Electoral Board Meeting   2/19/2026

Good morning folks.

Good morning.

On According to Plan, you have captioning available to you now from home.

It may be whether you want it or not, I don't know.

Those here in the room have captioning too, so if you don't understand what I'm saying, see if you can read it off the screen.

My name is Bucky Walsh.

This is the Albemarle County Electoral Board meeting, February 19th, 2026.

And we're having a called meeting and not a regular meeting in response to the April 21st special election that's going to be held for the purposes of a constitutional amendment.

So with that, I'll call the meeting to order.

I observe the presence of a quorum.

and I ask my fellow board members, what do you think about the agenda that we have as proposed?

And I think that's- There is the April 21st special election on your new business.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I don't have the word planning.

If you could, you could assume that.

Yep.

Very good.

We have the opportunity for brief announcements from the board and the registrar.

So I'm going to announce that the Virginia Supreme Court has said that we will be having an election on April 21st.

And they may or may not decide after that whether it counts.

So we're going to proceed in full election mode all the way through the process doing our part.

That's it for me.

Members of the public of whom we have many here in the room.

Those of you on screen can't see the, well, the hordes of people who are here.

Every chair nearly has a person in it.

I have a question for the registered officer.

A lot of our things have been out lately about all.

Naturalizing Election.

I know that the problem could not happen, but is there anything that the rental office is going to educate the general community about, you know, you don't need birth certificate, you don't need a photo ID, just to, because some people are not educated about the voting process.

So would the rental office maybe put something out there that is naturalizing

I'm not familiar with the theory.

The theory is that the federal government would want to take over the elections and have people to prove citizenship by birth certificate, bad days, that type of thing.

You have not heard of anything?

The federal government, I think it's the SAVE Act, has included one of its provisions that you'd have to show this.

And it's passed the House.

It's unlikely, I think, to pass the Senate.

That is correct.

My question would be, is there anything to do with maybe educate the

General Community, because a lot of people could get confused.

And that also leads to my next question.

Have there been any, maybe, security surrounding ICE that may show up at problems?

Now, for the first one, I can take a look at the say-back and see if there's anything that we can do that we aren't doing.

But online, it clearly tells people what the acceptable IDs are.

you know, now.

So unless the SAVE Act passes, then what we have will stand.

And so talking about ICE, I can't talk about ICE.

I don't know.

I mean, I understand what you're saying is, you're saying about them coming to the polls.

I'm not hearing anything about that.

However, what we do have, it's not necessarily related to ICE, but we do have the county police department and the sheriff's department.

We have an emergency,

and emergency preparedness meeting before the election.

So if something like that comes up there, but we do have plans, we will have that meeting.

Okay.

Louis, if I may, you have to be a citizen to vote.

And ICE has no authority to come into a polling place unless they're registered voters in that polling place, because that's where we're doing voting.

Now it doesn't mean somebody could not show up and force their way in, but our response would be to call for police backup.

Any other questions?

Let's see, got a couple of people waiting to get on.

Okay, then let's move on.

We're gonna look at the minutes from February 4th at our next meeting.

So old business reorganization of 202 University polling place.

We're going to meet with the team at university right here in this room on the 5th of March in the evening and we'll map out the process to be used.

So that's that's my update.

You say that's March 5th?

Next item under.

I will say that things look like they're moving along.

First contact with the person in charge of Slaughter Rec Center, which is the university precinct.

This is not going to be available.

We have classes in those rooms on April 21st.

Well, we have an election there on April 21st.

Things have been moving along well, thanks largely to Andrea sending to that manager of the site the letter of understanding signed back in 2018 between the executive vice president of UVA and us saying that that room will be, or that site will be available

November elections and for special elections, and this is a special election.

So things are moving along well in that regard.

Anything else?

retaining the university, DS300 error follow-up.

Team of folks from ES&S, the manufacturer of the DS-300, fired up the DS-300s, the three DS-300s that had failed and had been sequestered, locked down, not touched since the last election.

They all came up in the failed state, which was in one sense refreshing.

You'd hate for them to come up looking fine.

We rebooted them, put new configurations in the devices, and they proceeded to start entering ballots in them.

And 370 or so ballots in, one of them failed again exactly the same way.

This particular problem they reported that they have observed in 12 different units out of the 15,000 they have manufactured.

And their report was that we were the only site that had more than one.

Lucky us.

Those three machines have been replaced with new hardware.

The old machines have been shipped back to them.

They were delighted to see the failure because having a machine that they can get to fail again gives them something they can test against.

Have we, you know, whatever solutions they apply, have those solutions actually fixed the problem?

The approach that they were looking at, there are two possible ideas.

First off,

Our original thought was perhaps the USB sticks that go in the DS-300s that have the configuration for the election and onto which are written the results and images of each ballot for the course of the day.

So there's constant communication going on with those USB sticks.

We thought there might be something wrong with these USB sticks we were using.

They were inter-sticks.

and their opinion is no, that's not the case.

That it's not the sticks, it's something in the communication hardware or software that talks to the USB devices and that it obviously is not rampant in their system having had so few failures, but they've got some piece of electronics or some piece of software that's just too close to the edge of its parameters and doesn't always work.

So they're going to be looking at whether it's a software patch or a hardware patch.

Surprisingly, a software patch would take longer to deploy because there's certification they have to do and the certification at each state that they have to do, and then you have to push this out to machines.

Whereas a hardware patch, they send out a new module, you replace one piece of broken hardware with another piece of hardware.

You test that in situ, you're good to go.

The qualification standards are a little bit different because pieces of hardware break from time to time, so it's accepted that those could be perfect.

Anyway, they're trying to determine that in any event, they won't have any changes or updates.

to the DS300s out in the field in time for either of the next, the April 21st election or the primary.

If it's a hardware fix, they might have something before November, and if it's a software thing, it would not be until next year.

But still, it's a very low incidence.

I am guardedly optimistic that we will not see this again.

As a counterexample, we ran more than 17,000 ballots through the early voting machine.

And it didn't experience this problem.

That's what I have.

No, I was just really glad to see that they were able to repeat the error.

Gooden, one thing I was, they were, I thought they were really concerned also.

A screen that was so horrible on November last year was a screen of delight in testing.

So situational, you know, it's a good example.

We've gotten new thumb drives with the three new machines that came.

We have seen no sign of the thumb drives that should have come with the machines we have and we asked the question

which Tyler was to be following up on and they actually approved, they actually shipped them to us.

So I haven't heard back on that yet.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

In fact, we need not just a set of thumb drives, we need a couple of sets of thumb drives.

Yes, and as an example, the three machines that arrived came with three thumb drives.

get a whole new set of thumb drives but it seems to them they think we did yeah they do think if you recall the uh the arrival of the ds300s last year they they came in spurts we got some of the machines and the rest of the machines then we got the housings for them then we got the rest of the housings for them and i just wonder if one of the spurts went astray and never got shipped to us because the thumb drives aren't were shipped separately from the devices

at least in this case they were.

I do, Mr. Chairman.

A compliment to the board.

We had, we insisted, the board, the electric board insisted that we have three spare machines.

The argument could be made, why do you need spare machines and why did you get more and debate that all day.

I'm not going to see any correlation there.

Time and space.

But we were very fortunate because if we'd had a fourth machine, it would feel bad.

We would have had no machine to replace it.

Yes?

Lori?

I've been totally out of time.

I've got to turn this way.

They just always have a spare machine in each.

I know that they have significantly fewer precincts than we do.

I'm only asking because I haven't heard it ever discussed.

at a board meeting in the years I've been doing this, whether that was ever entertained, discussed.

The DS-200s, which were the previous machines, were real bricks.

I mean, they just did the job.

You get an occasional ballot jam, and the DS-300s, with the exception of these three,

So prior to this last election, we never would have had a rationale to justify that thought.

We have bought machines for I think three precincts in order to have two machines at those three precincts, one being university, one being Bank of Butler, I forget the other Brownsville or something, but we have only

We have seen the voter turnout in the polling places dropping off as people are coming to early voting.

Even though our overall number of registered voters is going up, disproportionate number of people are coming to early voting.

And so the actual number of folks who turn up at the polling places is dropping, again, making it harder to justify having a second machine there.

If we experience similar difficulties this time, we will have many conversations about what we should be doing differently.

Janelle, do you have any thoughts about

There's cost issues about having these additional machines that were suggested.

Is that something that would be in the budget?

I spoke with Lori Vincent.

She's our budget manager for our department.

And I told her that, reminded her that we put a line item in the budget.

just for this election in case it happened.

And I was letting her know that it did happen and it is going to happen.

And so, and I asked her, I said, I told her that we're spending money, a lot of money to get supplies and these other things.

And I said, how are we budget wise?

She said, she's absolutely not worried at all.

And she also said that the August election falls into the next fiscal year.

So that helps us as well.

But the only place that I was concerned about was staffing.

I think the budget for part-time help will go up significantly.

But we did plan for that.

And she said that we're fine.

Well, that's- So your question is?

Right.

Now, obviously, there's going to be a question about how many.

Right.

Of course, now that's when it becomes, you know.

What?

Not so bad.

Exactly.

30?

Transporting them because

You can easily take just the scanner part.

I actually videoed the process of removing it and popping it.

It's literally undo the key, slide the scanner out, unplug from the back of the scanner, the cord, and you're done.

And you put the next one, the replacement on the same way.

Let me clarify.

opened up a discussion about buying more machines.

So, okay.

Yes, just putting a pin in this, if we're having additional machines because these fail, then I would question if we shouldn't have different machines.

If they, you know, you get a random failure once in a while,

Okay, every device can fail.

My understanding is these are the most used optical scan machines in the whole country.

Okay, let's move along.

New business, the April 21st special election planning.

Jim, you wanted to make sure I had the ballots to order on the question on the agenda.

Yes.

Sorry, the back didn't print.

I do think that was like the answer, but the grand total on the front is four.

That's good.

Well, that's a lot of ballots.

Well, for the grand total, it's 80%.

For the absentee, it's actually about 75% of the number of absentee voters.

That's the number on our list.

Yep, we have 7,000, just over, almost 71.

Why wouldn't we order 100% for that?

Oh, I see what you're saying.

No, I have that many.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

You mean as far as the mail out goes?

Right.

Yeah, I have enough to mail out.

It's 70, it's 7,028.

I have those.

I don't know.

Sorry.

If we need them, yes.

If we need them, or I would just fold some flowers.

Right, okay.

I think you have plenty of balance here.

Well, I looked back at what we did for the general election and the primary ahead of before that, and then I talked to Bucky about it also.

Both what we thought would be the best.

Exactly.

And so then I check that with the previous orders, and it's a little bit higher.

I just went up just a little bit.

I have to say, I actually am not sure

Yeah, these are all 11.

I do.

Printelect, their minimum is 500, so we've got 500.

So you'll be more than covered.

Correct.

For the express vote sheets, 5,000.

Oh, for the express vote sheets.

And just out of curiosity, I remember that when we first signed the contract with Printalyte, I think I remember correctly that the cost per ballot, based on the 8,000 by 14, was 21 cents a ballot.

And the quote, I move to approve.

Right, I think we were about to say the same thing.

Jim, all in favor?

Aye.

Let's not plan to send out all of those to the polling places because they will have way too many ballots and we can somehow or other somebody thinks they're getting low we will have

Not back here that we can get it out to them just to cut down on the amount of stuff they have and really assuming that the turnout is going to be low.

By the time we get to stocking the cages to send that stuff out, we'll have a good beat from how early voting is going in terms of what the turnout is likely to be.

So we'll have a lot better information as we get closer to election day.

Look at that, the caption closed.

Now, before I move on to the training plan, do you want to talk about just dates in general?

I'm sorry, everybody.

I just close this out by hand until it's finalized a little bit more.

Then I'll put it on in the computer.

The calendar pages.

Yes.

So I remember some more talking about maybe truncating the training to not necessarily have all the full training that we had before because of training fatigue maybe, you know, thinking ahead that we have another election right behind this which early voting will begin in June.

August 11th, and then we have November, we have a short lull between that and November, but not much.

So what I did was I, taking a look at the landing we had sent earlier, and then what was done last year, I tried to create, I created kind of a pattern that I saw that you had most of the training days on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you were doing a lot of the machine work on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, and then sometimes the Saturdays.

So that's what I did.

So the highlights here on the, oh, that the first testing would be provided by me.

Tyler will be here, I spoke with him, and he is going to bring the media, which was burned earlier this week for us, and he's also going to bring the test tests.

I was at the number in the test deck.

I even out.

Yes, you got to have one for each ballot style.

We have one ballot style.

Overvote and undervote, yes, no.

So backing up, you're saying that.

Oh, and all blank.

The LNA.

This is just for the machines that will be used in absentee and early in person.

Yes.

Monday.

Monday cold pads.

Oh, Monday the 23rd.

And then also please add the cap machines there.

We qualify all the machines that can be used for any ballot style at the same time, which usually is seven DS-300s.

And that includes spares.

Just running the whole stack through all of them as opposed to later when you're doing just the polling places.

Is there a time for that?

Time.

Tyler asks for 9 AM.

Well, unfortunately, I can't do it at all.

We'll be in Arizona.

Maybe the 23rd.

Fortunate because I kind of actually enjoy it.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, because some of this I wasn't sure.

Yeah, if you've got Tyler.

We normally do the first LNA testing.

We only do one express event.

because that's all that would be used for early voting.

Up to seven machines programmed to take ballots from each.

We need seven this time.

Just in case what?

Yes, CAP provisional voting.

There's CAP by mail, CAP post-election provisional voting.

Two machines that are available for early voting in case you need a spare.

OK, then when we go to March, so I have a question.

Do we need a poll pack refresher for the people working early voting before early voting?

It was necessary.

I think that would be good.

You might offer one session, but the overwhelming feedback from people using the pole pads is they're easy to set up, they're easy to use.

Just all of the money stuff.

and if they wanted it.

And if they're new.

Yeah.

Maybe later for the new ones.

But that's a little bit.

OK, so then we'll be setting up the early voting room.

Just a reminder that early voting is in room B across the hall.

And I did a little schematic for everybody.

So we did the theme, the registration team.

We did a walk through yesterday morning and we

Visually placed everything and mapped things out the way we'd like it to look, the way we think it should go, and probably will.

So we're gonna talk about that in just a moment if you'd like.

Here's one for you, Alex.

You've got the big paper.

Okay.

Okay, so we'll be setting up the room.

We have actually into the weekend, so we might start setting it up on Saturdays.

And just make sure that we're ready for six.

So we will be doing the, I added a couple of other things on here.

We'll be doing the large mailing of the absentee ballots probably on Monday or Tuesday.

March 2nd and 3rd.

We'll be getting the materials on Friday, tomorrow.

We're going to work Saturday.

We'll be close to getting it done.

So whatever it spills into, the day that we finish, Monday or Tuesday, I put a deadline, I want to mail, the big mailing by Wednesday.

So the deadline is you must mail them out before or over the weekend is what we want to give ourselves.

Exactly, absolutely.

So I don't remember the form for being on the permanent list.

I know it says do you want ballots for Democratic primaries?

Do you want ballots for Republican primaries?

Do you want ballots for general election?

But does the general election also say and special elections?

Whether everybody, everybody that's

that would normally get a general election absentee ballot is going to get the special.

And even 18-year-olds, those who are going to be 18 by the general election date, they are eligible to vote.

They are.

In person, not absentee.

Yeah, I'm curious about that because normally we're talking about 17 year olds being able to vote in a primary because you want to let them be able to vote for people that they are going to be able to vote for in the general election.

But the referendum,

Absolutely.

All right.

Are you taking questions?

Chairman, so does that mean that Elect has sent out guidance on this issue?

Okay, and then so we go on to early volume again, so on the 6th, the Electoral Board meeting is on the 12th, and I move, you know,

Like I said, tell me, this is my first time scheduling.

I'm just going on what I've seen before.

The Chief's Manuals, actually, we need one more, and it'll be ready to go, but we want to have it ready definitely by March 24th.

And then the Chief's and Assistant's Training on March 26th, we can give them.

Then the Newbie Training on April 2nd, that's the Thursday.

the LNA testing for the precincts, the DS-300s and express phones on April the 6th, that's Monday.

The electoral board meeting on the 9th.

Yes, absolutely.

In the same day registration training, two or three sessions on the 10th.

Early voting is open Saturday the 11th.

I did, yes, they were good.

Well, that was a general election.

that I have for this is very small, really small.

But it would be nice if they always told us if the person putting in the same day registration was a citizen.

Yeah, the template.

Oh, that alone is worth training on.

Exactly.

that as well.

Okay.

So check pages I put on the 13th or the 15th of April.

LNA testing for the precinct pull pads on the 17th.

On the 18th it's the- Hang on, hang on a second.

Will the database be ready on the 17th for LNA testing in the precinct pull pads?

Usually that's a weekend thing because the last day of registration is sometime right before that and then it's got to go through the state and usually it's not until Saturday that we can actually download the data from elect.

We want to leave those poll pads fully configured at the end of testing.

Yeah.

But only because Elect hadn't gotten everything done by Saturday.

Well, and we haven't gotten everything done because we have to get the last voter before we can load the election.

Right.

Right.

Now,

So with the poll pack, is that what you're talking about?

The e-polls test, is that what you mentioned earlier?

That's the e-polls piece.

Okay, gotcha.

All right, so then on the 20th of April, I have the election materials pick up and then the cages delivered to the precincts.

Just a note about that, because that,

The invoice for that or the bill for that is gonna be about $20,000.

Because it's over 10, I'm gonna have to put it out for bidding again.

Can you get three quotes for three elections so that you don't have to do it again in August and again in November?

I mean, they're in two different budget years, so I don't know if that's going to work.

We see those on the horizon.

It's the same job each time.

Save yourself some getting of quotes time.

And who knows?

It's a good idea.

So yeah, so I put that out for bidding.

So there's some more to do.

and then the election is on the 21st.

Okay, the one thing that I need to add in after we've settled this is the cap processing.

Yes.

Again, early voting.

Okay, I did mention that to Eric the other day.

and the doctors would be just fine.

I'm wondering about the newbie training.

Okay.

That's a good idea.

Plus, it's information that many of them don't have any placeholders in their mind for.

Bobbins for not playing in the semi-finals of March Madness.

Louis, you have a question?

Chiefs and assistant chiefs have to be trained for every election.

Okay.

Officers of election need to be trained basically once a year.

Okay just a couple of oh yeah that's the last day for registration no I don't know I have to look it up I'll look that up soon as I

So one thing I did want to mention on this thematic, it's pretty fighting, but not that we're not expecting it to be.

And I've gotten a lot of questions about why it's moot.

Well, Lori made us move it.

The suggestion was that we did not need the large room A, which is available to the county for other facilities that more people could attend, and that it would make more sense with what we expect to be a lower voter volume to do that in room B.

with the possibility that if, you know, people are just lined up out the building, we might move to room A and take over the larger space and, you know, set up more machines, which is a reminder, we should configure all, you know, and in the testing, we should configure all of the pole prints, even if we don't, you know, you've only used two of them in your configuration here, we should be ready either as spares or if we had to move to room A.

My only concern is, will that room be available?

Because the people

They moved.

Facilities helped us clear, they cleared the way for our 45 days.

I think there were at least four or maybe five other groups that had that room booked.

So I'm thinking if they moved, they might've moved to Renee.

I'm wondering though if it might be possible to try to reserve room A for the last week, the understanding that by a certain date maybe

Two or three weeks out, we'll know what kind of turnout we're getting.

And we can tell facilities management, yeah, we are going to need room A, or no, we're not going to need room A.

We'll do that.

We'll have two.

We'll have that room and that room.

OK, my reservation about that is

I just don't think we should plan to move the polling place.

I just don't think we should have a plan to actually move it.

This is not the contingency plan.

If there's a problem, an emergency would be voters lined up around the building.

Then we want to be in room A and take care of things.

But barring that,

and definitely the last week of voting is the busiest time.

We will see this freight train coming plenty of time early and go, no, we don't need this, 98% sure we won't need, but there is that 2%.

I just hate moving all the machines.

I'm not trying to press the issue, but I'm just saying, I think moving the polling place is easier, especially when you've been there for 35 days, or 37 days.

I just think that if we're gonna be in room B, which is not a problem, we're gonna make it work, we stay in room B.

We actually talked about, our team,

If there are lines, we actually set it up believing that there will be lines.

So that if they don't happen, we're fine.

And if they do, we're fine.

Lori said we have to move.

And also we're very cognizant of

Absolutely, and coming up this way and going up this way, so the hallway stays clear.

And if we have to, if there's a line, if the weather's okay, we're going to have the line outside.

And that's why we have extra people here.

But if the weather's bad and if it can be accommodated, we would hook the line around.

down into room A to that area.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but if things have gone to heck in a handbasket early on, I think we should not be stubborn about, hmm, we made a mistake.

We should adjust for the good of all.

and then so we're covered all the way.

A little water is thrown on that if we're asking people to move a second time.

For a primary or a general election, I have historical data I can look at, I can make projections.

I might be off by 20%, but I'm not going to be off by 80%.

This, we got nothing.

We don't know what the ad campaign is going to look like.

I don't expect the turnout to be large.

But you just never.

If they had all four of the amendments on the ballot at this time, then I would say, yes, roommate.

We need to be in roommate.

We're going to have an enormous turnout.

This issue?

I had a question.

I understand the logistic size, scale, et cetera.

Have you thought about the impact on voters of having a long-term tradition changed?

You know, in a time when there are concerns nationally, whether those are legit or not, we're moving where they have to go.

So we're moving them from a different room, which also is gonna mean you have to reorient them, who's gonna get them there.

But do you, have you thought about whether people will wonder what this is all about?

This isn't where I voted for the last five years.

I don't think so.

All this talk about moving is kind of crazy, but I think it is important to have the last week or two to expect a larger crowd.

But there's no talk about you're going to have to add more equipment.

You're going to have to add more pull pads.

If you expect to move from B to A, then you're not just moving

We'll have all of the equipment pre-configured.

And for the last election, you know, Alex and me rolled everything down from the warehouse into the room.

It doesn't take that long.

It's not really that hard.

Well, we've mentioned before that right now we're only planning on having two of the printers in room B, but we are going, when we do the,

Testing and programming, as Bucky mentioned, we will test and program all four of them.

So they'll be ready to go if we didn't move.

Yes.

Using kind of room B, whatever it is, when we used that in the primary in 2020, we had other

people who work in this building who use that kitchen for their lunches and heating up stuff and whatever.

And so there was frequently just people coming in and out to use that kitchen.

At that time, I wasn't a chief and didn't know the whole rules about keeping the precinct open only to people who should be there.

So are we going to close that off to the other employees in the building who use that regularly?

Yeah.

Jonell and I did an inspection of that space.

There's absolutely nothing in the refrigerator right now.

And while the microwave is filthy.

It's not even plugged in.

I understand.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions?

Not so much a comment, Mr. Chairman.

In December, and possibly even November, but certainly in December, we discussed the availability of Room A and the fact that elections, oh, let me think, critical infrastructure.

We have to have elections.

We have to provide for people to vote.

If all of our election operations, meaning in-person absentee and cap and

the canvas, et cetera, et cetera, are all in room A, a locked facility, nobody goes in there except elections.

Then the county people who have other needs for meeting rooms have two rooms, room C and room B.

If we divide, then we are somehow occupying the potential for two rooms.

So if you've got, you know, the greater farmers of Albemarle or whoever, or the bagpipers or whatever, the police security, lots of people use these rooms.

If all of elections are confined to room A, then everybody else has got two rooms.

And I don't, in my

How many years of watching people meet that are other organizations in the county?

You're right.

And that does happen.

You all have to provide for elections.

And if you look at it from a perspective of elections will occupy one room.

And it will serve two purposes, multiple purposes, in-person absentee, the cap structure and the cap voters, the canvases, the provisional ballot meeting, Jim, will all be in one room.

and then the county has access to two rooms.

That might be a good selling point.

Probably do it in B. Yeah, that would be sparsely attended.

We're wondering today.

My sense is still the contingency plan, plan on the whole thing happening in room B.

But we talked to facilities management about at some point, we can have a deadline that if things look like they're way more busy than we thought they were going to be, that we would remain the last week.

Well.

You know, my instinct would be, well, I mean, again, we don't know how many people are going to be voting.

My instinct would be just to stick with the bigger room, but I think that I really want to defer to you fellows on this because you have more experience.

I'm sensitive, Janelle, to your concern about moving

I mean, but it's not a security issue.

I mean, it's not a, right.

Yeah, well, and also it's a perception also.

It could cause people saying, well, what happened?

What happened?

Did they really do it?

Nobody was there.

And I'm just, I'm just playing conspiracy theory, but there is a perception.

If you pick up the whole, and by that time of moving it, we will have a lot of things, a lot of balance, a lot, I mean,

At the end of the day, I'm not concerned about Room B because I've run polling places that were not bigger than Room B, and we've pushed 1,700 people a day through there.

So we weren't printing their ballots.

So that's a substantial difference.

But I think we can make it work.

I think we can even make it work.

in anything short of a general election.

But I'm not going to push for that.

So I would say we stay where we are.

I think that sounds like a good idea.

What do you have in mind for the lineup of voters?

We have bake sale.

Look at this.

Seriously.

I mean, we'll disturb other people.

I have an answer to that.

So we're going to have people enter here and come out here.

But when we walk through it and realize if there's a line, you'll be standing in that hallway, we changed everything.

So if there is a line and the weather's okay, the line will go outside.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, exactly, exactly.

So we'll have people there, but that's, that's the, that's the answer.

Exactly.

Oh no, it went all the way to the back.

I mentioned one other thing.

We will have to, we're gonna have signs and arrows because everybody's, almost everybody's coming up from that parking lot and they are gonna be pulling on that door and wondering why they can't get into rooms.

I wonder whether facilities management is going to be able to put up our early voting sign on March 5th.

Oh, with the construction down there.

It's the construction.

Whether that's going to be possible.

We may have to go in a different location.

I don't know where that circle is going to go exactly.

I don't know why they're going so far into it.

Can't answer that question.

Next thing on my list is precinct staffing.

Relative to a conversation with the county public schools,

because there will be logistical issues in the precincts keeping the voters and the students separate.

Sure, they have a responsibility to protect the children.

So those of you with a particular concern,

It doesn't have to be the same at every place.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And it also depends on the setup at

the schools.

So for example, if they were able to do a gymnasium setup that has exits to the outdoors and the gymnasium were just completely closed off to the rest of the school, that would be less of an issue.

Right.

Well, we may have some situations where we need to adapt.

It might be that you're still in the gym because they decided they could give you the gym for the day.

But instead of coming in one entrance and exiting past the bake sale in the hallway going out through the school, you go back out the same entrance you came in.

Has there been communication with the schools?

A lot of these are in cafeterias.

You guys want to speak to that?

Yeah.

Well, they had a lot of concerns, obviously, about logistics and

Safety for the students, which is their number one priority.

And I think that the notion is that we're going to, it's going to vary by school, the setup, and they are going to appoint a point person that we can work with or Chanel's office can work with.

It's sort of a work in progress right now.

And I add to that, there's now another group that wants to meet about this.

I contacted Captain Martin.

who is head of the emergency response team that we have for each election.

And I asked him, I told him about what was happening and just asking him if he would lead the team up again.

And he said, absolutely.

And then he forwarded what I mentioned to him about the schools to Trevor Henry, who was with the county, his deputy county executive.

So he wants to pull together another meeting.

in addition to the one that we're having this week.

And so he will be in contact with us.

He believes that the circle should be wider.

Yes, yes.

Since we got on that subject, I didn't get an answer.

Are there,

No, that was what we were told.

It's just in the high schools and we, you know, we said that that wouldn't be an option for voters to have to go through metal detectors.

And they, you know, they understood that.

Yes.

Yes.

If you're familiar with schools, when you go in, you check in, and there's a little kiosk there that you put in, the ones that you put in your ID, and you have a back little check against certain registries.

Right.

So they've asked, and we've pretty much agreed, that all of the election officers that are working in these Albemarle County schools will need to sign in

through that process.

They did also say that that could be done in advance.

In advance.

Yes, they can.

But then we'd have to have people come in.

I don't know if that as well.

So I am wondering if they had the ability to just run the names through their program.

One of the things the school's making sure of is that we don't have sex offenders in the school.

Right, exactly.

Yeah.

I appreciate that.

I want them to be respectful of our needs, but I want to be respectful of their needs too.

And this is one that we're clearly going to assist them with any way we can.

So how will that work?

One thing that rules out just the names is when you do that, you're saying you have a valid ID.

It'll flag your ID versus just doing the names.

But then they would have to do it and we would have to have everybody do it in person.

I'm still not understanding what you're saying.

Yeah, just the sex offender registry.

Oh, just that.

yeah they had a they wondered if everybody was going to be background checked who was going to be in the schools and the list so have party observers right right i don't know how many we will have but the party observers are allowed yeah and we'll have the local board members floating around you have to

The answer to the background checks question is the election officers that only work on election day do not have background checks.

But the election officers that we have that do other things, work early voting, those people are entered more fully into the county

and they have background checks.

So Jim, to your point about observers have a right to be there, but

I'm not sure that the, well the sex offender law has a carve out for people who can go to a school to vote, right to vote.

I'm not sure that applies to observers.

So I think they still need to be screened on the sex offender registry.

Perhaps it's something our learning council can research for us.

I don't need an answer right this second.

It requires a human to be operating it.

Claire Wells, actually let me start over here.

I may be missing a school, Mr. Chairman, but the schools have a, whether it's the cafeteria, it's a gymnasium.

They have a means by which the voters come into just that area.

Baker Butler being an exception because you have to come in a door and come down a hall.

But it's easy to quiet it off.

So you must come down the hall.

And we have a chief from Albemarle's, Albemarle High School at Georgetown.

We're gonna have you, excuse me, are gonna have to have an officer of election or someone

No, we understand the issue.

That's been one of the topics of conversation.

It will be in different places in those schools.

Exactly.

And that may solve your problem.

You have to let people vote.

But I don't have to let sex offender, electoral board members in there, or attorney observers in there.

Well, they can't wander around school.

They can't wander around school.

Yeah, good for us, eh?

Yeah, that's true, it's a rare occurrence.

I was just waiting for the...

So two things, one on this topic, and I don't know the law on this, I'm obviously gonna look at it.

I personally have no problem with you scanning my ID as an observer going in,

But I do wonder what the law is on it because I think observers have a right, similar to voters, to be in that space.

Right, there's a specific carve-out in the statute for voters who are on the sex offender registry

who are normally not allowed to go into the schools at all.

And there's a specific carve out in the statute that permits them to go into the schools just for the purpose of voting.

Normally it's not an issue because the election takes place on a day when school is not in session.

So it's going to have

So anyway, just raising that issue.

I don't know where it falls with observers.

And the second question is getting someone off this topic.

Have you all started hiring yet for election day or early voting election officers?

Well, that's why I'm getting onto that.

Yes, we have.

And I've heard back from at least 10.

Okay, so is that still, I know in the past, the registrar's office has kind of kept that to a small pool of people for early voting and then election day is a much wider pool.

I'm just hearing concerns from some people that they haven't been contacted and why haven't I been contacted, so I'm just trying to find out, you know, like

Absolutely.

That's what I want to share that.

Absolutely.

But we are pulling in some new people.

because especially if it is slow and it will have those slower times we wanted to take the moment to bring in some people who we can you know can be trained at a small building.

So precinct staffing, we still don't, I'm gonna stay on topic for a minute.

Precinct staffing, we still don't know how many people we need because we don't know where we're gonna be in the schools.

We don't know what the turnout's going to be yet.

but we need to at least marshal our resources, make sure everyone knows that we've got this election coming and get people starting to think about are they available.

I know I'm starting to send out a mass email using 10X to learn everybody about April and also August and November just have that tool there too.

We're getting a lot of people's oaths and everything back.

So I've been plugging that one with them.

And we renewed officers.

Correct.

And he did a mailing.

Yes, ma'am.

I would say staffing at other places is more like a primary.

I would guess you are not going to need as many people as you needed for a general election, but probably more than you might for a primary at the public schools.

Just a few more crowd control folks.

And that depends on the school.

If you're coming and going from a portable unit out in the field somewhere, then making sure you've got good signs is the more issue there.

Our precinct is in the cafeteria.

That's my guess.

A school by school thing.

I know in the past there have been at least one cafeteria where they let

The voting go on in the cafeteria, and the kiddos ate in their classrooms.

Well, that's a good point.

Thanks for bringing it up.

If your precinct isn't a school, you absolutely might be moving to a different place.

And so we have asked the schools to include us.

So if they want, like if they say, well, we told them, don't wonder if you want to move it here, call us, let us come out and help you survey the plants.

We've offered that to them.

So for every school, we've said we can do it for every school, just include us and we can help you get through the process.

And maybe we could be in a smaller space than they expect.

So we've just asked them to include us with logistics of it.

and maybe we should just ask to go to all the schools.

There's only 17 of them.

Yes.

Yeah.

So if it changes, I think we should definitely get a chance to do a field review of that beforehand.

Okay, so precinct staffing, getting the strong feeling that we're,

To be determined what our final numbers need to be, but we want to ramp up more people than probably would for a primary.

We talked about schedule for training and LNA.

Albemarle County Schools follow up.

Yes, I sent you all an email.

Various problems with K-Tech over the years, partly because of that city part of it.

And so we're going to have to work with them

And I am sure their first answer is going to be, no, you've got to go somewhere else.

But I think working with them and with the legal department there and with perhaps the registrar's office in the city, work out some kind of deal as best we can.

and get it done.

I think whatever room they can give us, that's what we'll have to take.

But I have the initial contact information for the facility itself, not for the higher ups and central office and all that, which are going to, I know, be involved.

Well, I don't want to get into any details, but just a simple yes or no.

It had been a school.

We did not have an agreement with them.

And it's my understanding that the property was ceded to the city about a year and a half, maybe two years ago.

Now we haven't had, since it was totally ceded to the city, we have had at least two, three elections and we haven't had any particular problem this time.

The last time was when they were going to do this big renovation, which they ended up not doing at all.

But we haven't had, I'm not aware that we've had any blowback from

from KTEC when we've said okay, the election coming up, the primary coming up.

Anybody have a comment?

I would just say that KTEC is very nice to us.

They are so helpful, so welcoming.

And we come right through the front door and down one of the main hallways.

And I know there was one year where you were somewhere else, not too far distant past.

I can't remember where you were, but that was where you had been somewhere all the time.

So I have offered to

Gotta be our point person on K-Tech, along with Andrew Lim, legal issues involved.

And I do have contact information.

So sometime soon, I'll make a call.

You decide.

You decide.

Do it, that's fine.

If you're familiar with them, it might be better

Okay.

Why don't you guys work on this together?

You can transfer this responsibility to the registrar.

Other- Slaughter?

Slaughter is coming along very well.

Initial contact with Slaughter was, no, we have academic classes in those rooms that day and I can't cancel them.

Okay.

Well, you know, we do have an agreement with you all.

We do.

Thankfully, it was the day before that told us about that letter.

Andrea, then I had her send the, it's not an MOU, but

I had that sent to the main person at Slaughter Rec and he appreciated that greatly and said he'd be taking him to the provost's office and he'd be working on getting those academic courses changed to somewhere else.

We did have the fallback that

If they wanted to move this, and actually the letter has us being in a different location than we've ever been in, and if they wanted to move this, fine.

I will guarantee there will not be a big turnout at Slaughter-Wreck for this.

I think the school will be in session.

But it didn't say anything about moving it to another room, so I didn't either.

So I think we'll

Anything else we need to do in preparation for this?

Oh, yeah.

So we've looked at all of our satellite locations and we found that they're fine.

But we have to fill out the form anyway, which I'll detail.

No one anticipates needing a satellite voting location since we previously decided they don't work particularly well for us.

Anything else for the special?

The only place we ever used as a satellite location was in 2020.

Our electoral board member

and a drop box that he would take out to the Albemarle High School parking lot.

And he would stand in the parking lot with the drop box for six hours or something like that.

That's an odd kind of vote harvesting.

Sorry.

I just want to go back to the early voting and staffing of early voting.

Those of us who have typically worked it are used to hearing a little bit earlier because we have plans to make.

So like for me, I've just been kind of holding my calendar open.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I didn't want to get in the fray of the earlier conversation, so I know we've moved on.

But I'd just like to speak up on behalf of the voter and the election officials that work early voting.

We would like to be heard that Room A is where we do early voting and where we feel confident that the security that we've built with the voter

shows in where we hold elections and to continue to use Room A if that's an option.

I feel, and please chime in if you'd like to, but I feel this helps voters feel comfortable with all the changes of every election

that kind of handled everybody.

I think Room A would be a better choice than moving around in the facility.

And I understand the facility needs in their balance.

But from the voter worker perspective, consistency is really important.

Thank you.

Anything else before we move on?

The next item should be brief, even though there's so many little dashes by it.

The local election security standards.

We have a March 1, 2026 report.

Do, on the local election security posture, which I assume you're already working with Sagar on.

I'd seen a few emails back on that.

No.

We have a meeting tomorrow morning.

Security thing that is probably 80% technical.

Yes.

Software IT has to answer.

I could never answer.

No, no.

This is really... We got to sign off on it, but it's really the IT people that have to do the majority of the

The point of this agenda item is just to make sure we all have these required dates on our calendar.

We've got the March 1st dates of that in.

April 1st, if there's a remediation plan, now we're progressing on that.

May 1st is the acknowledgement by the Electoral Board of

Those things, and then by August 28th is the annual review of our local election, so you can send your document.

It's part of that process.

This is how we take care of them.

And then we sign off on it, but we don't send that to the state.

We just sign it.

That's all.

Just want to put that on everyone's calendar.

Can I just mention about early voting?

If you are interested in early voting and I have in contact with you, please email me.

My email is jmcfedd.albemarle at albemarle.org.

I've hired a part-timer.

She'll be coming in, I believe she's gonna come in, we can get it done March the 1st.

She has, Bucky will be glad to hear this, she has web experience and we've already talked about, would you like to do some things on the web?

And the answer is yes to that.

So we can maybe start moving some things over.

Yes.

Well, I'm trying to do it by the end of this month.

It would be nice to get those folks on board in this election cycle so they can see that before they hit two more later on this year.

Our next meeting is currently scheduled for March the 12th.

I'm kind of guessing there might be a need for something else in the interim.

I think we're dealing with the schools and K-Tech and all that.

I think it would go ahead and make it something if we decide we don't need it.

That's a Sunday.

Okay.

Excuse me.

Second?

Second.

Do you second?

Let's see if I can get us a room.

We really haven't gotten anywhere on anything.

It's easier to do than to schedule.

If there's no other business, then I would like to close the open part of this meeting, and we'll reassemble, come through misdeparted, maybe five minutes from now, in closed session.

And in that closed session, we would, gosh, what are the special words?

I don't have a, do you have the special words handy?

Would you make a motion with the appropriate special words so that we can look at?

Under subsection one to discuss and consider prospective candidates for employment and under subsection

So moved.

We seem to be in favor.

Motion carries.

This part of the meeting is adjourned.

Thank you all for coming, and thank you for speaking up.

And I think last year was so crazy.

So do you guys have something?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, goodbye.

No, and that's totally fine.

I want to say wow.

I think there just seems like the information I look just just some I only have a quick question for each of my days.

That's what everybody's doing.

Would you like this envelope?

Recording once again, we're coming out of closed session.

So moved.

Is there a second?

All those in favor?

Aye.

Everyone voted in favor.

Jim, you have a motion for us.

And those names to be included in the minutes.

I second.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Very good.

Is there any other business before we close this meeting?

Thank you all very much.

We'll see you back on March the 2nd.

Second to the motion to adjourn.

There is no objection.