some of those internal systems that the university has and to get them to partner with us a little bit more.

I mean, you wouldn't have all this hoorah.

They're getting second year students.

Right.

somewhere at the university.

And many of you, they're sending back to you, vote back there again.

Yes, ma'am.

that is I don't know who's registering students to vote but is it getting into our system are they actually turning because these kids think they have registered and they're still having to do same days because they're nowhere to be found so I don't know what's going on but that that the tear-off slip is a result of general assembly law if a third party registers

Thank you for bringing that up.

but I can't say that all the stacks have ever arrived.

Nancy has it.

I don't know if anyone else will agree how that works.

Why do we have to do this on paper?

And one of the reasons that it does is because the party or candidate representatives that go to the provisional ballot candidates and the electoral boards must be given those logs so that we can compare them to the provisional ballot envelopes to make sure that the information is correct.

Well, I maybe heard a suggestion that would require the applicant to fill out a little sticky with that information and just put it on the law, which makes sense.

Exactly.

We were checking.

The student filling out the sticky, you've not corrected whether you can read it or not.

At seven o'clock, there might have been 200 SDR things sitting there to be logged on.

I was wondering how, when you finished the logs, because I was helping with the logs.

If you're going to run this polling place, you need adequate numbers

Now, it doesn't have to be done by the same EO that's talking to the voter, but it really needs to be done before the voter leaves the polling place.

Thus my question, you need more people so that you don't have what Todd described as four students that he's trying to, you know, it's like being a blackjack dealer.

It wasn't like that.

I mean, that's a recipe for disaster.

She had 18.

We had 18 for the general election.

So,

I'm just sitting around twiddling our thumbs because we're used to you know here comes the Russian we had what like 60 I mean now 39 the numbers just vary but you're going to see different results in them and that's true for every book but the primary also aligned to a spring break so the students aren't in town

OK, summer break.

The voter turnout in every polling place is dramatically lower in the summertime.

If you got some time to breathe on that election day, good for us.

Is that HMS.housing?

The long address of the building, please.

Todd, you got your hand up, please unmute.

I think you should resolve that before we, you know, you take the next steps on how to improve things.

Whether you need to have a street address is something that maybe the General Assembly or the AG or somebody else needs to decide.

So I would suggest we should get the university question.

Yes, ma'am.

My name is Sherry Steffen.

That's perfectly legal, absolutely.

It may not be legal for them to live there.

I go to this church or this church takes mailings for the... You certainly can be registered to vote and not have a permanent address.

Now, or not?

I don't believe we can actually solve the whole problem today, because there are a lot of facets to this.

Did you get a copy of the three options he had?

Are they in one of these papers?

No, no, no.

Uh-uh.

It's too much material to go over.

But maybe we'll send it to Nancy and send it along.

Yes, ma'am.

The only comment I would make is I would encourage the city electoral board and the county electoral board to get together and try to solve that.

As we said, it's not just a Charlottesville city and an Albemarle county.

I understand, but right now, right here, it is between the city and the county.

Be prepared for a sit down, get comfortable and sort it out hopefully before April, although once again, it will be a special election and you probably, unfortunately, will not have a great turnout in a special election, but we need to be prepared for it.

That's a good idea.

And it needs to be straightened out by clear definitions and clear instructions.

Is Nancy Chief from here?

No, Mike's coming back.

Nobody holds any job forever.

Okay, if anybody has anything else.

So it's a good thing for us to start

You have to have, it's a checks and balances.

Exactly.

Todd and his wife were sitting practically, she was practically on his lap.

There's no impropriety there.

That's not what I was implying at all.

I am on and I can't believe that she was not on my lap.

You've got enough people with enough, you know, enough table space and you don't have an officer sitting in a chair or two officers sitting in a chair working with stacks of paper on the floor.

We just couldn't change in the middle of the day with the number of people we had this year.

Nancy, I will send you what Bucky worked up as three possible ways to organize the room.

I'll send it to her.

All right.

Okay, do we have anything else that we need to... We need to thank these good people for coming in and sharing their time with us and their ideas.

Okay, next is election officer accounting reports.

That's what Jonell said she doesn't have.

The ADA inspections and certificates have all gone in.

Where are they?

They went in online.

Do we have copies of any of those reports?

I can get them.

It would seem to make sense to maintain those so that when we've got to go back, if there was an issue or problem or a question, we've got it to refer to.

Because there are other things that are obviously important also that for which there's no record.

Yeah, I've been sending mine to Alex, so he's got all of the ones I did.

Bucky, would you like to discuss this?

codify what we actually do so that there's no confusion among ourselves or among the staff of what our expectations are.

Would you like to run through this for people who may or may not have this, but who are interested in Congress and elections?

It's been posted online, so everyone who picked up the online minutes has a copy of it.

Not everybody looks online.

We're making all those appointments contingent upon the actual return of materials so they don't even get on our roster until they send stuff back to us in this one view.

And so they need to be told in writing when the letter goes out that says you've been appointed, but you have to do all these other things and we need to have that information back within three weeks or you'll have to start at the beginning again.

I'm sorry, I can't.

The intent of that is to cover the situation where you're right in front of an election and you'd want to give people a shorter time window to get back to you, get back to us within one week or two weeks or something like that because there's an election coming in five days.

Do I have more time?

They can also do it online.

and things like that might contribute to why someone who had a one-year appointment was appointed for another one-year period of time, because we really haven't gotten a good feel for this person yet.

You just won't assign them until their term runs out rather than saying, we think you should not be an officer of election, which Bucky say it's hard to unappoint.

Sorry.

Had the election manager do that.

Well, the initial assignment may be done by either a board or the manager, but it can be open for discussion or it's up to the board to make the final decision.

The electoral board approves the roster of the lawyers.

I think it stands a lot.

Your friendly amendment has been accepted.

Those opposed say nay.

The Electoral Board can overrule any assignment that it sees fit.

Or you've been trying to get people and you haven't been able to get enough and then suddenly you've got people you can assign.

Can you give me a ballpark estimate of how many dropouts you had in the last two weeks before the election?

they're in crops so what if they can't work the June primary but that doesn't mean they won't be ready to go and we had people last year who were simply because they didn't work the June primary after giving notice of why so so I don't understand what you would change here I don't know I don't know how to change it except

Because it sounds like you're saying, let's use good judgment and getting rosters assigned in advance.

Exactly.

Try to minimize the number of people.

That's why I started by saying I'm not sure it's really germane to number 10.

number 11 upon request and at a reasonable charge not to exceed the actual cost incurred pull that right out of the code the elections manager shall provide a copy of the list of officers of election including their party designation and precinct to which they are assigned to any requesting political party or candidate this list shall include officers of election who have not been assigned to a precinct as well it doesn't say party does that matter

Do you want to leave it open?

I'm just trying to lay down the concept that you got to give out stuff.

Then, not less than 10 days before the election, the roster, meaning the precinct assignments and the party designation, shall be available to the chairman or the chairman's representative or a candidate.

They won't have our personal address or our email or phone number.

The name, the party designation, and the precinct to which you are assigned.

That's the one that goes to the parties, not the one that's there for anybody from the public.

Alphabetical order.

earlier about adding on a thing where the officer can say if their contact information can be made available to party chairs right yes that's what you put if the officer gives written consent right okay

but I did and it worked out that less than half of our EOs are in their home precinct.

And to Bucky's point the board looks at the applications so we know what their home address is because it's on their application.

So

They've been removed.

So there are cases where we have appointed someone, but we don't assign them.

Half the EOs sit home.

That shouldn't happen.

Policy doesn't shackle us for all time to do only these things.

No policy, yes.

No policy.

Is there any further discussion?

I feel like we did.

We had, yes sir?

So that's just a thought and observation.

Thank you.

I'd like to ask Alex how you thought you think we got some meaningful ideas for improvement?

So good suggestions.

That's why the Chief's writing, Chief's notes.

You had a great slide on the definition of hot wash, which is in the dictionary.

OK. Jim, you wanted to do something about the contingency planning for the possible April special election.

I believe the General Assembly goes into session January 14th.

Yes.

And I believe that they will probably take up the redistricting issue pretty quickly.

Since they called a special session to get the first vote on that, they didn't rush right into it.

I assume it's going to pass.

You think?

I think you do.

You do have that.

All elections.

So they had in-person absentee voting, two elections going on at the same time.

Once we actually have a date.

Which could already be a teacher workday, you never know.

We had a primary, I don't know, three, four years ago.

I think that was in 2021.

So I just wanted to say that I think we need to start looking at these contingencies sometime in January.

As I could tell, the possible election dates would be April 7th, the 14th, or the 21st.

It has to be a Tuesday.

but anyway so there's a logistical timing thing here I think we need to examine the code and make sure that just securing our USB keys will be compliant so that we're not hoist on that petard.

tabulators, optical scanners, you can rent them, but it's expensive.

It's expensive.

Thank you for doing all the extra stuff I didn't know you were doing.

Sure, I'll send that to you.

Anyone have anything else to say about this possible date coming up?

It sounds like we definitely need to have it on the January agenda.

Can we know that?

Yes.

Correct.

It costs roughly $15 a ballot to mail them out.

Just to mail.

Well, it's not just the postage, it's everything that goes into getting that ballot into the mail and being returned, or not.

So it doesn't include the cost of processing it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It includes.

Well, it's not.

There's no incremental cost for that.

And if you know anybody that's getting an absentee ballot that they're not using routinely, you might wanna not get one anymore.

I just wonder then, why were we telling voters that it was $30 in order to try to convince them to get off the list?

Well, I'd like to know.

Well, if you get the message out better, $15 is the number.

Did anybody else hear it?

If there's two people in the household that cost $30,

How much does it cost for someone to come in and vote?

The 1500th person doesn't cost any more.

Yes, ma'am.

Speaking of things being posted for public view, the Elections Office accounting reports and budgeting, is that information made public on the website once it's generated?

So there is no historical answer to provide.

to get that information so that it can go up online and publicly.

And it should just be another page on, you know, how it was finished in the budget.

The regist- Sorry.

The line for elections, for sure, but whether that's broken down on what they put out on their website, I don't know.

Oh, no.

Yes, sir.

That's her, that is her goal.

For Albemarle County.

She can't tell Fairfax what to do, but yes, the Albemarle County election office budget will be readily available.

A lot of them don't bother posting their minutes, so.

Electoral Board in Virginia that has four meetings a year, if they're lucky.

Four to six meetings is not uncommon.

I think it's deplorable, but it's not uncommon.

Okay.

I'd like to give a report on the BS 300s.

Oh, yes, please.

We want some resolution, and now that we've got this looming April, nothing like, as one of my former professors used to say, a dream with a deadline.

That's when the early voting started.

So we're working on that.

If they said anything more about what they're looking at.

I'm trying to get them to get their little flat feet up here to look at LGs.

There's no more specificity about that.

Thank you, Phillip.

They've been looking at this for a long time, and it doesn't seem like there's any progress that they've made.

Well, they've been looking at it since election day, and we've been talking back and forth, and trying to even get a name.

New information.

somewhat yes.

I didn't see where they managed to replicate but that in that email from I was told that by Tyler.

Yeah, it's not in writing, Jim.

Oh.

It's not in writing.

Interesting.

But I keep asking.

They now know what the problem is.

But you're dealing with regulated software, so if they have to make any change to anything, there's a whole validation process, then it's just tedious and slow.

There were some 8,000 of them.

and we would recheck it.

Bowl pads, okay.

So we don't have to use the paper, because we'd use the paper pad as well as the electronic.

Yes, yes.

your own bowl of chocolate.

Oh my gosh, what is this?

And it's appropriate for opening here.

Whoever wrapped this did a great job.

Well, this...

Good job.

They didn't check the citizenship.

Thank you!

Well, we appreciate all your work.

Well, yeah.

Four years.

So you will get a new member in January, and I only hope that she has as much to do with this as I did.

We were a team in the Mariela virtual food- Yes.

Roubaix.

Were you on the board then?

No.

So you just as active citizens.

We were on both on the board and a recount later.

We had like five teams on that and each team had somebody appointed by the Democrats, somebody appointed

And here we've got Tom Perriello racing again.

So thank you very, very much.

protecting your blood sugar, insulting your pancreas.

Okay, I would suggest the two of you determine the time for the next January meeting.

It's hard to do without a third person.

You want to go with your same second Tuesday?

But it would be pointless to schedule a meeting without our third person.

You can set that time by simply sending an email to the new member.

I think as soon as the judge makes the appointment, which may have already happened, except that then we can caucus throughout the period of time.

We don't have to wait for January 1st.

OK, we need to go into an executive session.

I appreciate it.