6.6.2023 Board of Election Commissioners

foreign okay good evening it is now five o'clock on June 6 2023 I'd like to call the board of election Commissioners meeting to order pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or it may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or

unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible Commissioners good evening it's good to see you again okay start with a role called attendance uh commissioner Dennis here commission to Campos commissioner robotile yeah and chairman Lyons is present okay item number two on our agenda for this evening is Citizens but we don't have anyone who was signed up for tonight so

can I please get a motion to accept the minutes from the August 8 2022 meeting of the board of election commissions of the August 8th 2022 meeting motion made by commissioner Dennis can I get a second yes I get the second Saturday motion made by commissioner tennis seconded by second by commissioner robot tile I'm going to do a roll call commissioner Dennis yes kind of commissioner Campos

Commission of robitussion yes and Camera Lyons which yes all right Commissioners as you can see from the packets in your binder

did you have a summation of the minutes from 2022 okay and the summary sheets are on the second part of your bonder for tonight's meeting I want to start with a review of the 2023 Municipal census which actually we just officially store under the second phase of the 23 census I'm going to get to that in just a few minutes but starting on February 1st on the municipal census was mailed

out to approximately 45 000 households I awarded the contract to Universal wild as they had printed the census for 2022 and 2021 as well a press release was issued to The Herald News wsar Fall River Community media and to the radio immigrant the Portuguese room we're going to try to butcher the title of their program um I sent that press release out on January 25th to inform all residents

that the municipal census would be would be um arriving in their mailbox uh the manufacturing costs for the census which was per our contract was 16 443 with the postage cost of nineteen thousand eight hundred and thirty four dollars approximately um so per the law um we had 20 420 residents um who did not reply to the annual census for 2023 unfortunately and I've done a number of local interviews as

well as the number of press releases since January 25th um so if we do not I do not receive the municipal census form for residents by the first uh Monday in June those residents unfortunately are made inactive their names will end up on the inactive voter list and we'd have to follow up by sending them a confirmation card just to attest that they still reside in Fall River it will take their

name if they reply to it off of the voter inactivity list and that way they will not have to show an ID when they go to vote um for the honey September 19th preliminary election unfortunately it does not update their census year for anyone who is listening please return your 2023 Municipal census because it is very important to update your census year as well as for all of the reasons

that I have laid out for the interviews I've done previously it ties into having an updated photo list and active votalist for the city of Fall River we also have public and private grants that are that are applied for by the vso that counts on Aging director of The Board of Health so it is critically important for the city as a whole when it pertains to public and private funding that's going

to come into Fall River to have an updated Municipal census list on record so those cards I just had a conversation with our vendor Jim Bailey who works for Universal ylt is in the process of putting together the estimate but based upon the conversation I had with him it's looking like the cost to manufacture the cards for the upcoming 2023 will be forty five hundred dollars with an estimated posters cost of seven

thousand dollars approximately those figures will be determined possibly by the beginning of next week so as of today the city of Fall River has 56 517 registered voters so we're just slowly taking up day by day we do receive registrations online um in the mail as well as directly from the registry of motor vehicles and just a heads up for the Commissioners to know as well as for the public at large

because this is a very frequent call into my office anyone who does any type of transaction with the registry of motor vehicles they automatically enroll you to votes that's then I think in place since 2020 but as of January 1st 2023 even if you go to tell the clerk at the RMV that you already enrolled there's they are still required by law to input you to register to vote so we will receive the notification that you

did a transaction with the RMV and we'll send you on an acknowledgment notice in the mail as well as a 2023 vote by mail application which is a requirement of the votes Act the voter registration deadline as of 2022 is now 10 days before election I think commissioner NSU they've known this from previous years up until 2022 when the votes Act was passed it was previously 20 days before election it is

now 10 days before an election so we will have special registration hours as the voter registration deadline does always land on a Saturday we are required by a law to have a minimum of eight hours available to the public for the 10th day before election on that foreign

on a Saturday or nine to five but that should be determined and I will issue a press release as we get um closer to election day so it's most likely it's going to be by the beginning of September we'll have those it's really old day yes it's a full day I believe the law requires that with the voter registration of over 40 000 of registered voters who are required to have a minimum of eight hours

availability for anyone who would like to register on the on the voted registration deadline so we'll be here working regardless so the office will be open on that date to accommodate anyone who has not um yet registered two votes the questions before in regards to the municipal census the confirmation cards anything for him to our election calendar okay very good okay um I think on the third tab of your

binder I didn't close a copy of the 20023 um municipal election calendar which I set back in the beginning of January um just to touch base um our preliminary municipal election will be held on Tuesday September 19th followed by the general election on Tuesday November 7th those dates were set by the city council I believe at a meeting um at the end of January okay so per the votes act um no excuse voting

by mail is required and available for all primary State and Municipal elections as a as a convenience to the public at large I did enclose the vote by mail applications I didn't close one of the rosters the vote by mail application rosters and your binders uh along with the municipal census which again I thought would be a great um convenience to the public because based upon the amount of applications we have

received for 2020 and in 2022 those State elections the response has been overwhelming and so far we have received 4 500 applicants who would like to vote by mail for the 2023 elections that number will continue to grow between now and September and I do anticipate we'll grow between the preliminary and general elections absentee ballot applications were mailed out to all of our permanently disabled voters

happens during the first week of January and I also had sent out a second mailing for those who have not yet responded to their absentee ballot application as of as of January excuse me as of June seconds we have 131 voters who have applied to vote by absentee we do have a total of 210 permanently on disabled voters who do receive an absentee ballot application to vote for every year's

election those voters are required to have a signed affidavit by a physician on file with my office in order to receive an application mailed to them directly at the beginning of every January a very important deadline to note the deadline to apply for an absentee vote by mail application uh is by 5 PM on the fifth business day before election and because Government Center does close at

4 pm our office will be open until 5 PM to accommodate anyone who would like to drop off their application in person to the office window okay so a couple of big changes that are going to be taking place that I have um arranged for 2023 with thanks to the votes Act of 2022. we are no longer required to have a checkout table at our polling precincts on election day so I'm

going to be taking advantage of that because I'm trying to make the process flow a little bit smoother on election day as well as from the traffic flowing through the boat is making it much easier to get in get their ballots cast their ballot and be able to leave the precinct in a timely in a timely manner um so there will not be a checkout table at the polling precincts on Election Day

in place of that there will be three check-in uh workers at the check-in table I'm gonna have the books broken down into thirds and I'm having one of my Checkers work at the warden the warden and clerk table which is going to be set up by the ds200 voting machine that way that Checker can make sure voters are putting their ballots into the machine give them an I voted circuit

because it is a very popular request and just in case if there was if a voter makes a mistake on their ballot for example if they do over vote with a particular category the machine is not going to accept the ballet it's going to stop it in place and a message is going to come up saying that you have over voted in this particular category when that just happened it's great to have

one Checker situated at the voting machine to alert that voter before they head out to the parking lot because so many times wardens and clerks have told me that they tried to run out to people into the parking lot to get them to be able to come back into the priest and to be able to you know return the ballot spoil it and be issued a new one to make

up for the mistake that they had made on their original ballots so having one chakra situated at the warden clerks table which is going to be um located next to the voting machine is a great asset in terms of trying to catch up on those or prevent those mistakes from happening um at the beginning so many questions about um our okay very good so the traffic goes much much easier in terms of the

checkers it's also eliminating a workload especially for our bigger polling precincts because beforehand the books always had to match I think we experienced this last year and we're closing that one of our precincts at the tansy elementary um that the check and book and the checkout book do have to be matched periodically throughout the day so it's eliminating that extra step for the

precinct award to be able to make sure the books are in balance before they're closing uh the machine town and finishing the reports at the end of the night so it is a great thing to take advantage of and I've had conversations with surrounding communities to find out how it's worked for them and it's worked out really well for those that have taken advantage of it so it's time to I

think kind of move the ball move the ball forward into the future is there any public notice on this is there any public notice going out to people yes you know what's going to happen oh yes very much I know it's going to be quite a bit of surprise and this is the first public acknowledgment of it and it's going to be asking head closer to election time I have a number of

interviews I'm going to be doing with wsar as well with local access to make the voters as best I can aware about the changes when it comes to voting procedures on Election Day I think it's been much easier about a welcome news to the public I just think for those of us been voting for quite some time we're very used to the process of checking in and checking out vicious eliminates that

one step who are those is always looking to fill some coffee on the front page yes to do a write-up about that but I definitely try to always reach out to all of my media content I'm Debbie westia The Herald news as well as the employer of access just to make sure that the public is aware and I want to do that especially as we get closer to the election time so this is

the first Public Announcement about the changes that will be taking place of another big change that I welcome you is I think especially for my poll workers is I'm not going to be sending the app the mail-in down the street process of the phone precincts on Election Day because you know it's all it's an overwhelming workload for the precinct Washington people to have to check in and check out in this case

check in all of the ballots and run them through the machine especially when they're so busy with other duties on Election Day so the Commonwealth gives all cities and towns the option to do Advanced processing the ballots nine days before election day so we can start we can we can have to end it the day before election and we have an entire nine-day period to be able to advance

process all of all of the unbalance that we do receive by that period the only balances all of the mailings yeah so not just walking we're not going to have any in-person early voting for Municipal elections these will be the ballots that have been requested by voters to vote by mail have been checked in by the office and they're going to be um processed down in election Central again

notification has to be made within 21 days before that process um takes place so I'll make sure the public is aware about that as best I can through my um through a press release as well as through my local interviews as we get closer to the um but again it's it's a great thing to take advantage of because the workload again for the precincts as well as my office my folks

are working so long and so hard to make sure that these ballots are ready to be sent to precincts on Election Day it's um so much easier to have them set and ready to go nine days before election so we can focus all of our efforts on preparing for election day rather than trying to make sure that the police are there first thing in the morning to pick up trays of ballots deliver them to the

right precincts and you know to go through the normal motion so we're going to be taking advantage of the advanced processing of ballots which I think again is a great thing and especially when we head into bigger and busier State elections in 2024 it's an enormous undertaking so we have utilized this in 2020 and it was to our it was a great benefits because the idea of having to

send thousands and thousands especially in 2020 we had 17 000 people requests to vote by meal in November 2020 so I'm anticipating now that vote by mail has really caught on with the public at large that we're probably going to have just about as many voters if not more possibly implied to go by mail in 2024 to be determined but we always want to you know kind of play it safe and just

be prepared for it so I do find that the advanced processing of balance is is a wonderful option to have and we'll be doing that as we head closer to election time within that um 90 day period before both the preliminary and the municipal election all right all right so um all balance must be all male and absentee ballots must be applied for by by fighting him on Fifth business day before election as I just mentioned

um all ballots must be received by the Board of Elections office by the close of polls on Election Day in order to be counted um there will be a brand new permanently mounted uh boat uh Ballot Box mounted outside of the Third Street entrance um I was able to apply for some Barbara funding and that was just recently approved by the mayor's Opera committee um so I'm in the process of having the

contract signed with the mayor um in that Ballot Box should be ordered at some point during the middle of the Third Street yes rather than having I think you probably have seen it the box that um chairwoman Suzy young had purchased back in 2020 it's a relatively small simple plastic box that is not weather resistant it's not really meant to be kept outside it's not durable so with something that desperately needed

an upgrade so it was very nice to find a company that does manufacture and produce secured ballot Dropbox and to be able to get the money through Opera funding was fantastic to have a Ballot Box uh permanently mounted outside of Third Street now that we have vote by mail yes you know permanently instituted from all of our local and um State elections how often are you going to put on um emptying that on a daily basis

depending on the election probably several times a day I know looking at our bigger like in 2020 for example we had to empty the box I mean probably at least twice a day if not more just because the overwhelming response from people who are voting by mail a grant it was during the pandemic but we do have to check the box at least you know twice a day at a minimum to make sure that

it's you know being checked the ballast is being emptied they've been processed you know into the office um so we want to make sure that process you know um as we head until election day so at least twice a day so so so just is it maybe just one person go down uh probably two people I mean if I can't get down to myself probably who my clerks will go down to empty The Ballot

Box and bring the back up to the office because you know it comes with um a secured bin that way the ballots can be transported back up to the office so once you take them out you can't open them I mean it's a bid is it a bin where you take it out it's secured then it goes upstairs and then it's it's reopened upstairs oh no we have actually like a travel thing and actually put the

ballots into bring back upstairs but the bin itself The Ballot Box will be permanently mounted outside of the Third Street entrance so it's a it's a great thing to have rather than having the plastic one that we had from for the past two years it was only chained to the building and I only could keep it out during the building hours and I'd have to run back down um after relating for the day to bring

back in and you know chain back out um the next morning so this is a great great thing to have I think as we head into the future now that vote by mail is I'm here to stay and it is a romanly popular option by the public at large I don't know I mean I missed it in your statistics but what's the what's the what's the increase over election over election on mail-ins

for depending on the election I mean we had um in terms of raw numbers for 2020 for example we had about 17 000 voters who applied to vote by mail in that general election we had about eight thousand development that was 20 just about yes so that was significant because it was during the pandemic the primary election in 2020 we had just over 8 000 people applied to vote by mail so it more than

doubled for the generals and then heading into 2023 this would be the first time working we will have vote by mail instituted for a municipal election so as of right now we have 4 500 applicants and a lot of people responded to it because I enclosed the vote by mail applications with the municipal census which I think was a fantastic idea and actually when I had my conference call at the end of 2022 with

secretary galvin's office they were actually talking about doing that they recommended it to cities and towns because now a vote by mail is an option for all local elections and they actually redid the vote by mail application in itself I didn't close one um in your package it's a multi-roster so I think you probably have seen with your census so more than one registered voter per household can actually utilize

this application to application to apply for a mail in Dallas rather than just the individual application the multi-roster is fantastic so an entire household yes that is the multi roster which is wonderful because more than one registered voter per household the last tip the last time can use the application and it's been the response rate has been fantastic I've been very happy to see you know the

response so far and they've come in uh trickle in on a daily basis and I do anticipate between preliminary and general uh more people most likely will apply to vote yeah um any other questions about the events processing or the changes in regards to election day procedures before we move on no okay very good okay um so as of today if you look at the the third tab behind the 2023 election

calendar I did type up a list for you of our 2023 municipal election candidates um as of June 5th we have five candidates who are running for the office of Mayor we have 19 candidates who have put requested nomination papers for the office of city council and we have 10 candidates who have our custom nomination papers for the office of school committee one candidate has finals Premiere that is Michael J Vandal

Apollo Amaral filed officially for city council and Charlie Chase has officially filed for the office of school committee um the deadline to submit nomination papers to me for certification is on June 28th at 5 pm and the deadline to your request nomination papers to run for office in 2023 is on June 26th at 5 pm the filing deadline for all candidates who are running for local election this

year is on July 18th at 5 PM all candidates are required for the city's order to file their nomination papers with the office of the city clerk and that deadline is on July 18th so after July 18th oh yes that calendar is right in front so this is yeah it's on the first page of your 2023 production company

will be the first off for right there between April 4th when nomination papers were available and just to recap the June 26th is the deadline for candidates to request nomination papers on June 28th at 5 PM is the deadline for submitting nomination papers for certification and for all local election candidates they must file their nomination papers with the city clerk or is that like to say

take them on a field trip to the city clerk to be filed on July 18th at 5 pm as I also included the voter registration deadline as well as the deadline to submit absentee info by mail application included in the calendar as well as the date and the time for posting the election warrants and election dates themselves

so candidates who are running for the office the mayor are required to have a total of 300 certified signatures candidates for the office of school committee and city council are required to have 100 pictures where are you now well I apologize I'm back into our notes on on the previous tab I'm back on our note page the summation whatever for you

yeah on the last page my apologies I broke everything down for you so all candidates I issued them a welcome letter from me as well as a copy of the 2023 election calendar um included with that so I gave copies of the information sheet about how to collect signatures or um your nomination Shapers I also issue a copy of the ordinance that pertains to the posting of political campaign signs

which is 60 days before election included in that is the statutory language that pertains to no electioneering also known as the 150 foot buffer law as well as rules for observers and just in case of any campaigns have any volunteers who want to observe at the polls on Election Day they're more than welcome to and I do include a copy of the do's and don'ts the rules they must abide by Otherwise

those are the best right uh yes that's going to be right behind

information sheets the city ordinance pertaining to the posting of campaign signs which again the 60 days before any election the 150 foot law as well as the rules for Observers and I'm your last count just for your convenience because I don't want to come to election day I'm always invited and definitely encouraged to please visit all of the polling clip locations on Election Day and that's the update of

the list we do have the public to know we have 27 uh voting precincts um in the city of Fall River which you have two sub precincts just to note uh were eliminated by the Commonwealth at the end of 2021 as a result of the 2020 episode we lost two voting spots we originally had uh 6c1 which was at the um the United the um Eastwood fire station on Eastern

Avenue as well as 5 B1 which was at um acquire Bishop e departments which is 736 because the city yeah so the city had previously been divided into two congressional districts now we're going to be comprised entirely within the fourth congressional district so the two-step precincts were eliminated by um the Commonwealth at the end of 2021 as a result of the federal census so we had 29 before we did have 29 in total

how many were at the um on Eastern Avenue which is the fire station were there two there before there were two precincts Precinct 60 as well as six c one were located at the fire station on um the ready Eastwood fire station on Eastern Avenue and then we had the two uh precincts five b and 5v1 at and those two-step precincts were merged respectfully into Precinct 5B and six seats respectfully 60. that's still

that's still the one that's on Eastern Avenue yes other than that nothing had been changed everything was luckily able to remain situated and when we only had 944 voters who were impacted by the recenting of Fall River and those voters were notified at the beginning of 2020.

2 we were very lucky I know based upon the conversation I had with them at counterparts chairman de Brito in New Bedford they had 17 000 voters who were impacted because they have a number of sub precincts and I think about 43 precincts as a whole so it was a very interesting conversation to kind of learn about you know the different processes of how they were impacted versus fall versus so knock on wood I

was pretty lucky people don't like to have change especially when it comes to voting there's there used to going to a place it's like traditions right you know it's incredible to think back looking at on the 2000 uh 2010 I know we had up until Precinct one day and two um we had two deep we had a couple of extra precincts because of the population size in Fall River at the time and those precincts

had been as after the 2010 um federal census had been eliminated so that was much more significant um 13 years ago than the one in 2020 so again I think the city even with population growth going from 87 000 to 96 000. I thought it was 94 the 96 then just about 96.

by the stats that were submitted To Us by secretary Galvin who was the U.S Census Bureau of liaison um had a just at 95 000 to change so I kind of always give it a Roundup to benefit um to be 96 000 so it is it is steadily getting up there in the city hall yeah because it used to be 89 000 for years yes but it was always right around 99 000. I'm sorry

what about there and we had we had a quite a pump I was actually surprised to see the number girls even in spite of that luckily we did not have major impacts in terms of Voters being impacted just a few um had been replacing to it here where they are a few voters especially in the North End of Fall River and my neck of the woods was some voters who were moved over from um

from you know from the Highland Avenue precinct on at the Methodist Church over to cardi Medeiros for example as well as a lot of Precinct the two precincts up on North Main Street at Calvary Temple church so there was a lot of that in some of the um the North End of Fall River much more so than anywhere else in addition to the sub the two-step recently oh no pretty lucky I have to send it

which is one other thing I want to just show you as we were discussing both by mail very briefly I think you probably have seen the usual going to see thousands of these you take a field trip into the office so this is the famous ev7 envelope that I have spoken about like a broken record and just like the public at large um I've had my staff go through them the

ones that we have and I've just ordered another 12 boxes I've had because this is the envelope in which the favory is going to insert their ballot that's you know they're going to vote with the ball into this envelope seal it and they must sign the affidavit otherwise we have to reject it and send the voter an entire new package so I've also had a stamped signature required by law I've had my

staff begin to highlight and stamp all of the envelopes as well as with the corresponding election the first one we're going to have of course is the preliminary election for 2023. uh the reason for doing so is because it almost becomes like a full-time job we have so many ballots we have so many um mail-in ballots that voters forget to actually sign the affidavit so it is just

critically important to make the note to the public at large so please if you decide to vote by mail after you vote put your ballot into the ev7 envelope and make sure you sign instructor versus voter sign here otherwise we have to reject the ballot and send an entire new package and that does take up a lot of our time and already as it is you know it is quite a significant amount of work

to oversee this process so it's very important for the public to know that if you decide to go find me out take your time fill out your ballots insert it to the eb7 envelope seal it and just make sure that you will fix your signature on your voter sign here that is just critically important otherwise it will have to be rejected so just in case if you happen to talk to

any voters anyone in your travels and they decided to vote by mail just make sure you kind of you know remind them of that point just please make sure that you sign the envelope before you mail it and otherwise we have to you know take the time to reject it and to send the voter on a new a new package with a new balance

I think that was pretty much it in terms of the summation that I put together for you did you have um any other questions under the ignore her I do not no this is very good this is very helpful it was nice to have yes I know it's great yes they're yours to keep so we're gonna we're gonna keep adding to it okay with no other business before us I'm gonna in a motion to adjourn what's

your legit okay motion made by commissioner Dennis segmented by commissioner robotile all in favor all right I okay our meeting is the germs thank you very much commissioners hahaha