Electoral Board Meeting   4/9/2026

Downstein.

There, the machine agrees that it's ruined.

Good.

It being 9 o'clock, I welcome everyone in the room and online.

It'll be April 9th, 2026, at Albemarle County, regularly scheduled electoral board meeting.

And I call this meeting to order, including the presence of all of the members of the electoral board.

and I put before the board the first item of action on the agenda and that is to approve our final agenda.

Anyone have a copy of the agenda?

Any additions, corrections to that?

All right, take that as approved.

Maybe a couple of more people to the meeting here.

Push this close.

So brief announcements from the board and registrar.

Anyone have any announcements to make?

I don't.

Hearing none, we'll go to the public.

Any announcements from members of the public?

Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of questions.

Go ahead.

And I looked on the agenda.

I don't see them on the agenda.

I mean, I don't see the place where you would have answered them, so I'm going to ask them.

It's come to our attention that the DS-300, y'all had to get three new DS-300s.

They went through LNA testing.

And my understanding is that the DS-300 in-person

Absentee wrote down and you had to replace it?

The unit that was originally deployed in in-person absentee voting after six days was it?

had a power supply problem.

And that device, you set that machine aside, we replaced the device.

As you know, the ballots are taken out of them at the end of every day.

So hoping we could get that machine back online and then consequently get the tabulations from it.

It was simply secured and awaited a repairman to come look at it who did so.

Day before yesterday on Tuesday, and he filled with it a whole lot and then left before I talked to him.

So what was the final pronouncement on that machine?

This is the same machine we talked about earlier, Claire.

It's the exact same machine that went down.

And so what he said that it was, I can't give you the technical things, but when I asked him to lay it out, he said, it's the

He said- I can give a little bit of a technical part.

No, I'm worried.

after the normal course of business.

So I put in a question to, just asking our rep, elect rep is, can we do it the Monday after early voting ends?

At first I thought, at first that was my first thought, then I thought, well, it's not gonna be during the actual official early voting time period.

I don't know.

but the best day for us to do it is that it's gonna be very difficult to ask people to stay late when they're already working very hard.

We're already late into it and it's 3601 balance.

So that's an eight to 10 hour process.

So we can do it all that Monday because we'll be fresh, we're gonna do it.

The idea was to do it in two hour timeframes.

And I've had a couple of volunteers saying, EO volunteers said, I'll come in and do two hours and then people on staff.

So that's a question

I'm not sure.

I would recommend against doing it on the Monday, because then you're right up against the wall, even if from a procedural standpoint, the leg doesn't have any problem with that.

Right.

I agree with that.

But can I give another reason why?

because, okay, we'll have observers there.

Let's say if we do this over five days, that's okay.

That's five days.

In between time, you're going to have ballots, older ballots fed in, new early voting, older ballots fed in, and that's what the tape is going to look like.

And that's really why I was trying to avoid that because we cannot do that on any one night.

We only have nine days.

Well,

Yeah, but that's, I understand that, that procedural part doesn't bother me at all.

It's just the mixture of old and new.

So it was the count.

I got you.

I know, but it's still that.

Well, that's exactly what it would be.

That's why I asked the question.

That's exactly what it would be after early voting ended.

But there's a reason why.

One day before the election,

Actually, that day is not as frantic as you think it is.

It's the days before that, up to the Sunday before that.

I know, but we're not down there.

It may take a little bit less time.

I did the math, and I thought it was 3,000.

You say it's 3,600.

It's 3,000 if they're fed constantly.

It was very few breaks.

I came out to four hours.

I don't love the notion of counting them after early voting.

you know, over.

No, I mean feeding something in after the early voting period.

On the Monday after.

Yeah, I don't love that.

A couple of things to consider.

One, the officers who run CAP know how to feed ballots continuously.

I mean, that's what they do.

They have large batches of them to keep feeding.

So they're acquainted with doing that.

The pattern that we used last year when the machines went down was we fed the previously tabulated in the ballot box that had to go back through the new machine after the polls closed.

So there's precedent for after the polls close.

The in-person absentee clearly closes at five o'clock on Saturday in order to keep

the recycled ballots, the ballots that have to be recounted separate.

I think you'd be well-advised to do it after 5 p.m. on Saturday because then you've got a public count that's that many and you know your public count, you know the number of ballots going through.

So you keep them separate.

They'll all be put out on the same tape, but

You've got a record of how they're being put in.

I mean, whether it's Saturday night or Sunday, and I know Sundays, you've got the LNA testing, you've got a lot of things going on.

But after five o'clock on Saturday?

No, I'm just saying.

They won't love that.

Two things.

Thank you.

One is to the point Clarabelle makes, which is a good point.

Obviously, some documentation on our part can help keep separate previously scanned ballots from the old machine versus new scanned ballots in terms of where the counts are.

So we could very easily distinguish that at the end of the day today, we finished an early voting with 12,000 ballots.

And then tonight from the previous machine, we added another 800, 900, 1,000 to that and do that several nights in a row, document that.

So we could have a clear record of what was done to avoid any later confusion on that.

Those are just two or three hour stint.

But then if we're going to have them touching our ballots, it depends on if they are cleared with HR.

It could be other people who worked in early voting.

It could be board members.

Well, that's who volunteered, people who were not working.

One of them only works, what, a couple times early voting.

Yeah, the people who volunteer, they know they can fix.

They're not concerned about what their early voting schedule is.

They want to do this.

So we understand the documentation part.

Yeah, I would like to just write on the tape.

Here's where this is ending.

Here's where this is beginning.

Yes, that's right.

And then sign it.

And then we should have witnesses there.

The only thing that we were concerned about was the time frame.

It's going to be more difficult.

If that's what we have to do, that's fine, to break it up.

Then it is to do it all together.

Getting people to come in because the staff can't do it.

That's what they're doing.

11 to one.

Yes, exactly.

Everybody's coming in for a two hour stint.

No, no, no, that's what I'm saying.

From a contingency planning standpoint,

Not that I anticipate this, but we have to acknowledge that there's a more than 0% chance that the machine we are currently using will decide to just fail.

And if we have waited until the Monday to try and then count these ballots on that machine,

then in that process, we'll lose everything that's been done to now and have to start all over again with a different machine.

Do you have a spare machine?

We have several spare machines, but we still, if the same situation happens, we end up having to count all of the ballots and the DS300, we'd have to put two or three of the spare machines in use to get them all done and then we'd need a whole bunch of people to feed 15, 16, 17,000 ballots through all the machines.

Whereas if we do it a bunch at a time,

then we end up at the end of the process on that Saturday when we can finally close the thing out for the last ballot scan.

We've still got days, plural, before we need to get the tabulation out of it.

You have to remember that you can't,

We have a very good understanding.

I mean, I know you know that.

I mean, we have to wait until we can get the tabulation out, but we can do everything up until then.

I understand that.

Just, it sounded as if

But- You could have a failure at any time.

Exactly.

I submit that the chance of failure is greater when I am feeding ballots into the machine, because that's the only time we've observed failures.

No, that's not true.

To Rick's point,

Maybe you might want to consider using one of your spares rather than adding the 3601 balance to the currently used scanner.

Put them all in another scanner.

It'll eat up one of your spares, but

The heating of a spare is not a particular concern.

We still have all the staffing and timing questions that obtain whether we're using this machine or another machine.

I can work that out.

and as palatable as possible.

Yes, exactly.

And then just limit the time that we do it on any one day.

So maybe just two shifts, because that puts us already at nine o'clock.

We just need to make sure that the record keeping is recorded.

And that everyone who should be able to observe this process has been notified, knows to plan for it, and that can be available.

And using a spare, I think it does have its advantages.

It's one disadvantage is it's another tape per cap to add.

Whereas if they're all in the machine, they're getting all the EIP out of one tape.

That's a small thing because they have to add the mail ballot.

Anyway, so they have to do one edition.

I can easily amend the spreadsheet to do that, you know, to just create another entry point for that.

Let her ask her what she might answer.

Well, I don't know.

We're looking at each other across the room.

If you called in the cat people on Sunday, I know there's a lot, I understand what goes on on Sunday.

But if you set up the CAT people, a certain number of them, obviously not all of them, and put them with either the machine that's working or your spare machine, whichever machine you want to use, and you put them in a room with their observers, not interfering with everything else that has to be done on Sunday for setting up the pole pads, and let them just feed ballots on Sunday,

that would get you out of your Monday crunch.

You have people who are accustomed to feeding lots of ballots one right after the other.

You can get it done Sunday.

We have a lot of other things going on on that Sunday that we have to do.

I would suggest that taking all of these comments into consideration.

Ultimately, this decision is your decision.

We'll just complain if you don't get it right.

But early voting is in your domain.

And I, you know,

I can't speak for every time period, but certainly happy to volunteer to help.

I've gotten more experience running ballots into machines than I intended to have in LNA testing, so.

So I guess my question now is when can I know the answer, the decision, the actual process?

I'll do that quickly.

I'll do that today, as it won't take much.

I'll just kind of put down the days, kind of the times, just really the structure of the whole operation and send it to you.

Can you post it on the website for observers?

I can.

I don't want to invite lots of people to come because only party observers are authorized to be there.

But I think maybe put it on the website.

And I think that would be one party observer.

I'd be real surprised if anybody wants to send three, but I agree with you.

This is a machine we previously had.

OK, thank you.

All right.

I do have other questions on failures.

We did that- That is not the case.

Okay.

There was a pole pad that failed in person absentee voting, is that correct?

where, you don't know anything about that.

I wasn't in there, I don't know.

I'm just asking.

So there wasn't.

Okay.

I'd have to replace any, stand on a completely different subject, but I don't see it on your agenda.

The Department of Elections sent out guidance a couple of months ago that they were not going to print or send you, send the registrar's maps.

However, many registrars- It seemed more than a suggestion to me.

They didn't say you couldn't, because they can't say you couldn't.

But many registrars are putting up maps, both for in-person absentee and for the polling places.

Is that a subject this board is going to consider?

Because it would seem to me that having a map

that's being proposed, I realize that's not the wording of the ballot, but letting the voters see what a new map of the districts would look like would be helpful.

You're not saying anything, you're not telling them how to vote, you're just saying,

We took up this question in discussion at around the time the directive came out from the state and decided that the campaigners were doing a great job of showing maps, at least here, and that that really belonged in those hands, particularly if the state wanted us not to do something in that regard.

So we didn't take a formal vote on it.

I remember the discussion.

Sure, if there's no other time for public comment, I just wanted to make sure that we're considering the problem of voters coming on election day and expecting to be able to vote here.

In the past, CAP's been running in that room and so somebody's been able to come out

and redirect them to their actual precinct where they need to go and vote.

This time I assume that it's going to be a little bit more problematic.

Is it possible to get some sort of QR code up so people can, you know, know that they can't vote here on election day and they need to actually go to their precinct or could someone be stationed outside or is there a plan for this because it's a,

And can I address the other point that you made?

So for election day cap, which is now happening inside the registrar's office, it's going to move to room B.

And I have the board in here doing the canvassing.

I know after the election is that time, from election day forward.

And so Cap will be in this room over here.

We're just going to move and clear the space for them.

We can do that.

I don't know if there'll be a sign outside.

But if the sign outside just says, go vote at your precinct, maybe there could be a QR code

some way of directing people or I don't know if there might be a person stationed outside.

I think there will be people coming, but not enough people to stationing someone.

Then there could be a- They can always come into the registrar's office and ask a question, too, so we could direct them.

If they still don't get it from the QR code, come on in.

We could also add the web address, as well as the QR.

and QR codes can be malicious so you don't necessarily want to scan everyone you see.

Okay, any other announcements or comments or questions from the public?

Hearing none and seeing nobody online with their hand up and noting that we're still recording, yay.

Let's move on.

We've got a whole bunch of minutes to look at this time.

March 2nd, March 12th and March 20th.

Maybe you'd gotten some, made some minor tweaks based on feedback.

Was it the March 12th minutes, I think?

Would you like to move for their approval?

I don't mind doing it separately.

I think we do them on mass.

I move approval of March 2nd, March 12th.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Approved unanimously.

There they are.

They're my signatures.

I tried to jig them, so they all get on.

Jonell, how are we doing from a financial standpoint?

Oh, it's a set.

OK, so financially.

So financially, overall, we are looking at some different sides.

But overall, we have used up 67.2% of our budget, which equates to 452,922 and 22 cents.

So what I did being on this sheet is what we had talked about earlier.

I broke out all of the items that can be aligned, contributed to this election.

So the actual total at the bottom is $137,112.98.

And if you just take a look and see, these are the costs.

I didn't put them in the order of the most to the least.

I grouped them together by subject.

But as I was doing this a couple of days ago, I realized I probably

I'm going to change it and I'm going to start monitoring this on a weekly basis instead of a monthly basis.

And I think I'll get more into the data about exactly how much things are costing.

But as you can see here, our largest cost is part-time, the wages, and that will go up significantly after Election Day.

Part-time there includes staff and the EOs that are not only election night.

The part-time wages for EOs, that's just election night.

There are two different buckets for part-timers.

And then if you have any questions about what you're seeing here, I can answer them.

There is one thing I would like to note that the part-time wages in January was just over 3,600.

In February, it pretty much doubled to 8,800.

Yes, exactly.

It will be.

Not yet.

We're in the final stages of it.

I actually, I wasn't able to go to the meeting where they were talking about the

the registrar's office, but I listened to it online.

And so it was good.

And one of the supervisors, I want to say his last name was Proffit.

Okay, gotcha.

He's running for Congress, I believe.

He had a lot of questions.

Oh, not anymore.

Okay, gotcha.

He had a lot of questions.

and me and the impression that he was wondering if we needed all of the resources or how are all of our resources used.

Sounds like a good idea.

And we're still under the impression that the state will reimburse

The last webinar, the UX said they'd pretty much get back to us on that.

Nothing else on that?

Then the Electoral Board and Registrar Responsibilities and Delegations.

We can postpone that to this meeting so that the board will all have a chance to look at it and we can have a focused discussion on this.

Everyone has their notes ready?

Let's have a focused discussion on this.

I'd be happy to lead off.

I want to call out the things that I would suggest a change to.

Just the final result.

I would say that when I went back through it again, I even changed a few things.

Scanning down the first page at 24.2.112A, electoral board to determine the number of deputy registrars.

I think that's not really a general registrar responsibility.

That's been a problem with me for a long time.

That code section is about 50 years old and makes sense because we do so much more.

So our temporaries are permanent.

We hire more temporaries for me to say, you can have 10 deputy registrars.

That means nothing.

That doesn't mean.

10 full-time deputy registrars, 10 part-time, just the code section is useless, I think.

You hire how many you need.

Since the registrar is not in the regular county governance structure, I'm thinking the state was simply grasping at some way to have some sort of control over that personnel expense.

Personnel often take the largest part of your expenses.

Well, once again, it dated back to the day where

People had one or two deputy registrars that would be set.

That's not because of modern election stuff.

That just doesn't make sense anymore.

That is far from the only thing in the code that makes sense to me.

But we are stuck with the code we have.

So I would suggest this remains an electoral board responsibility, but that it's the general registrar who is free to make recommendations to the board or requests of the board.

Does this include the election officers during early voting who are deputy registrars?

There's another thing that is- Temporary assistant deputy registrar, yes.

Technically it would.

You're emphasizing Jim's point.

Yes.

Just one more thing on that.

If you get around,

It's still our responsibility, though.

That's all we're trying to allocate today.

Anything else on page one?

Go on to page two.

First thing for me is 24.2115.2A.

I'm sure everyone's trained some of that responsibility.

We have delegated to the general registrar.

You all are training folks on pole pads, for example.

So I would say that's a EB slash GR responsibility.

and then the same thing for 24.2115.2b, exactly the same argument there.

and 24.2115.2C, which is an electoral board responsibility.

Well, there's some form, I think maybe.

I think it has to be submitted through one of the systems.

I think maybe I sign it.

Yeah.

And you had already made that.

And that was all I had on this page.

Next page.

The first thing I've got is 24.2, 604.1, page 3.

We're pretty much not in the sign providing business or even deciding what the signs ought to be.

Changes that for me to just GR, yes.

and then down at 24.2609, the same thing.

You delegated that responsibility for polling voting booths.

Moving on to the next page, if there are no objections.

on page four, 24.2617.

I would like to delegate this responsibility to the general registrar.

Again,

Pynchon Cole's code sections that don't reflect much reality anymore.

618 and 620.

Just a question.

618.

This is the number received.

So you don't want to... We're not generally here when the ballots are received.

after printing.

Number to order is a different thing.

623.

I'm not even sure what it means that we should keep the ballot containers for use in each precinct, but since I don't know what it is, I don't want to be responsible for it.

If we were to do such a thing, I would definitely want the electoral board involved in that, so I would make that an EB slash GR.

Down in 637, there's a typo.

This is on me.

The second line where it says, matchies at the polling places should be machines.

IPN 639.

This is certainly something that in practice the electoral board's there handing out this stuff, but I don't have a problem with that being a shared responsibility.

I would like for 641 to fall squarely on the general registrar's shoulders for responsibility, because we generally don't have anything to do with actually physically providing sample ballots.

All right.

I think we're saying, Jim, 639, we actually do have a few precincts.

How many is there?

Oh, well, I assume that keys meant keys to the machines, not keys to the buildings.

I assume that's what's in 39.

I abstracted the code section so I can't say precisely verbatim what it is.

I'd have to look it up and regardless if it's a shared responsibility problem.

Moving on to the next page, page five.

I'm on page five.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes.

This is page five of this part of the minutes, but the minute of the packet.

But the packet was numbered from page one.

Page one was the actual agenda.

So sorry.

Yes.

Your page six, my page five.

649.B.

I just want to note that so far, this is not a requirement here.

So to the extent that it becomes necessary, I think it will end up being a joint responsibility.

But it is not actually necessary in our jurisdiction.

That is all.

Oh, no, that's not all.

Sorry.

659.G, 2 thirds of the way down.

That doesn't have to be a shared responsibility.

The general registrar should specify where the keys come back to.

And 668.B, same thing.

And 671.A,

I think there's a typo, I should have had the word hat for GR's office on day of election.

And it's absolutely, we want the general registrar to be there, but it's absolutely the electoral board's responsibility to do that.

Cross out GR.

Cross out GR.

Excellent.

That's what I have.

I have both, yeah.

So we're changing that to EB?

Yes, I would take that to be EB.

671C.

671C has to be a joint, because you report them.

just for the avoidance of doubts, 71.2.B would be a combined responsibility as well.

Okay, moving on to my page six, your page seven.

Yay.

The last page.

Almost.

I found that these printed differently.

Those are the ones on the screen.

711.

That's interesting, because I only found 711.

They totally gave you our responsibility.

And that's what I'm recommending that we do with that, delegate it to the general registrar.

and the same thing.

No, please do move on it.

711.1.B, sending the written explanation of a reason for rejection of absentee ballot to the voter within 90 days.

I'd like to delegate that to the GR.

That was the last change I had.

Any other changes that you made in here?

So I'd love to check and see.

Okay, okay.

Okay, can I check again too, Warren?

This was printed from the first thing you sent around.

So you're going to send out a final version?

Assuming that we have importance on that, can we approve those as the list?

And if Jonell comes back with, no, no, there's something else we need to talk about, then we'll take it up at the next meeting.

And that provides what we do, but assuming that we're sitting in agreement.

You're making approval of this.

I am moving approval of the designation list of responsibilities on the electoral board to the general registrar.

But John is right.

Aye.

Alex, where are we on that?

We're almost complete with that.

Correct.

The ones that are working polls, and then I have a plan for the ones who are not working.

Questions or comments?

Checking that off.

Did we have, Jonell, I'm moving on to the LESS program requirements.

So we're all set.

Now, from my understanding, I think to give you

So I believe by August 28th, the electoral board has to send to the state on letterhead that we've approved the security, I'm not going to get the language right, but basically the security plan.

It was the same spreadsheet.

They have different tabs, and each task has a tab.

And then the last item under our old business here is review and disposition of old board materials in warehouse.

OK, can I just

The assignments that you mentioned earlier, I've had a lot of election officers come to me and tell me they were very pleased that they had been moved, that they were able to be moved to their home precinct where they moved.

All right.

Moving on.

New business.

Hang on.

Hang on a second.

No, yes, yes.

Let me know when you're ready.

Still recording.

Touche.

Early voting report.

Well, are we voting in person first?

We are doing really well.

The count is 10,000 as of yesterday, 10,529.

And I will say that on the sheet here, we understand that it's one off, but we found where we ended up being one off by counting the slips.

There was on March the 20th, there was one fewer slip and it's actually counted.

We actually counted them.

So I'm going to, that's why I had this in here today.

Well, I look forward to the explanation in the statement of results.

Yes.

It needs to be in there.

So a couple of other things about early voting in person, I looked at the latest

cumulative totals, and I've compared it to the 24th day, which was yesterday, the 24th day of early voting to the 24th day of early voting in November.

So, yes, the governor's race.

And so that total was 10,220.

And the average for early voting, they averaged 539 a day for all 34 days of early voting.

And so our average is 400 and

It's actually just down the circle.

More in the last two weeks.

Yes, exactly.

So we're right now, we're actually on target to... We're actually a little bit ahead of what we're looking for in elections.

However, I still have heard hardly any

What do you remember?

No, no, I've worked early voting quite a bit and we were having some issues when we only had two poll pads.

Since you moved to three poll pads, it's been very smooth as far as I can see.

The only time we had any kind of significant lines is when we have a bus with 20 people come in at the same time and they all came in here and then we had a 20 person line, but it got cleaned out very quickly.

So it's gone very, very well from my perspective as a CEO.

Not to discuss it now, but we'll start looking at what room we're using for August 4th primaries, which we do not know what primary.

Yes, yes.

I've been working with facilities on this, and they want us to use Room A.

In fact, they've already booked it.

They've booked it for the primary, and they booked it for November.

Here's the reason.

because it makes everything else more predictable.

We're taking up one room and it's always that room.

So the rest of the buildings know that, oh, it's election time.

You know, voter reg has that room.

And so that these two rooms will be open.

And so it's a lot easier for them to schedule.

And they did a lot of work to actually move, work with other groups to move them out.

Yeah, facilities, the support was outstanding and they worked with the other groups.

They did all the work for us and then got them to move so that we could have room A for August and November.

Marking this down as lesson number.

Yes, let me mention a couple of other things.

Facilities came to me with two issues.

Nothing bad.

It's the impact of our being here on the building and the climate in the building and in the circle.

So I'll talk about the curbside one first.

So what they asked us to do, what they said the problem was in the circle was there's too much traffic.

Sometimes there would be four cars to vote, but not just us, there were delivery,

um drivers and all that kind of stuff so they asked us if we could do this and I said okay so here's what they asked they said can you limit it to one to two cars in the circle and make sure they drive all the way around to the flags so it leaves this part open and then they gave us a sign um to write where the stripes begin the sign is out there now we started this last week the sign's out there now and it tells curbside voters to stop here

and Wade to be directed.

It's very visible, it's big, it's working.

I've asked the election officials over several days how it was working.

They said it was going really well.

So that's the process that we're doing.

And the other reason is, is that those intake grates that are over here, when there's a lot of cars there, that exhaust goes right up into the building.

And so, yeah.

So the stop here is right before you get to the circle?

And the questions were, I worked with Captain Martin on this.

I work with Bruce in facilities.

I work with Trevor Howard.

We're all involved in this discussion.

And so I said, well, you know, the traffic's going to back up there.

They said, we know.

It's OK.

So people can still get out if they need to.

And what helps us is that our curbside people are very efficient.

So the people aren't there for very long.

So the traffic moves very well.

So that's the one, the first is just with everything.

So it's been going well.

The second is- Curbside has really increased over the last two or three years.

It seems to me to be even more than when we were in COVID when anybody could do curbside.

Earlier this week, the number was 283.

That was earlier this week.

So the other adjustment that they asked us to make was just yesterday.

They had noticed, I'm curious how they tracked this, that our election officials were actually pushing the ADA door openers for every voter.

that and so they were concerned about it because of the wear and tear.

We voted 10,000 people.

Even if you cut it in half, that's 5,000 pushes.

And so they asked that the election officials not push the button for people, let people push it on them.

So they talked about the wear and tear on that equipment.

He said it was very expensive, but also the door stays open.

And so it brings in the weather.

Solenoid?

That's every pale and hearty person attempting to vote.

Exactly.

So- It's okay if we push it for grandma and her walker.

Yes, right.

One more thing about early voting, I'd like to talk about CAP.

No, actually we've received 4,329 because some of those are undeliverable.

No, they came back to us.

They came back, yeah.

They've asked how many supposed real ballots came back.

It's 4,160, but that's as of yesterday, so that changes every day.

Has CAP processed any of them?

They have processed.

just, it's just over a thousand, but they know what this number is.

Ballot room.

So yeah, so that's going well.

One other thing I do want to mention is I compared the precincts that have the higher number of check-ins in person, and for CAP, all of them in CAP are the same numbers.

So you're saying male ends are equivalent to early end persons?

It may have bearing because in those mail, that's including Dropbox.

I'd have to go look.

We've got some tax payments, some checks, big money that don't belong here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, so these are just the numbers that report each electoral board meeting.

I will mention something about that.

You can see we have a negative net 89 in March, but I went and I looked back at how many people we registered in March.

and they've moved a good chunk of our actives to inactive.

It is.

It's the number that we registered.

Is that easily added to the chart here?

Sure.

And how many did we register in March?

Lori.

Question that other people might be thinking too.

What happened?

Why did we have 283 deaths in one month?

I mean, obviously that's not how many people died in that month.

Why deceased February 283 and it's 2-1-11?

Like, did they just do that annually?

So that's January, February, pretty much Cismont.

No, December was one.

And November was 11 and then we jumped to

So they give you that information?

Yeah.

I will mention that back when I was in the field of demography and got the monthly mortality and morbidity reports, January and February always were a spike.

I pull all the names that are connected within them.

Make sure, you know, it just has a check.

Any other questions for Jonell on early voting?

OK.

This next item is, first off, let's look at the original schedule for training and then for testing.

Testing is a little clearer conversation.

For training, we have same-day registration training tomorrow, three sessions.

and then you're okay with doing this.

I think I am, particularly now that you've said it to me again.

No, it shouldn't be any trouble.

And the new officer election training is scheduled for, I just don't remember off the top of my head.

Wednesday, April 15th at six o'clock.

We start off because we do have people that are actually new to Virginia.

We start off kind of giving an org chart of how election administration works from the state election commissioner down to our election officials.

Albemarle County works with the Magisterial District, precincts and all that.

And then we go through, it reminds me, using the term, the Stations of the Cross, which is a description of, okay, this is what, this is what a whole place ideally looks like.

We start off with a greeter, and this is what the greeter does.

And then we move to the check-in person, the check-in person.

And we go through all of those.

We may want to list those up.

and then we have a mock election that we have much fun with.

We take them to the election room where everything is set up and then we have scenarios.

First one is just a regular voter.

We pick a volunteer and have them go through.

and then we go through scenarios where we are the actors and at some point we do something wrong.

And I ring a bell, I'm the director producer of the rock collection.

I ring a bell, say, okay, what was wrong there?

We have four or five scenarios.

You try not to make it too tough to see what was wrong.

But like the first one is always voter comes up,

and the check-in person says, can you state your name?

Jim Heilman.

And do you still live at 2638 Penney Lane?

They tell you.

Where's your ID?

If you don't have a driver's license, go home.

So I will shortly be updating those mock election scenarios.

maybe assigning people to do it.

We need a couple staff people in there, and then the three of us.

So I'll send those out.

You sent out the training deck, didn't you?

If not, I'll send it again.

I think we had even, I think we had,

Let me have a look at splitting up the slides and I'll make a suggestion when I send it out.

Okay.

She said one thing to report.

We had our pull pad training on Monday.

That was a huge success and 45 new people and mix of some returners trained in really well.

So

They had 45 people total.

You can't turn out in the middle of it.

Yeah, 20 many come at six o'clock?

Nine people.

Okay.

We have 15, 20, 11 people.

Good.

I have one more thing for training.

Working on this template.

Oh!

This, I couldn't get the...

Fairfax was terrific in sending us all of their actual illustrations and all of that.

But I wasn't able to work with their vendor.

I couldn't quite get it done.

So I switched to a local vendor.

And so we started off with this.

Hiding in here is the SDR envelope.

It's here.

It goes actually this way.

And then we ended up with this.

And so I'll pass this around.

And there's one modification that I would make.

I would have them do an outline.

around these to make them pop out a little, like maybe an orange, something that's going to be brighter, but not, but small, thin.

And the idea is that the voter doesn't get this.

The voter fills it out.

Then the EO just puts it on here.

This is two separate pieces, you know, and I just clicked them together so you can see it.

and then the EO goes through and you can see when you get, when you see it, you can see pretty clearly where this information is.

One thing I wanted to- You did it for both sides.

Oh yeah, both sides.

And I want to preference that.

The reason, like the first one, we just have it open on yes, because if it's a no, you're out.

I mean, it's over, you know, so- You can see through.

Yeah, I would get university, half a dozen.

They may not use them all this election.

A hundred sounds good.

You'll have to hold it on it.

All right, the last thing I have under this topic was testing.

We did LNA earlier this week on the DS300s and the express votes.

And we don't have full pads on Sunday, but I have block pad L and A listed on the 17th.

Well, I didn't know exactly why I had that, but for some reason I had it.

We're talking about this.

We have it on the 19th.

Yes, okay.

That would be the Sunday?

Sunday.

Warehouse?

Yeah.

Where do you have to do the inspections?

Oh, on the 14th you want page inspection?

Yes, please.

Anyway.

I can share this also with you, Jim.

I've got that on the 13th.

Is that on the 14th also?

I think we moved it.

We moved the page checks for the 4th to the 14th.

OK. Now it's on my calendar.

So back to the question of testing.

With regard to the pole pads, last November, we put the pole pads through a logic and accuracy test process, tested all the machines, and this was the second election they had been used in.

It took a long time, and all of those machines are still running exactly the same software they were running on exactly the same operating system they had.

which would make me question the necessity of doing that.

But beyond that, in digging into the code and in talking to people at Viva, I find that it is not commonly done that people would run poll books or poll pads.

And not required.

LNA testing.

And that was the digging into the code part.

In the code, Section 101 says it defines what a voting system is.

625.2 makes it clear that your voting systems are not allowed to have any wireless communication and yet we know that all the electronic pull pads that are in use use wireless communication so they don't meet the definition of a voting system and they use wireless communication and they're approved by the state for that so therefore I would conclude that they are not voting systems

Now, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't test them before we send them out to the polling places.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't allow observers to do that, to observe that process.

What I'm proposing is that we less rigorously test them.

I don't need to test the functionality of every machine.

I want to make sure every machine is properly configured with the data that it should have and it connects to the other devices that it should connect with.

And so I would like to limit the testing of the poll pads that we're going to have this time.

I was thinking about that, and I'll try to remember how.

Last November, I dealt with the green cases and pulling out the printers and checking the printers, but I don't remember.

I mean, I had to have a pole pad in order to have the printer turned on.

I remember, just can't remember how I did it.

one pole pair per precinct just so we know that one I intend to check them all to make sure they all connect and they're all properly configured but as far as in terms of functionality

They're all running the same software.

They've been running since the last time we looked at that.

But I think for the future, when we update the software, upgrade the operating system, then I'd agree with you.

Probably one machine per precinct to make sure it's functioning correctly.

And then test them all for configuration.

By configuration, I mean correct data and they connect to each other.

What is the time difference as far as, I mean I'm asking, what's the advantage?

I believe the work that we would be doing would be of no benefit.

since the software of this operating system on this hardware has been tested before.

So I don't see the benefit and I do see the time crunch.

And it's at a time when we have a limited amount of time.

I don't remember how many hours we spent Sunday in November.

I don't remember either.

I do.

I don't remember what time we started, whether it was nine or 10 or whatever it was, but it was Sunday and we tested all of them.

We had, we ran them through the, we had, I think somebody produced a checklist.

I don't know the Bucky, I think Bucky did it.

And we did, you know, every, hopefully all the conceivable ways a voter could present.

Did they just tell you their name?

Did they show you their driver's license?

Did they show, I mean, we went through a whole bunch of different,

This is what we test.

And we all work.

And then we had, I think the, you know, the old guy was here.

I'm,

in favor of that.

It's configuration testing and pull pads.

Some software is the same as before.

Well, question and comment.

Poll pads have to be used for cap and pre-processing because they have to check in the balance to make sure.

And cap and pre-processing had scheduled a Wednesday, Friday, two weeks ago, I guess, was their first, it would be their first two days.

And they got in the first day and the poll pads

So that's not the situation we ought to be in.

So that was my motion.

Those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Very good.

That's the plan.

Next item was election night planning and board and staff assignments.

I'm not proposing to assign staff, just suggesting where we might need some.

But I had included a note in the packet here

Really, after the polls close and things have gone as they normally do, then we've got two sets of parallel activities going on.

In Registrar's Office, they're getting results called in, and hopefully that all happens in a relatively short period of time.

Nobody has any difficulties, but there's an hour and a half or two hours where that goes on.

Maybe less.

It's a simple election, so let's hope for less.

and in the warehouse, we're receiving back the materials that we had issued on the previous Monday from the chiefs with all their envelopes completed and everything else and the voted ballots and the unvoted ballots and everything labeled and boxed and sealed.

All that's come back.

There are a lot of things that have to be done.

This seemed like a good opportunity to iron out what we're doing.

There is an activity that Jim has been involved in that I've never seen in the registrar's office

where he's basically putting a calibrated eyeball on what's coming in to make sure, if I understand correctly, to make sure it just passes a sniff test that we've captured things that make sense.

So we can get back to polling places before they pack up and leave if things need to be corrected or we didn't get something correct from them as it's going.

So we are also loading these data into the elect system for general consumption.

and I think it would behoove us for someone else to learn how to do that before Jim's term expires.

This one will be mighty simple.

Yeah, should be.

Yes, no.

Should be.

Under vote, over vote.

Doesn't mean the concept can't be taught at that time.

And then down in the warehouse,

I've kind of laid out how I see things coming back.

It's not a one-man job, so we'll be needing several people to help with the various stations.

Where the poll pads are coming back, they need to be checked in, and then we need to upload the voter credits for all of those.

And that takes some time.

Your understanding did not go so smoothly last November.

Actually, that process seemed to go OK.

I think it had been a problem in the summer, but in November I think it went well.

We weren't able to process the pole pads as fast as the chiefs brought them back early on, but before we were all done for the night, we'd easily gotten through all of them.

Again, hope not to be there that long this time.

But we'll need folks who can help chiefs bring in stuff from cars.

We'll need folks to be at each of these stations working.

And when you guys get finished up in the main office, you can come down and help.

And I normally, late enough, particularly waiting for camp,

to not get back there, that I would like to try to get back there at this time.

You got back there last time.

Yeah, 12, 1215.

I'd like to try to get back there and help earlier.

Cap, because being Cap is not going to be.

We'll get back there.

So we have Tyler coming for intellect.

I'm gonna put that up to you and Alex, because it's really uploading the voter credits.

It might be handy to have two people doing that process.

Maybe as a backup for Alex, maybe that's something that in the future, you can have someone else from your office helping to do that.

But as you see, it's a bursty thing.

I mean.

And then for the, we've put together our election packet already.

The results sheet is on the agenda.

Next item.

Actually, it's the last item under new business, but we're almost there.

So, does this approach seem like a good approach?

Yes.

I don't think we need to vote on this.

Yeah.

But I would ask that the registrar take this, look at it, and consider how we're going to staff, particularly the warehouse side of this.

Krista, if you're lucky.

Yes.

I hope that's how we're turning and just trying to find like a faster way with that.

And that's something that I was trying

figure out before this election happened, but just a lot of nooks and crannies and everything.

The poll workers on election night, instead of putting it back into the case, we can find like a bag or something, because I've seen it.

They can put it in like a safety kind of bag, their pads.

And so that pad comes back with them, with the cases being empty.

So the cases can be like, for instance, we have somebody who's delivering IV stuff.

I know what you're saying.

I have no material objection.

They just, they need to be controlled.

They need to be safe when the chief slams on his brakes not to hit a deer and fly from his front seat onto the floor.

In those heavy duty green cases, I know they're safe.

When a polling place comes in, do you need to separately download voter credits from each poll pad?

Or does every poll pad have all of the voter credits from that polling place?

So each one needs to be separate.

So given that, you really can't lose any of them.

I would say leave them in the green boxes, you know, the big transport cases.

but maybe there's an extra staff person there who does nothing but shuck the poll pads out of the box when they come in and so the person who's getting the voter credits can be solely focused on that.

I'm just trying to find a faster system because again you have to understand.

Yeah just real quick question what

I have a question about that.

Is it different?

Several EOs have asked me or told me that the check-ins on election day, you have to add them up across poll pads.

There is a summary report that we print out of the pole pads at the end of the day that adds them up for you.

It will, but when you look at, but then, but I think the ELs are not aware of that.

They're not, because we've done a lot of sort of training and giving people knowledge about the difference between the check-ins and how to find them in the summary report versus, there's another reports, what is it?

Yeah, there's another report there, status report.

It's their summary report and there's a status report.

And so, but they're not aware that

that really that the pole pads are synced because we actually did a test where we had, it was like 9.30 in the morning and everybody had 23 on their pole pad.

We didn't check in for, I mean, 80 people at that time.

We had only checked in 23.

So all of the pole pads said 23, but they were adding, thinking,

Not to manually add things.

This is coming up several times.

What you said is exactly right, Ed, early birdie.

Each pulpit is reporting exactly the same number, and it's the total.

On election day, the instructions say you have to hand them up.

So on election day, are they going to be synced such that every poll pad is going to have the same number, which is the total?

Do you understand what I'm saying?

I understand what you're saying.

And I'm not sure I agree with what the instructions say, because I can remember going to these things in printing summary reports to find out

And I've talked to Sherry and a bunch of other people who said the instructions are not correct.

So I'm trying to figure out on election day, will it be like it is today where when you look at the individual poll pads, this one will have 460, that one will have 460, that one will have 460.

Or will they have to add them up?

Let's not try to resolve this technical question here.

Let's have you guys resolve the question.

and whatever we need to properly instruct people on, we'll put that in the last minute instructions so that we can get that to all the polling places, okay?

Moving on, election day fair routes.

Okay, I'm tired of taking route three.

Mr.

Chair, I propose that you assign roots.

I did that for too many years.

Don't care to do it again.

Just so all of our members have the same information, we want to make sure every polling place is visited at least once.

So we have routes that have different polling places in them.

Each member has a route that they'll follow.

But you can go to whatever other polling places you want to go to during the day that you think would be good places to visit.

It's always nice to check in on new chiefs because, you know,

and everybody wants to check in on Slaughter Rec Center.

Ask me this morning, are you going to come out again to Sign Hill ever?

I haven't been out there in a long time.

Well, that and 20 bucks could get you Route 2, so just...

I was hoping to have one to show you all, but can't seem to find unless you know where an old call-in sheet might be hanging around.

Oh, now?

So call-in sheet is what

The staff is using it.

The people are calling in the results.

And it's very straightforward.

Of course, when you have lots of candidates, it's rather long and there has to be a specific one for each polling place, but depending on their candidates, this election, one size fits all.

And the questions are, what's your total voting?

What's your vote for this candidate?

What's your vote for that candidate?

What's your vote for this candidate?

And then your provisionals.

How many reason one provisionals?

How many reason three provisionals?

You get a reward under votes and over votes too.

Yes, under votes and over votes.

Really straightforward.

But it's amazing to me because I'm sitting there hearing the calling in and taking some of them myself, how befuddled

So many of our people get, oh, wait a minute.

I don't have that figure.

So my only suggestion was if, and sometimes the call-in sheets are really a last minute production during election day.

Oh yeah, and that's one of the questions.

Has everyone signed both copies of the statement of results?

of course we get them back with that not having happened but I thought I don't understand why they get befuddled other than the fact that they're brain dead but I thought just if we have the call-in sheets ready stick in a copy in their binder saying this is what we're going to be asking you be ready for it might save them because some of them have to hang up and call us back again because they don't have total voting figure or something like that

We've got available for this election some statement of results training that we announced to the chiefs.

And so hopefully they'll have someone on their team or themselves look at that.

And it really drives home the point of make sure you've completed all this before you call in.

And the call in process is a great way to discharge your responsibility to announce the results.

Mr. Chairman, Jeff's idea of having a blank that she fills out before they call in really would be helpful.

And it also would be interesting, hopefully the same, if they turned in that sheet that they had at the polling place and you compare it with what they actually

My personal experience with data collection has informed me over the years that any time I ask someone to report the same information in two places, I have asked them to put it down differently in one of those two places.

And so we try very hard not to ask someone their date of birth and their age because they won't agree.

and I'm never sure why that was but I'm worried about someone transcribing the statement of results is the record, that's what I want them reading from when they call in.

I'm willing to let it go this time, it's not without some trepidation.

Yeah, just a comment.

Whoa.

Never.

That's the call-in process.

It's the great, you know, everyone be quiet, listen to what I'm doing.

It's not done.

The EOs hear it, or anyone hears it.

It's in the SOR training.

Oh, I was just going to suggest if you don't want them to fill it out that you merely want them to look at it

Maybe you put a square, an X through thing, like not to.

That's why I and the ghetto across the board.

Do not complete.

That's a very reasonable idea.

It doesn't mean they'll follow that instruction.

It's late in the day, and they're understandably brain dead.

No, but you're amenable to.

Shall I record this trepidation?

Sure, sure.

Do not complete the watermarker.

All right, that's gotten us through the new business.

Are there any other items that we need to take up?

Question about, so university, you had asked for a map, a detailed map, just of where it is or

We have had that map and we have used it before to speak.

Now, I think it may have been

One that we were using may have been the latest redistricting.

The latest redistricting, the only change in University Precinct was it added about 50 people down at the bottom of it.

And I don't know whether that's on that map or not, but the GIS people should be able to.

because I put in, I did put in a request, you know, to, it's possible to do this, but I wanted to clarify what you were looking for because we really got some great information from Lori, sent us excellent information where we now have the addresses of all the dorms and what you, what we had talked about earlier, we were asking for the numbers within the dorms so that if somebody gives a number outside that range, we know that something's, you know, it's a flag, something's wrong there.

So, and so we're putting together,

Maybe on the Charlottesville City poster part, if you're in this column, go someplace else in red, you know, so that's an alert to them.

Okay.

Anything else?

Yeah, I just had a request.

In my report after the last election, I mentioned that there was still some confusion about from chiefs on observers in the precinct.

And I won't go over that.

But we, again, had some confusion during early voting about, wait, can two people

Talk to each other if they're observing.

There just seems to be a lot of still some kind of what I would call elementary confusion about how many observers are allowed to be there, what we're allowed, are we allowed to ask for the count?

I've had to talk to Jenelle about that because some election officer says, well, I'm not allowed to give it to you.

I can only get it off the machine, all kinds of weird things.

So if during your training, if you had an opportunity to just talk about just the basics of

of what observers are allowed, you know, how many are allowed to be there.

And I try and train my people to say, no, we're allowed to have one for poll book.

Emphasize that part.

Just to tag onto that, Mr. Sharon, the poll observers, the authorized representatives are allowed to walk up to the optical scan and look at what public count is.

Slick the number, it's right there.

Yeah.

Can I add one more comment on that one?

I've struggled with this whole thing with observers.

It is handled very differently depending on the chief.

And it should not be.

It should not be.

And I like to ask a question.

And the question is, in the book it says, the observer, if he has a question, he should go to the chief or assistant chief.

And I think it also says, and you're not supposed to talk to any of the other election officers.

I don't know if that's true or not, because if you're not interrupting the process, I've never seen any issue with an observer saying something to one of the other election officers.

It happens in some cases with chiefs, and in some cases, the chief comes over and says, you may not talk to anyone, no one there except me.

It's not handled consistently.

The problem is it runs up against human nature.

I think the problem we have is we have some chiefs who have literally called out publicly

or someone having a conversation with...

Sometimes initiated by the EO.

The EO is talking to me and I'm... And we just need to clarify that because EO's people are really upset when they get called down for having a comment, a slight comment with an observer.

And in other places, people talk all the time.

I mean, I talk to you, you know?

Sure.

And I don't see any harm in that as long as you're not interfering with the process of elections.

And I think we need to somehow get that communicated.

And you're not talking to voters.

I agree.

Yeah.

I think it's worth adding to our last minute instructions.

Just a clarification on this point.

social comments are one thing, issues with the election are another.

That's what I tell them.

And communications with regard to the election or anything that might interfere with an officer's duties, those are things that need to go to the chief.

Hi, how you doing?

Nice to see you last Saturday.

As long as you're not interfering, it's not a problem.

That's exactly what I advise my observers is

their EOs are there to do a job and you're not to distract them and interfere and you're not to give, ask them any questions about the election, you go to the chief.

If you have any issue, you go to the chief or the assistant chief.

But to say, good morning and it's nice to see you reading.

I mean, that's.

Okay.

Water precinct.

Staffing, I know that it's a problem for this election.

Nobody's expecting an election on April.