Electoral Board Meeting   3/12/2026

See the little red REC up at the top?

It seemed to go away, didn't it?

It says it's recording.

No, it's because it takes all the little notations off the screen, but there's no motion on the screen.

All right.

Somebody in the waiting room.

Thank you.

You don't have to push it all the way to, just enough to blot some of this out.

I want people to be able to come in if they need to.

Good morning.

I welcome everyone to the March 12th regular meeting of the County Electoral Board.

That's March 12th, 2026.

I'm pretty sure with witnesses that we have the recording turned on this time.

And I welcome all present.

And there are quite a few here in the room and a number of you online.

I note the presence of all of the electoral board members, so we must have a forum.

And I call this meeting to order.

The first order of business is to look at our final agenda.

Are there any changes that the board would like to make to the agenda?

No, I have a small thing, but I'll just put it under other items.

Very good.

As do I.

That'll be fun.

And then next item is brief announcements from the board and registrar.

I'd like to lead off.

Andrea.

I have been looking at the state website at bills that are passing and bills that have gone to the governor and all that.

And the General Assembly seems to have teed up lots of things for elections this year in contrast to recent years.

And I wonder if maybe in a May time frame when all that has settled out, if you could give us a briefing on what's there.

Some of those things look like they're going to have September 1st implementation dates as opposed to July or January.

And we will get a similar report at the Viva conference.

Yes, but they probably won't be quite done by then.

I'd just like to get that out in our presence so that we don't miss something important.

I would like to officially apologize to all present and up there when I said that this would be such a low turnout election.

We don't need no stinking room A.

We can do everything in room B.

and we will have 30 people the first day show up to vote and we had 413.

We're down in the 300s now.

I am out of the prediction business.

In observing and querying our chiefs and early in-person voting, it seems like we're doing okay in room B.

Couple times got a little overcrowded, I'm told, but for the most part,

and we're down in the 300s now instead of the 400s as far as turnout.

Well, Room B does seem to be working well.

Which is everybody who doesn't know it, in case anybody doesn't know it, that the schools have decided to not have students in person on April 21st, which, yeah, makes things a lot better.

We do have a small glitch with KTEC on that simply because they're having a three-day nurse testing that will be going on.

It's only 20 nurses, but there will be students in the school, so we will probably have to do the background check thing, KTEC.

Okay, moving on.

You have an opportunity for public comment.

Let me see a hand up over here.

I have a lot of public comments.

Introduce yourself.

I'm Anne Brubaker.

I'm NPL, Assistant Chief at Georgetown.

So I'm just going to start with one.

You can't hear.

Scheduling for Anne.

Anne, you're scheduled up.

Sure.

Yeah, on the other side.

Oh, OK. Anne Brubaker.

Sorry about that.

Scheduling EOs for early voting has been frustrating to say the least.

I have not talked to one person who's been happy about it.

A lot of EOs were just scheduled without any regard to when did you want to work.

They were just put on a schedule.

They weren't asked.

They were just scheduled.

which normally you work Tuesday, Thursday afternoons, well now maybe you're scheduled in the mornings.

Really frustrating.

Besides that, I've worked since 2020.

When I signed up, I was told that my party affiliation is only known to the office staff and my chief.

It is now known to all VEOs.

and it should not be.

That's nobody's business.

And was that disclosed via email?

I believe it is public record.

It may be public record, but it certainly shouldn't be sent out to people.

I have a whole list of things that- The chiefs do have a reason to know.

Exactly.

So that was my understanding was that the office staff knew that and that the chiefs knew that.

And obviously the board members.

But other EOs, there's no reason to know that.

There's no reason to look around the room and go, oh, R-R-D-R-E-E-D.

There's no need for that.

I don't see a need for that.

It creates a division that you're trying to do away with, I would think.

You're not trying to create a division.

We're trying to create a team.

I'd be delighted to talk to you.

I'm Liz Werglini.

I am chief at Georgetown, and I'm also working early voting.

I've worked early voting since 2020, just like Ann.

I've worked as an election official in Amal County since 2016.

Early voting is nothing short of chaotic.

We are treating our voters as they should be treated, but behind the scenes, there is chaos.

As Ann brought up, the staffing of early voting is, and this is, I don't want this to be an attack on Alex.

Alex is doing absolutely the best job he can do given the circumstances.

I am seeing a lot of an experience in not only our EOs but in the people that we need to consult or how things should be run.

There is disrespect on, I believe, on EOs by office staff.

There's incredible disorganization.

There are inconsistencies.

A policy will be set, and then an hour later it's changed, and then an hour later it's changed, and this is all different from how we used to do.

Not to say that what we used to do was perfect, but we're just being given, we're changing this with no reason why and no understanding why.

Yesterday I was working as chief.

I had a person come in who had two ballots that had been mailed to her.

The whole ballot, early voting ballot, mail-in ballot situation, again, was really chaotic.

I was told at one point that I couldn't work on certain days because they were only dealing with protected information, which it turned out was labels on envelopes.

And also, as EOs, when we went to our training, we couldn't access that room until 10 o'clock because it was a protected room, so if you arrived at

five minutes to 10 for a 10 o'clock meeting.

You had to stay in the hallway.

So three or four days later, there are tons of people in that protective room madly putting labels on envelopes, which if I had been able to come or other people would be able to come in on Monday and take care of that, it wouldn't have been.

Because I had said, I'm happy to come in on Monday, but I was told I could not because it was protected information.

I was sworn in EO.

That is information that I have access to anytime I'm on a pad.

So I'm not sure what that situation was.

Pat?

It is my understanding that labeling started on Monday prior to Friday and it was being done only by office staff because office staff were the only qualified people to do it and by Thursday, there were people here labeling, at least one person here labeling who is not an EO, not a board member and not a member of the office

I just question, I'm really questioning decision making at this point.

I do have a question since you brought that up to me, but protected information.

I do not see anything on a label.

that is protected information.

Name of the voter and the address of the voter.

There is no birth date information.

I will be happy to send you a copy of an email I received saying why I could not help because it was protected information.

Actually, when you print out the list of the absentee ballot holders, it actually says on the list that comes out of theirs that it's protected information.

It says it on there.

So yes, when I first started it, I did not, you know, wanted to honor that.

You know, I said, well, let's see if we can just do this in house and the staff.

And then I talked to a few people and I thought, okay, well, if we swear people in,

when they're doing this, then that would be okay.

And that's exactly what we did.

And I informed you by email, two of you, that yes, initially you could not, that we wanted to handle it in-house, absolutely.

I was not informed by you that it was changed.

I asked Alex about it.

I said, what happened?

And he said, Jonell found a loophole.

I understand you're saying chaos.

We don't think that was chaotic.

You know, everybody had the way that it was set up.

Everybody had their own separate precinct.

Everybody was working on those precincts.

There was part of those ballots that were done earlier.

So the only it might have looked chaotic because everybody had to sit together at a table at the conglomerate of tables that we had to pull together because we didn't have a larger room.

and it was done the same way that it was done earlier with fewer people.

So the exact same process.

So the process was not chaotic.

Can I ask a quick question?

Yes, we swore people in.

We sat there.

when you were where, and remain.

Yes, because we swore everybody in.

We were not sworn in.

Thank you.

I am concerned about this protected information.

Yes, I was just about to say that.

It just could have been reflexive.

You know, some of the information that comes out of Veris is.

But don't know.

Yeah, Rick Barnett, due to Chief, this is one.

So whereas we know not an issue anymore.

Two things.

Don't forget to, yes, we should be recording.

There's a little REC up at the top.

It keeps disappearing.

Ah, Diane McNeil, that was my first question.

Second question is just interesting.

I was going to vote this morning and I was told I could not because I'm not sure because I thought, well, I'll just go to the meeting next week.

But I've never, ever,

Bento, it was a problem with my driver's license.

So what was the reason given?

They mumbled something about federal restriction, maybe?

What?

But I just thought I'd throw that out while I'm here.

That's all right.

Who told you that?

It was the lady sitting at the...

Hold that?

Hold that.

Okay.

And then some other lady came up.

Because like I said, I cannot...

Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

We don't want to turn voters away.

That's not the business we're in.

I'm Linda Seaman.

I'm a member of the Democrats voter protection team.

And we're seeking some clarification on a new to us process where voters who come in before April 14th, the deadline to register, and they register to vote, but are told they have to return in five days to actually vote.

Now our question is, number one, if they're unable to return, say they are leaving town, can they ask for a provisional ballot?

Last year, toward the end of voting, this document came out from the interim registrar and it outlines ways for someone to vote having immediately registered before the deadline.

So that's our question is what happens to that voter?

And the second question I have is how do voters know

when their registration's complete and they can return to vote.

Do they get some kind of notification that allows them to come in?

It may be difficult for them to come.

And exactly how is that whole information process flowing?

We don't see information about same-day registration on the electoral board's website other than the date that it begins and we ask

Let it be added to inform voters more about what their rights are on same day registration.

Can I address that?

Sure, Jim.

The conversation that we had last fall resulted in the policy that if someone came and registered and were told to come back five days later to vote and said, I cannot come back five days later,

They were given the opportunity to have a provisional ballot.

And the reason code was other.

That's why we finally found a reason for that reason.

It was a little dicey in that, well, I'd rather vote now.

Well, is that saying you can't come back in five days?

So that that issue of

giving them total choice versus only giving them the choice that they said they really can't come back in five days.

That never really got sussed out in the process last fall.

But that's the process that we used last fall to my recollection.

And in subsequent discussions this year, actually after last year's, we saw how many people were doing that because they just said, I want to vote now.

came to the realization that what we were doing was implementing same-day registration because that's exactly the same process where you register and vote provisionally and yet the state in the code allows same-day registration to occur only after a specific date in early in-person voting

And that seemed like we had reached beyond our grasp there.

And so we revised our approach for this election that we would have people who came in who needed to register would register as the code prescribes, wait five days.

At that time, a registration card is sent out to them.

So that's how the notice is that they would get.

But after five days, they should be in the systems and should be able to come in and vote whether they get a registration card before they do or not.

and then only at the end of the early voting window when the state has prescribed same-day registration should occur that we would do that.

And then regarding this, as it dovetails off of what Bucky said,

trying to address that.

And we reversed it, as Bucky said.

And the reason for the preferred option on the first one is not the preferred option for us.

It's the preferred option for the voter because their vote will count immediately.

So when you do a regular registration, you wait those five days, your registration comes in and they say it's approved.

Then when you come back, you vote a live ballot.

However, what we were doing with people is if they voted a provisional ballot, that was not even looked at until several days after the election and not counted.

So that's why the preferred option for voters that we believe is to wait those five days so they can actually put their ballot in the scanner and it's counted.

right there, and then the waiting period is over.

So wait five days, or depending on when you vote, you might be waiting 25 days before the provisional ballots are even looked at.

So your wait is shorter when you do the regular registration and you wait those five days.

It is always longer when you do a provisional.

It's 100% always longer.

There's a third option on that.

All else fails.

I know, but that's what we should not have done.

I remember discussion about changing that, but I don't remember that we ever took a vote on changing that policy.

Did we?

I think I'd have to look in the minutes.

Oh, MinuteKeeper.

Yeah.

MinuteKeeper does not remember actually taking a boat.

MinuteKeeper remembers some discussion on it.

I see no problem with that.

We can't control how quickly they will get back to us.

Sherry Stovin, EO and Assistant Chief at Brownsville.

I just wanted to let everybody know, just give them a heads up that earlier this week, there were three voters who came in, presented their driver's license.

When it was scanned, say it was a John Smith,

The name that came up was Emily Jones.

Oh, we did.

And it didn't show up.

So this is something that I've never seen in the entire time I've ever worked.

And if it's going to be an issue during early voting, then I think

Yes.

But that's what you have to do.

Typing in the name is not going to work.

It didn't work for those three voters.

Just to comment on that, we had exactly that thing happen last year on election day at Monticello.

The vote came out.

We told her, so we reported it.

I don't know why it happened, but it happened three times.

How did you resolve it?

How did you resolve it?

My personal observation is that the scanning system in the pole pads works so dramatically better than the scanning system we used to have with the pole books that we were using.

It's really remarkable when it doesn't work.

And this one doesn't fail in the I won't find someone for you mode.

It fails in the I found the wrong person for you mode, which is no good.

But it's one of the reasons why we have humans in this loop to confirm that what you are seeing on the ID is, in fact, what this person is presenting to you.

So not ideal, but

It's clearly got to be part of our instruction for our officers of election, what we're going to do.

I see that Lewis has his hand raised on the call.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

I just got a question about the five-day waiting period.

I don't know, Lewis.

We'll look it up.

We're not sure.

All right, thank you.

Quick question that was alluded to earlier, Claribel Wheeler, Rivanna Magisterial District.

There has been questioning around the state concerning whether or not

This is a federal election because clearly there are some, just reporting the news, I'm not making the news.

Has elect actually given you guidance?

This is not a federal election, because we are voting on a Virginia Constitution, not a federal election.

But has elect sent you guidance on that that you know of?

But in the webinar, they addressed and made clear that this is a state election and not a federal election.

Anybody else?

We'll march on with our agenda.

Minutes, approval of the minutes from February 19th.

Yeah, the only change I made was that there was some email discussion with Bucky about terminology used.

I decided that

What goes on in Room B is to be called early in-person parentheses EIP voting to distinguish it from early mail voting or anything else.

So that was the only change I made was to make that consistent.

Do I move their approval?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The minutes are approved.

We move on to old business.

I had a great meeting with the university precinct team, precinct 202.

We were looking specifically at a process for the processing of same-day registration and provisional votes.

Since university, at least half of all of our provisional votes, sometimes considerably more than that,

they need, needless to say, need a different process than the one we use in all the other precincts because they're processing 10 to 100 times as many provisionals.

And we had a really good discussion.

We covered a lot of ground.

We've documented that discussion.

I've sent that back out to the university team and I have just recently shared it with the board and the registrar and the elections manager.

and I believe that's what the university is going to go forward with.

Basically we've created a defined assembly line approach to doing provisional votes as opposed to the one-off craftsman system where, you know, an officer of election sits with a voter and crafts their provisional vote.

University is going to make use of their second room and basically run that as a little provisional voting precinct where voters start at one station, go get a ballot, mark the ballot, come to another station, finish up their provisional envelope, and all the data gets recorded there, off they go.

So that's way oversimplifying.

We had a positive meeting, identified a few additional requirements that university has that don't exist elsewhere.

One point they made that I was wholly unaware of is that their check-in officers make great use of the movers' rules.

to help move things along because obviously students are often moving on an annual basis and the movers rules would apply in university all the time to people coming through.

So one of the requirements to be a check-in officer is to be fully conversant with the movers rules and know whether you need a better registration form or an affirmation of eligibility form and make sure those get in the right hands so that people can be moved through the process.

That was enlightening for me.

But it will be one, which normally we don't have, where it's the same school year as last November.

So I would guess, I would not predict, but I would guess... We'd hope there haven't been a lot of people moving.

A lot of less moving around, if they're in their dorm room in November.

but you're not taking bets right not taking bets the template that you you made that template i think which one the one to put over top of it it's coming we're going to be using it are we going to use that template

I think we'll use it everywhere.

I've actually already written some slides for it in the same day registration training without having a copy of it to try and make the point that the template will help you determine whether or not the document is complete.

It doesn't really help you determine whether it's legible or not.

You have to look beyond just there's ink in every box to what does the ink say.

So glad to hear they're coming.

Okay.

Okay.

Look forward to that.

Moving on, election office accounting report.

How are we doing?

Is this election going to cost anything?

This is free, right?

You know, I haven't, what I did was this on your email, I don't have enough of my influences in yet to give the full picture of what we're seeing, but I did our initial supplies.

And so that includes the envelopes, the ballot on demand stock paper,

I don't have the invoice yet for our actual ballots, the thumb drives that we ordered, and then the postage.

And then all of that- Outgoing and return on- Correct.

That is just over $37,611.40.

You're not even looking at the labor.

Correct.

Not even there.

So that's where we are.

And the 27th budget,

is on the move now.

And I'll have a report about that next week as well.

I know that the state allocated $5 million that would be available to localities.

Well, the prevailing guess, it's going to be first come, first serve.

I was a little confused about that.

The policy is the state will reimburse us for this election.

Yes, I got something back from the budget department.

The 2027 budget is available for me to look at now.

I haven't had a chance to take a look at it, but they did set aside $250,000 for elections.

works with the conduct of elections.

Any questions?

I do, sir, if I may, Chair.

You had referenced salaries.

They get paid by the hour, correct?

Yeah, you're talking about the, well, in-person absentee, it's $15 an hour.

Is that what you're asking?

Which is the same since 2020.

Any other questions?

OK. Then the electoral board and registrar responsibilities and delegations.

We just got a copy of this.

Let's guess the board.

Do we want to go line by line through this or do we want to pick this up at our next meeting?

Unless there's something you want to specifically say to address this, I'll put this on the agenda for the next meeting and we'll review this at that time.

Then we can focus in on places where we are not all in agreement as opposed to going line by line through the whole thing.

Next item I've got on the agenda is the question of officers of election being assigned to their home precinct.

Good findings and everything.

The majority of our election workers are not at their home precincts, but some are, so that's a good thing.

the code 24.2-115A suggests that we should try to assign officers of election to their home precinct.

Obviously, that's not always going to be the case.

Obviously, you don't need 30 people to work in Ivy precinct, for example, where we have 30 EOs, that's their home precinct.

Yes, and then I've also,

I just found a small group when I was doing this and kind of made note of them but now I'm going to send it out to anybody who's questioning it or would like to send it out to emails anybody who's questioning it or everybody who's not in their home anybody in the home precinct not in their home precinct okay and and making it clear that they don't have to move

We're just trying to find ways to be as compliant as we can.

Okay, Andy.

And that's reflective.

Alex is still working on this.

I think so, because Alex is still working on it.

Very good.

We'll pick up this again and get an update.

I'd love to get a count of how many people you end up reassigning as a result of this when we're all said and done.

As far as he showed me the box, we didn't have time to go through it.

One thing that was on top of the box.

Does anyone still have a VHS player?

There is a VHS tape on the top that says for Jim.

I don't have one of those things that works anymore.

I think I know what it probably is.

I'm not sure.

I might bring it in.

I may have one in my attic.

All right, new business, early voting.

Okay.

We are, it's brisk.

So I'm just going to start reporting some numbers.

So on Friday, which is the opening day,

417?

Yes.

A completely different number.

Is this one?

Is this one Friday?

We're gonna have to date it incorrectly.

Okay, so let me give you numbers.

Let me give you yesterday's numbers.

I do have those.

So for yesterday, Wednesday, let me give you Tuesday and Wednesday.

So for Tuesday, we have 344.

For Wednesday, we have 355.

And collectively for the first several days of early voting, we have 1569.

Now the other two numbers that I have, I have 453 for Friday and I have 417 for Monday.

Are those flipped or bound?

Yes, so these came directly from the pullbacks.

So, okay.

Well, we'll have to check and see what's wrong with these reports.

Is there something wrong with that?

I did note that the check-in prints I would have thought that that was the number to look at but then it also has total prints and that I didn't read that number at all because I know that number is wrong for sure the total prints it's not wrong I mean it's not right so so we'll go in and take a look at all of the numbers yes the number of ballots printed isn't telling you how many people

No, it's wrong.

We know it's wrong.

It's not right.

Yeah, but it's not even accurate because we know it's not even accurate.

I somehow have those figures.

I have to rifle through a lot of paper.

I'll just be curious to know how we're tracking.

We're going to want to give our polling places, officers of election, an indication of how many people to expect at the polls.

And while the first few days of early voting is not always a good indicator, the first two weeks of early voting is probably a pretty good indicator.

Yeah, that would have been further in.

What I'll do is, well, I'll look this up right after the meeting.

Just has everybody signed in over there?

Because I can send it to everybody.

Let's just make sure everybody's fastened in.

It's nice that you have the right numbers.

Okay, so then I have this.

Please don't regard the record myself.

Okay, so these are registered voters numbers and then the cancellation numbers.

I looked at from December, from November through the end of last month.

So you can see the trend in our registered voters.

The December number is very high.

That's the right number.

We went over 90,000 there.

I looked at November of 2025, and we saw that just over 86,000 in November, quite about 86,000 in November.

And then the cancellations, I want to just bring your attention to a couple of numbers here.

The February number for deceased, that includes some deaths from January.

This is a big number, but it includes some from January.

January is a little bit too low.

And then the other number I want to bring your attention to is the inactive.

NCOA stands for the National Change of Address.

and the Department of Elections sends out a national change of address, they send out address confirmations to everybody.

And so for those people who did not respond, we had 144 of those.

And the result of them not responding means that they went inactive and they were not eligible if they were permanent absentee

They were not eligible to receive those ballots, so we pulled those ballots.

No, just their, just their, their commonality has been

So there has been no purge.

No.

Through the state purge process.

Next question.

Sure.

National change of address is

is exactly that.

So then what's the difference between out of state?

Well, this NCOA is something that elected separately.

The out of state, you are moving, but it's people reporting it themselves.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Very good.

I do.

We mailed out, I have these certificate of mail.

We mailed out 6,971.

Sorry.

6,971.

That was on Friday.

Since then we mailed out another 33 and then we will mail out this morning another 84.

In the last two days we got we got 41 day and we got a bunch the next day so and we'll mail those out today this morning they may have already been gone we're doing a run this morning and we have to we'll do about this okay and we received back

Yes.

And then from the mailed out absentee from the bunch that I mentioned earlier, we received 74 back.

They were all undeliverables.

55 of them, about 55 of them were returned to sender.

Either the people moved

or they moved within Virginia or they moved out of state.

And there were five of them that had a message that I hadn't seen before.

It says temporarily away.

And I'm surprised it was so low when we had 7,000.

Yeah, that's a quick response.

You may get more.

Well, actually it was the kudos.

The Department of Elections,

as Jonell I think said, did not send the registrars the NCOA until Thursday.

So you couldn't work until Thursday.

So everybody all hands on deck and I want to compliment the board because all three members of the board were here Friday afternoon loading up the mailed out absentee ballots into their cars to take them to the post office to get them in on time.

Thank you, board members, for working overtime.

Thank you.

But next year, one of you can drive my truck.

I do want to dovetail off of that.

I went to the post office yesterday.

I spent about almost two hours there.

So I really wanted to understand their operation.

Looking at the new stamps.

Exactly.

They did everything.

I brought back some of those trays.

they gave me a tour of the inside.

I asked them about the best process for us to get our ballots there.

They told me that we're gonna do exactly what they said.

I do want to mention a couple of other things from early voting.

The gold oath we've had, I don't have a number for Friday or Monday, but yes, on Tuesday we had 24 and yesterday we had seven.

Are we still keeping a log of the ID confirmations?

Well, didn't this begin last?

Didn't this begin?

Well, you guys tell me this last year.

Debbie started that and we did not understand why then.

Liz, do you have information?

There were no reported, it is my understanding, and I've heard this sort of through the grapevine, so it may not be it's 100%, there are no goal votes on Friday or Monday because the poll pads had not been programmed with the absentee ballot information.

So if somebody came in who was on the absentee ballot list, we did not have that information on our poll pads.

So that's why there were probably no gold votes on Friday or Monday.

Does anybody have any?

They send in their assets.

I'm wondering if anybody could fill out a form.

I'm sorry, could you pronounce what you're saying?

I'm not hearing the words.

Ann, could you explain?

I don't know.

There's a form that's goldenrod in color that is used for folks who come in and say

Yes, maybe you did send me an absentee ballot but I never received it and I'd like to vote and the state allows them to simply vote normally after they sign this form swearing that they're not going to vote their other ballot and they didn't get it.

And that's only in early voting.

It's not something that's available at the polling places.

That's somebody who comes in and doesn't have

An ID that's actually on the list of ID with them, and they can sign a sheet that says, I am who I am.

And Diane McNeil.

We are also recording all of the gold forms, gold oaths that are being done.

I don't have a strong feeling about that.

It's recorded in the pull pad.

It's recorded on the slip of paper.

I frankly see no need.

It's fine.

That's fine.

Consensus direction to the registrar is that we see no need for these things.

And if she's in agreement to make them go away.

All right.

Anything else on the new book?

The less filing that we did on three, before three one or by three one, did we have any remediation activities we had to do?

I think there might be one or two.

I'll ask Sagar about that.

But we actually had to hold back on that a little bit because the form was changed and

The Department of Elections can't submit it if the form is changed.

So he had to go back to the original Excel sheet and fill that in.

And are we on track to have the remediation accomplished by April 1st?

Yes, we are.

Good.

Next item here is the election schedule for training we had talked about and for LNA.

We have previously talked about a schedule in our February 19th meeting that we were going to use.

Let's go over what those are going to be.

Go ahead.

We're still in March.

Yep.

We started the first one in March on Thursday, March 26th.

Neck and car.

Neck and car, yes.

You're all booked up that day.

So we're going to do that on the 26th.

Um, the new, um, the bullpaddling meetings and refresher training for the bullpads is going to be in room A on April 6th.

That's on the 6th.

Already LNA test.

So LNA testing will be now on the 7th.

So flip flop.

Do you give me the times?

Yep.

So for the pull pad newbie refresher training is going to be 10, 2, and 6.

And this will be all 5th Street, here, and there.

Yeah.

Pull pad training.

What about on the 26 with that time?

The 26 is from 6 to 8.

Thank you, Rick.

6 to 8.

6 to 8.

Yes, sir.

Yes.

Okay, and poll pad training was on April 7th.

That's been moved April 6th.

Correct.

Then for same-day registration training, it would be on Friday, April 10th.

and that will be over at the county office building at McIntire.

And we're still working on that time.

We have the room all day, which room?

The Lane Auditorium.

Yeah.

Available.

Yes.

So I put it, we can technically be there from eight o'clock until five.

So we just have to figure out a time.

They don't let anybody come stay there after five on Fridays.

So I said a 10 o'clock one and not sure the other time.

But you do it so you make sure I can be there before you sign off.

Later.

We have to be kicked out by 5.

3.30?

We've got it at 3.30.

and then newbie training will be on Wednesday, April 15th, and that's from six to eight.

And this will be over also over here on the fifth street.

Yes, sir.

And it's going to be room A you say?

We did.

No, I mean, we checked the cages that day, earlier that day.

Yeah, it was fun.

I have a 10 a.m. dentist appointment and you know we don't change if we do this anymore.

But that should not be more than... You can go and come back.

We'll still be testing.

9 o'clock.

Yes.

When is training for the standard EOs?

Something we discussed earlier on, since we had trained the heck out of everybody last year, we are not going to train them, and we don't have to train them.

New officers, we have to train.

Chiefs and assistants, we have to train.

So we're training those folks.

And since we don't have new equipment, new processes, there's no need to train the EOs.

We are going to be putting some online training up

We'll have some training for the ballot officers.

On the calendar I'm holding

It says LNA testing for the precinct call pads on Friday, the 17th of April, which really can't happen.

I don't have that on.

So oversight here.

Again, good reason to get a new list.

And by the time we get to that one, we know how to clear things out after we check people in so we can really test everything the way it's going to happen in the polling place.

That'd be great.

As long as I'm on no ink.

I had a question from a voter the other day wanting to know about satellite offices and why don't we have one like Chesterfield.

And I provided some feedback, clearly Chesterfield is doing a lot more voting than we are, but that we had had this discussion at our last meeting and there may one day come a time satellite voting.

That immediately raised the question in my mind, how would you synchronize the poll pads in two separate locations?

There's a problem when the whole idea of satellite voting first came into effect in 2020, because you had to be able to communicate.

And it looked like the only way you could communicate was through the internet.

You did not want to communicate through the internet.

So it was said that you have to be in, let's say you have a regular one here and a satellite here, those two have to be

Understand all of that and the code helps specify that in terms of owning or leasing the buildings.

What isn't clear is how the hardware No-Ink uses, since they're using not Wi-Fi connections between the devices, but other connections, how they would synchronize that.

So I put it to you as something to explore with the No-Ink folks.

Obviously not something we need this year.

But five years from now, if we're still using this equipment, I'd like to know how that happens.

If it does, and if it doesn't, that might color future decisions.

So just put it out there.

Not something I had considered before.

OK. Let me make sure that I have that straight directed at me.

Exactly.

The poll pads in that room all sync together.

And that's the only place we're checking in people to vote.

But the poll pads in another room don't normally sync with the poll pads in this room.

And if that other room happens to be 10 miles from here in another county-owned facility that's secure and operates as a registrar's office as well, which would make it a valid satellite place that if the board of supervisors had approved it as such,

How would that work?

Is it technically even possible with the poll pads?

And again, not something I anticipate we're going to need to know the answer to anytime soon.

But you never know when the General Assembly is going to change once again the rules about early voting.

And suddenly we're, oh my gosh, we've tripled the number of early voters we have.

We need satellite offices.

I'd like to know if this equipment can do that, and if so, how.

Not that I need to do it.

Any other questions about dates or times or schedule?

Okay.

Something I have, you had your hand up first, go ahead.

This relates back to previous conversations concerning policy changes.

Our policy,

My knowledge, and I'm pretty sure I'm right, in past years has been that if some voter comes in who has been issued an absentee ballot and they come in to vote and they do not have their absentee ballot with them, they are given a goal vote, allowed to vote on the machine, and told to destroy their ballot if it comes to their house.

I overheard yesterday I guess it was or the day before that very situation and the person was told, bring us your ballot or mail it in to us.

And I questioned, I said, is that what we're telling people now?

And the answer was yes.

That is a policy change.

What I'm hearing is that I need to know what the policies have been for early voting because I don't know what they are.

Now that has been our policy, correct?

Or bring them back in.

Or bring them back in.

There's too many bad things can happen if you do it that way.

Yes, you'd be having to look through all the minutes of all the previous meetings and hoping you could find them.

And Liz has faced the same problem last year.

Another policy we used to have was if somebody did bring their ballot in and wanted to vote on the machine in person that day, that we were supposed to open the envelope, write void on the ballot, staple everything multiple times so that it would be very clear that ballot could never be used.

Now we are being asked to write void on the ballot and send the ballot back to the office without any of the other recommendations.

We have a folder, an envelope that says

A.B.

on it.

So the first process you articulated is virtually the same as the process in the polling places on election day.

So very consistent with that.

Yes.

And easy to track.

You left out the part where off of them they get off the permanent absentee list choice.

But yes.

And I would ask the registrar why you'd want to do

what Liz has articulated as opposed to just avoiding it, stapling through it, and keeping it in the polling place in Envelope 4 ABS.

You need to make sure that you have at least envelope B with their identifying information on it.

And you need to see the ballot that was issued to them.

Write void on the ballot.

Okay.

I'm so sorry.

We also would actually staple the ballot to the outside of the envelope so that you could see that the ballot had been returned.

I'm just saying- It's not exactly what we do in the polling places, but there's no harm in that.

What's the difference in the polling places?

Not agree to answer.

And this way you can also see the ballot is there without having to actually open it up.

You see the address, you see the ballot, and you see that it's been pointed.

Mr.

Chair, do we need a

Well, motion that we do it as described that everything goes back into the envelope.

And the ballot has that void written on it.

Right.

Right.

So moved.

So let it be written.

So let me try to be written here.

We're early voting for the chiefs who might be new.

We're not aware of anything like that.

You guys haven't seen anything like that, yeah.

So back to my issue, if we are moving, I move voters who bring in their absentee ballots but wish to vote, or excuse me,

Voters who come in wishing to vote in person without their absentee ballot in hand be told to destroy their ballot and if they receive it at home and not send it back.

That seems to be you're all liking.

Does the golden vote form offer any direction to the voter on this topic?

Not really.

And they don't keep that.

No, I understand.

Just want to make sure we're not going to tell them to do something that's inconsistent with what's on that form that they just signed.

Sounds like a consensus to the board.

announced to both your staff as well as to officials working early in person.

Something that I would be very impressed if we got it done for this early voting session.

But the point Rick raised is a good point.

There should be the addendum chief's guide to early voting that here are some things that are different.

Here's what we do here.

Your check-in receipts, broad oath form, et cetera.

It would be nice to have a short list of those things so that we could provide that instruction.

As noted before, even if we don't get it done for this early voting session, we'll get two more turns this year, so plenty of value from any effort expended there.

I thought your slides looked very good.

If you don't want to go through them, we can save that time.

It probably would be good for us to go very short.

I think it'd be nice to split up who's doing what and have a little run through.

And that all comes under training.

Except for which day, I'm sorry?

Friday.

There's no tables in there, no projection system in there, so we can get this room on Monday.

What time's good for you?

Second, this end before the room goes away.

There we go, got the room reserved.

You did ask about

and so I just have my hand out, I can just give you.

Yes, and so I printed out the names of the courses and there are 11 of them.

Thank you.

Is it enough to look at it?

Then I think that'll end the open part of this meeting.

Finally go into closed session after a break.

Thank you all for coming and for participating.

Paul, thank you all very much.

That was all wrong.

The topic I have involves the assignment of EOs and chiefs, personnel, yes, we're considering the appointment assignment and performance of current and prospective personnel.

Do we need to obtain legal advice?

Do we need to discuss contracts?

No.

It's all personnel related, then it would be covered under- Then it's all that, okay, gotcha.

That's okay.

So what I just said, all those in favor, all those in favor, aye.

So I'd like to move the following as we come out of closed session, that the electoral board certify by recorded vote that to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Motion passes unanimously.

All those in favor, say aye.

They're approved unanimously.

For the purposes of having a board meeting to review assignments of officers of election to the polling places for the April 21st election, I'd like to suggest we schedule a board meeting for March 20th at 9 in the morning.

Is everybody in agreement there?

Post notices for that meeting and get it scheduled.

And right now I'm planning on it being in this room, assuming I can make the reservation system work.

Any other business?

Thank you all very much.