Electoral Board Meeting   7/9/2026

Okay, folks, that's the sound of me turning on the recording light.

Let's again wave at the camera.

Welcome, everyone, to the fall of the meeting, and talking the recording in the future, due to the July 9th Albemarle County Electoral Board meeting.

We have a quorum here.

Before we get started, I'd ask my

colleagues, take a look at the final agenda or the agenda and see if we can approve it.

I note one item on the agenda that is a mistake in item number five, it says approve the minutes of the 6-10-2026 meeting.

And of course we had a meeting on 6-11, not 6-10.

So that's a mistake.

Okay.

We'll take this agenda as approved.

Brief announcements from the board and registrar.

where are my proofs?

I think we need to make that from you guys.

All right.

Well, then we'll go to the public comment portion of our call.

Anyone in the room or on Zoom has something they'd like to say.

I see Rick Garnett.

Just two quick questions, and you might answer them later.

I want to make sure I get them in.

We have a meeting where we will... And then the other one is, since it's summertime, have the schools been notified to be prepared for Monday and Tuesday?

Yes, they've been contacted by Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday because we pick up on Wednesday.

If you need to contact, talk to me afterwards, I can get up to you.

Historically, it's usually the same folks that you talk to in the summertime as does during the year.

So if you're having a hard time finding somebody, please let the registrar know.

All right.

Because I was waiting for a call to my doctor's office.

Seeing no other hands.

Oh, you had your hand.

I thought you were reaching your head.

Go ahead.

That's the current question.

We'll round out your open hires for regular full-time staff.

Anything?

All right.

Go to approving the minutes, but our speaker is out of the room.

Perhaps we could move on to a moment just to the accounting

So those particular reports are not available to us right now.

I spoke to my budget analyst and she said that

that they want better reports coming out of the financial system, but it's not possible right now.

I asked her about the timeframe, about when they would be able to get the kind of reports that all of us are looking for.

She said about six months.

today to look over.

You're going to send that to us.

I would just say the high points you'll see, there's not much change in what you do.

The biggest change is in...

So the biggest challenge is in furniture and equipment because we're reorganizing the office to have better use of our office space.

We'll do the same thing for the warehouse.

OK. Is that response to a question?

We slipped over a few minutes and went on to the first whole business item.

Yes, it just happened.

I thought it was $70,000.

I saw the figure of $70,000.

Yeah, but just looking at it, I'm sorry.

That's a memory.

It was more money than I thought we would get.

That was the net of what my takeaway is.

Because the city of Suffolk, it also has 30 precincts, roughly the same

Yeah, yeah, and $240,000 just around there in expenses.

And so what we turned in, now that I'm speaking about this, I think Jim is correct, we turned in

We didn't turn in the full amount because we could not fully document the full amount.

So we only turned in, we only requested the amount that we could fully document and successfully survive an audit.

So, and then I think we got about half of that.

I think Jim's right, but I'll give you the number.

So I think Jim's right.

The number was about 74,000.

I think I removed the spelling.

Why are you looking at this?

Let's go back to the minute.

Any substantive feedback on the draft minutes from 611?

I didn't think you'd send them to me.

We have, it's gonna be really quick, Jim.

And I guess, not that you, because there's two that are always kind of little,

How can you be indifferent to that being Slaughter-Wreck Centre?

Yes, Richard did talk, so yes, the only one that he had something available as of yesterday was Keswick.

We haven't heard back from them in terms of being available for the election.

Cernan, did you respond to me?

I'm talking about the church.

Oh, okay, okay, okay.

Do I need to contact the password?

We just need to make sure that they're aware and on board.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Thanks, guys.

It's all cool, great.

I'll open the third.

When you send out the roster, it would be helpful if, in that note, you put in the contact information for the location so we don't have to individually contact you.

The chiefs have that already, but it's summertime, so not all the regular chiefs are the regular chiefs for this election, so sending it out will make sure everyone has a copy of it, and it's only going to the chiefs and assistant chiefs, so there's no harm in distributing the information.

There may have been changes, you know, you may have a different person now, so.

Yes, there are a few chiefs and assistant chiefs who aren't available for this election, so it's good to shuffle cards.

Any else on the election?

When I come under new business there, but

Yes.

It's at the

McIntire, I'm sorry.

McIntire just stayed in my mind.

Yes.

Sixteen.

Sixteen.

That's the only time my clock knows to go to meetings too in the evening, so.

I'm back to that when we have paper copies.

The next item is on the half-day shifts topic.

I had to reach out to the Republican and Democratic sides of the aisle just to get feedback, as these folks are not only under the law, but also for providing us lists of EOs, to get their input on the idea.

I'll summarize very briefly.

Really, though, reach out.

The suspicion is, yes, there might be more people available working half days.

And it might be well considered to run that on a trial basis before we floated everywhere.

So no change in that.

And we're not going to make any change right now until we finish getting capped up.

But if you want to give that input on the topic, that's all.

All right.

Speaking of reaching out, I am told that the Democratic Party Chair has resigned.

It seems they are supposed to vote.

Well, that's very much our business to notify for various things we have to notify the party chair for.

Anything else on the whole business?

Move on.

New business, a board member route where we're going to go on election day.

I sent you guys just a minute ago a copy of this.

Last time, let's see here, I think I was doing Route 1, which I would like to do again.

I did Route 2.

I did Route 2 and Valerie had Route 3.

I'm going to stay with where we were.

And of course then go wherever the heck else you want to go too, but let's make sure everybody gets at least one visit during the day.

Okay.

I'm proposing that we add an electoral board meeting as we did for the last election to convene

immediately after we finished receiving materials for the election on the 4th, August 4th, so probably the 9, 930 range at night.

And the sole purpose of that is to do inventory of the provisional envelopes that we have received by precinct so that we can, once we have taken that inventory, deliver those envelopes to the registrar so that the staff and the office can be processing those in the morning.

I'm not probably going to be really up against the deadline for this election like we will be in November, like we were in April.

It seems like the right practice to deliver that material to the registrar's office.

I don't want to do that until we've inventoried it.

And that meeting, again, not going to be an issue for this election, but for any longer than an hour, because it's a long day.

And whatever we get done in an hour's time is what we give to the registrar.

And if we need to do more the next day, we just do that the next day.

But that way, the registrar's office has plenty of turf to work on first thing in the morning.

and then obviously we have the provisional ballot meeting at the campus that will run from August 5th all the way up until 5 p.m. on the 14th.

but meeting at the campus that will run from August 5th all the way up until 5 p.m. on the 14th. Note that date being Friday, Friday, November. It will sound like having extended our time. Thank you very much.

10 days after the election, as opposed to for everything now.

We didn't really spend our time, just took away the requirement that some law enforcement officer come get us if we hadn't sent it in.

But as of July, that lot has changed at all.

I'm just being cagey here.

I really hope we don't need all of that common misconception.

I would be delighted to be reporting our results much sooner than that.

Finalizing our results.

The next item on the agenda is something I had distributed in the packet with the agenda, and it's about proposed policy on the electoral board meeting of my t-shirt that is in polling places.

The state and its cultural wisdom has decided that on election day, we must wear this state-issued ID that would be impossible for anyone to duplicate.

I wish I might make fun of all of that, but the concept of having an ID badge on an electoral board member in a polling place makes good sense.

I think historically we have always worn badges in polling places.

Our officers of election are required to limit the people who come into polling places to only those authorized to be here.

Board members are authorized to be here.

Not all officers of election know who we are.

We are legends in our own mind, but not necessarily in theirs.

And so I would like to have a policy that whenever we're in a polling place, and that would include early voting too, that we're wearing an ID badge of some kind.

I have a question for Andrea.

Yes, we wear an ID badge.

A state-issued ID badge.

I put both of mine on the same page.

On one side it's one badge, on one side it's the other badge.

Anyway, so I was proposing this as a policy for the board.

That would be our expectation.

My policy does not have a financial penalty.

It does and states only applies on election day.

This would apply during the 45 days of early voting too.

It does not say that.

We have a perfectly good county ID badge, which when we're in county facilities, is far more sensitive to Greenberry.

But you're saying that when we are in a fulling place, we must have on the state ID badge, even if we have on our badge.

Yes.

Yes.

And that's not in my policy.

That's in the code.

OK.

I'm making a motion.

I'm moving to approve this, but it's not my policy.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Carried.

Next item.

We started getting calls at the end of the meeting.

the envelope.

So after the first calls it was the same precinct.

So we started recording whoever called in the names and then sent out the envelopes to those folks.

So it blossomed up to about, right now it's at 20 people.

There are gaps in there.

We got 16 kind of steady.

Then there was like four or five days gap and then we got another two and then another three.

So what we decided to do, we did several things.

So as people called in, we made sure that we sent them at the envelope.

When we followed up with a call from them,

and David Baker to actually make on it.

So of the 20 people that called in for the envelope, 14 have gotten it.

And there's four that we've said yes to see that they have responded to it, 14 have received their bill.

So also what we did was what should have been done in the first place.

We calculated the number of people who had not already voted, had not already called in for the envelope,

and we sent those to the entire precinct.

So for the Democratic primary and the Republican primary.

So that was about 159 extra, the envelopes that we sent out.

So that's how we resolved it.

So now one other portion of that, that was the initial mitigation that we did.

The ongoing mitigation is this.

We still, if anybody calls in saying they haven't got to be an envelope, we send it to them immediately.

That's where it is.

No, it's only been Pantops.

So what we did was if I get a ballot with no B envelope from Pantops, what we've done is we've gotten one so far.

We call the voter and we ask them for the information.

Separately, they can email it to us, which is what we prefer because it's very quick.

They can come in and bring it to us if they want to.

One person called, the one that was cured, I got his ballot, I called him, he called me back the next day and said, oh, by the way, I got the beat envelope.

After, exactly.

So what I had him do was fill out the beat envelope, take a picture of it, send it to me, email it to me.

took the photo, put it on his ballot.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And so that's what we will do for anybody from Pantops that calls.

We send the envelope, if we get a ballot out of the envelope from them, that's the process.

They all go in process.

Because we know that was our error.

In essence, that makes or breaks your ballot.

We understand that.

And so we've gone to great lengths to sort this out.

We've gone to great lengths to respond to any voter.

We had one of the voters that called in.

She came in to talk to me.

And she wanted to be on groups.

We gave them like tours.

So we have our internal process.

We've made two adjustments to our internal process to keep that from happening again.

I understand that you're treating this as if it's a cure because you're calling and you can cure on the phone for inaccurate or missing information but a signature is material information.

You can't cure a signature over the phone.

We actually can do that.

Well, that's what I'm asking you.

How can you decide the form?

So it's, I have a picture.

When you have to be on the look, the signer is interested in the picture.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

Yes, and so it's signed.

So we know all the information has to be.

So we're making sure that it does.

We can't skip that process.

The other question was, everything goes through CAP.

We're doing this before it goes through CAP.

It happens to be part of the cure process.

I have a question.

Have you talked to anybody in Pantops?

who in the initial mailing did get to be on the link, or you think that all the ones going to Pantops left beyond the link?

Next.

So what I have is also is the returned album of so far from Pantops.

We have received 26 albums from Pantops, 25 were in the album included.

No, this is the first mailing because of the timing that came in.

This day, yeah, correct.

That's correct.

We think that goes in.

And do we have any idea how this

We've had in the past problems where we sent the wrong ballots to folks several times in not too distant history.

And what I wanted to do was not as just an electoral board member, but as the electoral board.

I have your consent.

I'd like the registrar to immediately notify the board whenever there is an inkling of a systemic problem.

Not to let us find out later from other people that that was occurring, because we will get questions.

And if we say, no, there's no problem, then we're obviously not doing our job of monitoring it.

Yes, I agree.

Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest that was happening this time.

It's just we made some mistakes in the past, well-documented, usually on the evening news, and if I prefer not to find out what the reporter calls, what we think about that.

I don't think this would make the news.

No, I would just sit right here.

Anything else on this topic?

Okay, another item attached to the information you have here is the process that we used at the last election for processing provisional envelope.

The April election, of course, everything about that election was surprising to me, so I shouldn't say it was surprising.

But afterwards,

enhanced the process we were using in terms of how it was written up.

just with more words around it.

I do.

Yeah.

As we all know, in superficial value, there's only one party observer or per candidate of service.

So we can have a function of this.

First off, this process is going to change because there's going to be a provisional premature process coming in the future, but that doesn't apply to this election.

So when that arrives, then some of the timings and processing things will have to change again.

I think it would be easier to change a process we had written down than to change a process that we didn't.

So I'm sorry, sir.

So essentially this process begins on election night where we inventory the provisional ballots.

We inventory those as previously mentioned so we can hand them over to the registrar or staff.

The reason we do this is that we have up to six different reasons for provisional ballots, seven different reasons for provisional ballots, but only one, three, four, five, and one, two, one, three, four, five, and six, seven are used.

Don't ask me what happened to two.

and reason number one is same-day registration which is consistently about 85% of our ballots but the same-day registration ballots to be considered, the registrar's office has to enter those into computer system, the statewide computer system and make sure that those voters actually live here, that they haven't voted somewhere else, they didn't do a same-day registration somewhere else at an earlier time.

et cetera.

So all those factors need to be looked at before we can even consider the ballots.

So it's got to be processed for those.

And that's 85% of them.

And we're also on a tight time frame because the registrar's office historically has had until the close of business on Friday to get all that information into the state system.

And if you've got 100 original ballots, that's easy.

If you've got 1,800, that's some work.

So getting this in the registrar's hands quickly is important.

The second largest number of provisional ballots we have would be the reason for provisional ballots where someone has returned a ballot, an absentee ballot to the court, has been issued an absentee ballot and didn't have it to return but must have voted.

And so they've showed up in the polling place either they lost their ballot or they made paper airplanes out of it with their hands show and I don't know.

They wanna vote, they're entitled to vote.

People in the polling place don't know if they've mailed in a provisional ballot or not, so they go provisionally at the polling place, and that's the reason for the provisional ballot.

Then it comes to us, and of course we don't know if they've mailed one in either until the deadline for a mailed-in ballot has passed, which had been noon on Friday and is now moving to the

Five o'clock on Friday, yeah.

So we won't know until after we've gotten all the mail in and someone might, you know, after we got all the mail in on Friday whether or not those ballots have arrived.

And the registrar's office needs to check between what has arrived at the mail and what hasn't arrived at the mail before we can decide those.

So in our two largest cases of value,

And that's maybe 13 or 13 and a half percent of what's left.

So there's 98 and a half percent of our provisional ballots are covered by these two reasons.

All of them are processing by the registrar's office or the electoral board.

which makes sense to get this material in registrar's hands as quickly as possible.

And then once the registrar has gone through that, the rest of this process is not going to do after that.

Because the registrar will, in the case of the reason for ballots, these folks were already registered to vote, so we know they're registered to vote, we don't have to worry about those things.

In the case of the same-day registrations, we need to get feedback from the registrar

Is this person now registered to vote in Albemarle?

Because sometimes we get stingray registration where they have not registered to vote in Albemarle.

Did they register in the proper polling place?

Because if you don't register in the right polling place, we can't give you the right ballot.

Okay.

So, with that said, if this is accepted, then I propose we keep the same process.

And it changes as we find on the way that we need to find.

That's why I did send it out in advance.

Will the paper say aye?

Aye.

And of course, since it will be the board working on this, if we need to amend something, we're all present, we can amend it.

So it'll be during the provisional ballot meeting.

And as I said, we will undoubtedly make changes to this as we determine what the new process is going to be with the provisional ballot.

Sure.

There are a lot of unknowns there.

Speaking of unknowns, have we had any, this is off agenda, but I don't want to forget it again.

Yes, they sent some documentation late last week.

But in essence, we don't deny any felons.

in Paris, and then if the state goes through them, and then if they are on a particular, if they have committed a particular felony, then they cannot be in budget.

No, remove them.

That will remove them from the incomplete hopper and leave them.

You know, I'm not sure for getting that done.

They're doing it now.

It's happening now.

But you're running across possible developments all the time.

Ozzie.

You put them in the incomplete hopper.

Yes.

That's what I've seen.

Is that what you've seen?

That's what I've seen.

When they're gone.

Right.

Oh, I see.

You know, I need to read a little bit more from last week's guidance.

That part I'm not quite sure about.

So, but in the meantime, we don't deny anybody.

Well, that seems like something we need to

I mean, I know it's a new process, but I can- I'm not expecting a lot of provisional zoning.

Right.

And by that extension, same-day registration, but we will have some.

Right.

So this is an educational item that we'll have to take up for the chiefs and assistant chiefs.

Checking the felony box doesn't necessarily mean you're done, go home.

The same-day registration portion of the provisional envelope asks one of the questions, have you been convicted of a felony?

And then goes on, has this felony been, I don't know the exact word, has it been expunged from your record?

And usually if you answer yes to the felony question and not yes to the next one, then

you know, your same day registration can't proceed, but I don't want anyone in the field discouraging a voter because we don't have enough knowledge at this point to make that assessment.

So just make sure that all of our chiefs are aware of that.

Sharon, question to the registrar if I may.

Has this been,

Has elect provided a change for the soul pants?

No, there isn't.

This is only dealing strictly with registrations.

And also I'm a little at loose ends about it because the process has changed twice since it came out.

And I would expect it to continue to change because- Yes, it is.

Elect has dragged its feet on moving on O'Bannon versus King.

They've got to do something sooner rather than later before the whole thing might become moot in November when we vote on the question again.

Or it might change anyway.

So that was the end of the new business.

Let's go back to our meeting minutes, copies of those now.

Yeah, I am still baffled by the facts in my notes.

I clearly said that we approved six new officers.

I only had data on five, and I talked to Richard, and he said we only had five.

I did not know why I were twice written down to six.

I was wondering if perhaps

We had somebody from the previous meeting that we held in advance.

You're not getting out of being the secretary just because you say you don't like your minutes.

Yeah, nice try.

So, Jim, would you like to make a motion about these minutes?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say nay.

What needs to happen here is these need to go in minutes as well as going online.

So I need to give the sign to someone in your minutes.

This kind of piggybacks on the discussion of how we're dealing with the felon issue and the fact that it's confusing.

The state sent out, I believe yesterday or the day before,

instructions concerning candidates' statements of economic interests.

And they started off by saying, these will no longer be filed with registrars or with elect.

They will now be filed with some ethics counsel.

And then it went on to say all the things that the registrar needed to do to process these.

It was the most confusing thing I ever seen.

What the heck?

You have to establish an account, make sure we notify candidates.

They don't file with registrars.

You don't end up in the registrar's file.

The registrar sends them somewhere else after processing.

Okay, did you look at that?

Yes, I did.

It was confusing to me.

Can I ask who those people would be?

Yes, it's Andrea and me.

So the initial mailing for the Democratic Party primary was 4,672.

The initial mailing for the Republican primary was 946, for a total of

5818 ballots that went out in the initial mailing.

So be aware that these numbers are changing and they have changed and they're changed pretty much every day.

Absolutely.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Sure, sure.

For the Democratic primary,

4872.

This was the initial mailing.

And for the Republican primary, it was 946 for 5818 total.

Thank you.

So return ballots by mail.

This is as of yesterday is the democratic party, 1315 for the Republican party, 152 or total of 1467.

Now, that's as of yesterday.

That doesn't count undeliverables, which I'll get to in a moment.

So those are returned live ballots.

Voting in person, as of yesterday, Democratic Party 434, Republican Party 49, Republican Party 483.

Balance meeting of cure, 50 for the Democratic Party, two for the Republican Party.

Ballots sent by email for Democratic Party 68.

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

I think you're Democrats for 50.

50.

And Republicans, too.

Ballots sent by email for Democratic Party 68.

Republican Party 12.

And undeliverable ballots.

Those are ballots that come back to us unopened because the person has moved

and so it just comes back.

So for the Democratic Party it's 76, Republican Party 27, and there was one unknown.

How can it be unknown?

Sometimes people don't use our return balance, our return envelopes, they use their own envelope.

So we don't look in the envelope.

We just know that we've got it, make sure.

But the envelope is there, but I have no idea which party it is from.

You're going to have caps starting when?

8 o'clock.

I'm sorry, 9 o'clock.

Come in at 8.

9 o'clock, Wednesday.

Next Wednesday.

Next Wednesday.

And more than likely Friday also.

The next regular meeting of the electoral board is scheduled for August 13th, which is in the middle of the Canvas period.

Hopefully it will be done before then.

As previously noted, though, we'll have another board meeting on August 4th at night.

And then we'll start the provisional ballot in Canvas meetings August 5th at noon.

Sometimes when we're getting into the month of the election, add in an extra meeting in case there are things to be done.

We slid one in last week just for that sort of purpose.

I think if we have to have another one, we'll notice it and call it.

Okay, then if there is no other business for this session, then I'd like, I thank everyone for coming.

We're all going to step out.

We're going to go into a closed meeting.

And a lot of things to do.

The book's on the call.

Thank you very much.

I do have that number.

Sorry.

Before we take a break, let me make the closed meeting motion.

I move that the Albemarle County Electoral Board convene a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 1 to discuss and consider any applications of prospective candidates as officers of election, to discuss the performance of officers of election, and to discuss and consider the assignment of officers of election to polling places,

and to discuss the annual performance review process of the registrar as required under 24.2-109.1 and also under section 24.2-625.1b to discuss security with regard to specific local electoral procedures.

and the opposed.

Can I just mention something that's kind of unrelated, since we mentioned the word security.

The issue that I brought up about the 100-foot rule and people coming in with trucks and gun racks, I didn't go back and read the actual statute.

But in every reference to it, it talks about carrying a gun.

There is some, I'll pull the language, my computer just blocked me off because I haven't been active.

But there is language in the statute about having it in your personal property, which would constitute

vehicle, but I'll get the exact one.

This is saying it's not allowed if it's in your car.

No, if it's in your car, it's allowed because it's not coming into the precinct.

But for the person that lives in

All right, I'm going to pause.

Coming out of closed session.

And I'm going to move that the electoral board certified by a recorded vote, 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.

Let's do it by the numbers.

So we are all unanimously approving that.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

No.

Aye.

Aye.

Hearing no opposition.

So, any other business?