So part of the meeting today was to do a tour of our election center.

But now it's only been how many tours have you done?

It doesn't matter, so I might say that we're staffing.

I was gonna let you give the chores available.

But uh we wanted to take you through.

Um we are a couple things are happening.

One is we just did a renovation, a lot of the floorings, we added some other things, but part of what we were hoping to be done by this point, but it hasn't.

The artwork and everything is done, the research, everything, but our elections museum for Duval County uh has not started and won't be done until probably y'all get a guess, June.

In the May June.

Okay.

Possibly, yeah.

Hopefully, in the newsletter that it was gonna be ready when we came for training.

Well, that was we may have to push training off.

No, but that's the goal.

And uh, the education tangi, uh, Jennifer and Hallie has done a lot of work on the on the museum.

I'm looking forward to it.

And uh, so anyway, we won't see the museum today.

You'll see where it's going.

But um, but anyway, we always start our tours here uh for those, and Ed's another one.

How many tours you've been on?

Several.

If I skip or miss anything, please y'all gladness, you know.

But y'all can have a seat for a second.

Um basically what we start our tours here, and we have had somewhere around 80 different countries also come and tour the election center to see how we do elections in Duval County and how uh they've toured other places in other states, how we do it differently.

You know, one thing that's interesting is that states are very inconsistent when it comes to elections.

Uh there is no requirement from state to state to do it any consistent way, and so uh basically that's the uh the interesting thing is we get visitors is how different it may be done here versus other states.

Uh a couple things that we always point out when you come and start here, is one is our map.

The map is pins of all the people who have come from different countries.

So that just shows where in the world they've come from.

Uh we started at the last tour of mapping the ones that were actually from the United States.

It's the first ones.

Yeah.

So they we said, shoot, we don't have a pin in the United States, and so we let them that was touring it, uh, pin the United States.

But blue is once, white is twice, and red is three times that they have come.

So we're proud of uh being able to tour that.

The other is the picture of this up here on the wall.

That is uh Duval County's only tied race.

It was in Neptune Beach.

Uh, it was between Richard Arthur and Rory Dunan.

Uh it came down to a tie.

Uh and state law says when it is a tie in a race.

Now that's after we've done a recount, you know, everything's been double checked, everything's there.

It is an actual tie.

The state law says you must have a game of chance in order to determine the winner.

You know, so the game of chance, and those who know me, it couldn't just be real quick, because we had all the supporters and the media there for the historical tide race.

So the way it started, in fact, uh Roy was coming in this morning on the radio when we were both on.

Is the way we started it was uh, and the members that are up there is on the right is the Canvasine Board judge, uh County Judge.

Uh the council member representing at that time was Doal Carter and myself, and that's Richard Arthur, who ended up winning.

But the way we started the game of chance was the county judge uh first pulled a name out of the hat to say who starts this process.

And so Rory's name was picked first.

And so the next part of the process would because the ultimately it was gonna be who picked the highest number of ping pong balls, and so but two would go first, we flipped a coin.

So we flipped a coin and Rory won that.

So he's two for two right now.

So then there's 20 ping pong balls in a bag.

You can't see the numbers, we shake them up, and then Rory gets to go first, he pulls out a number, and then unfortunately a lady told me, make sure he puts the ball back in, or else the mathematical odds are different.

And I think he pulled like number seven.

Okay, so then Richard Arthur pulls his, he pulls number eleven, he's the winner.

So uh Rory still today say I won two out of three, I should have won.

But uh that's the way the game of chance was, and we haven't we've had a race that was two votes difference, but that's the only tide race that we have uh any notation in our records uh going back as long as they kept records.

So any questions so far?

All right.

Well, join me and we'll follow the tour around.

Just say y'all know we will be taking pictures if you do not want, we try to get it from like the side or whatever, however it goes, but if you do not want to be in any kind of action, just let me know.

And I can make sure that we honor that.

If you're on witness protection, anything like that, let us know.

I knew it, I knew it.

Can y'all just come on in?

Go anywhere you can move around in, and I'll explain what this room is.

I'm just gonna hover next to you because I have the microphone.

Absolutely.

That's a good point.

Okay.

Okay, this is our sample precinct room.

We use it for a couple reasons.

Uh, one is when we do tours to show how we set up a polling location uh during election day or early voting.

And it also helps see people who are touring what the equipment we use in Duval County.

We also use it when the poll workers want additional training.

Uh, they come and they can sit down with the trainer or sit by themselves and go through the equipment again and get hands-on experience if they need additional uh training.

So basically, as you know, all of y'all have voted in Duval County.

Uh, the e-bids is what we check in.

Uh, there's two parts of this process.

One is the BOD, which is ballot on demand, which we use at early voting, because obviously we have over 200 to sometimes 300 different ballot styles.

So, therefore, uh we have to print the ballot.

When we first started early voting at the initial part, now it's been almost almost two decades ago.

Uh we didn't have ballot on demand printing.

We had what was called pick and pull, or we as election officials call it pick and pray, pray you pulled the right one.

But you literally have all the ballots, and the poll worker, there was only like one or two early voting sites, would look you up and then go find the ballot and pull it.

So you can see thank God we're beyond that.

Now the printer just prints out the ballot that you need.

And now I will say some counties have gone to using ballot on demand printers on election day.

So they don't pre-print all the ballots, they have that.

We're contemplating is that a savings or not a savings, you know, because the hard part is, and literally, if you saw after an election, uh we literally have pallets of unvoted ballots that we've send to be shredded.

Uh because you know, someone says, Well, can't you just order what you think's gonna show up?

Yeah, well, if I didn't guess it right, who tells the guy that I missed it, you know?

So we always have to over-order because and the other side is in one side of town it may be a very contentious race, and therefore a lot of people coming out there, but another side of town, maybe there's not a challenge race, and so less people are voting in that area.

So it's just almost mathematically impossible to predict what the turnout will be at every location.

So, but we do preprint the ballots, we send them all out to the poll workers, and they have to account for all of them.

So, you know, some people worry, well, if you pre-print them, could someone ballot stuff or put them in.

The accounting process as you document on election is every ballot used must correspond with the voter.

If the voter spoiled a ballot, it goes in the spoiled ballot.

We have to account for spoiled ballots, so everything's accounted for.

So there is not like, well, there's a lot of ballots, let the poll workers just fill out a few more, you know.

There they can't do that because of the accountability, and again, the evids are checking in the voters.

So, you know, they would again, you know, from that process document how many the evids have checked in, how many have been tabulated on here, and how many ballots that have actually been given out.

So that's at again, chain of custody of those ballots and accounting for exactly who's voted them.

Any questions y'all have?

Obviously, y'all know the equipment, so I'm not going to demo the equipment.

You've got the express vote over there.

Uh, we use more of those in early voting because again, it's uh from a standpoint also, you don't have to print a ballot, you give them a blank card, card goes in there, it's programmed for all the races in Duval County.

So again, the express vote is for those who may be visually impaired, they can listen.

Those who may not want to listen, but they can also expand the wording on there to make larger print.

We can also do it in multiple languages, and so that is our required to have one in every polling location on election day and early voting, but we put more of them on early voting because again, sometimes we can actually move people through quicker on those than we can on the paper ballots.

It all depends on how many pages of ballots there are front and back and different different items.

Sometimes a printed ballot is faster than the express vote, and sometimes the express vote is faster, depending on how big the ballot is and how long it is.

So any other questions?

How's the feedback you got on the express vote?

Well, you know, in the presidential election, we had 80 and early voting.

Uh we hardly get very few people using it in on election day.

But in early voting, we had about 82%, I think was the number use express votes.

So we went through a time period of finding what the issues were.

Uh for example, at first we had a screensaver on a protector on there, you know, that so you couldn't see it from an angle, but unfortunately, your touch and it works on touch, didn't work as well.

So we took those off.

And then sometimes uh people's hand, if they had long fingernails, it didn't register as a the touch like you, you know, touching a phone or touching a keypad.

And so we ended up putting stylus on all of them, and that seemed to solve all the problems, and we put a lot of notations and stuff like that.

So as we evolved through using it, uh it really turned out to be something that people use.

What we do now is, and the requirement is, uh, and we've gone through an evolution of that from the previous supervisor.

This is we do not push anybody toward any way of voting on early voting.

We have a billboard sign that says mark your ballot with a pen, express vote.

We'll have a sign up that has a BOD and a sign-up that has the express vote, and a flag indicating which one's which.

And the sign, what the, there'll be a monitor, line monitor, and that line monitor will say, I have a I have a short line on the express vote.

And what we find is most voters, we do have some that don't want to use the express vote, but most voters is just which how can I get in and out as soon as possible?

If I can go do the express vote and be finished voting faster than waiting in long, I've got certain locations, and they want to use paper ballots, meaning the ones you fill the ovals in more than they want to use that.

And so we don't say, oh, please try it.

And that when they first got it, it was like, hey, y'all want to try this, and people got upset and going, oh no.

But that machine does not tabulate.

That's the bottom line.

The machine has prints the card and it has a barcode on it, and it goes in the same machine.

There's a slot here for the express vote.

The big ballot goes in here.

But it's no different, it tabulates right here, it doesn't tabulate there.

And so you see all your selections there on the card before you put it in.

Uh, you see your selections before it prints the card.

If you want to change the selection, you can.

One thing about the express vote is, and if you've ever watched canvassing board meetings or anything like that, one of the issues we have is we have it more on vote by mail, but we also have it sometimes on people who tell out obals, is voter intent.

You would think, well, gee, that's pretty.

How do you get voter intent out of a paper ballot where you just fill in the oval?

Well, bless the heart.

Not everybody fills in an oval.

Somebody wants to check it, okay?

I don't know where that comes from.

It comes from every political sign that you see a chat vote for me.

If I can ever get them all to change those, you know.

But basically, voter intent is never an issue on the express vote because it prints exactly what it is, and there's no marking.

On this on the poll ballot, yes, we get voter intent.

We get voters sometimes with visibility.

They will circle the oval.

They will circle the entire name.

And if they don't mark something in the oval, it doesn't count.

So I like the express vote because it eliminates all voter intent issues.

But again, if people feel like, and it's so interesting, they'll just go, yeah, but that ballot there, I know it's reading the ovals.

And the other one, it has a barcode, it's reading the barcode.

I said, Well, you do know when it reads the ovals.

It doesn't know the name next to it.

If it was programmed wrong and it's an X and Y coordinate, and one one was candidate B instead of A, you wouldn't know that.

You know, so you're trusted again the name next to the oval.

You know, so don't think it's more secure than that one.

That's why we do a logic and accuracy test.

We'll show where we do that, where we show it is counting what it's supposed to be.

The XY coordinate for one one is candidate A and one two is B, you know, where it shows up.

But again, it's not more secure to do one versus the other.

And so, but I preach that to them blew in my face, and people go, No, I'm filling in the elbows, and I said, God bless you, we have them for you.

Please use it, you know.

Any other questions?

You've been taking this out to the schools and to hobknobs and other community events to continue to train future voters as well as community members who may not have used it.

Exactly.

We want people to be aware before they come in to vote, uh, that it's an option.

And again, it's their option, whatever they want to use.

And so we're not going to push one versus the other.

So any other questions?

All right, we're gonna move out that door there.

Go ahead.

I think it's visible.

Everyone see it all with all the windows and stuff, that is pretty cool.

But much smaller environment over there.

All right, this is the tab room, our tabulation room.

Uh, this is also where our IT director will, uh the programming of the machines and the thumb drives are all kept in here for the machines and everything.

Uh, it and one thing about our office, we have mag locks everywhere, but not every employee is allowed in every location.

This one is limited to probably I'd say less than maybe five five employees into this one room.

And we don't even tour through there, you know.

Uh election night, the media typically, my friend Jim Pickett used to be, he's retired, would come here with the camera, and it was like somehow you were when you could see through that fish bowl, it was going to be more real.

And so, um, and of course, I I my sense of humor you learn is Jim would be going, Do you have the results?

And I keep going, you know.

He fought for that every time, you know.

Um, but what happens here in the tab room is this.

As I tell people, uh your vote when you vote and you put it in that DS300, it's captured in four different ways.

It is captured by the ballot that you voted.

It is captured by a thumb drive on that DS300.

It is captured as far as the results on the result tape that we print out at every polling location at the end of the night to say these are the results.

And I say this because as people say, well, what about the results change?

As I always say, Tom Cruise has to change all four methods.

And then the fourth is every ballot in the state of Florida is cast on a paper ballot.

So you can reconstruct every election.

So you've got all four things that you can audit afterwards to say, well, if someone changed the count somewhere, what was on the paper tape?

What do the ballots now count as?

What was on the thumb drive?

And the fourth way is at the end of the night, you know, and the DS300 is not connected to the internet during the time of voting, anything like that.

There is a wireless modem at the end of the night that we then wire we send by virtual private network encrypted to this one computer over here.

And so it comes in and basically there's an IP address for the machine that it leaves from, and there's one here that it has to know that this is the one I've got to send it to.

It recognizes, it sends, it recognizes, it shuts off the link between the two, and the results are in.

There's what's called an air gap, again, before we put those results on the web, they'll download it again on a thumb drive, switch to the other computer, put it on that computer, and then we upload it on our on our website.

So election night, that is the process.

Also remember in the state of Florida, by state law, we must report, and we set it at 7 15.

State law says by 7 30, we must report all the vote by mail ballots and all the early votes in the state of Florida by 7.30.

And so that's why the state of Florida, the results are typically done by 10 o'clock, you know, because you've got all the early votes in, the vote by mail, and we're just waiting on the precincts.

Now you gotta remember some states don't even count vote by mail ballots until the election's over.

So from that standpoint, you go, Well, why is it why is it taking this state this long to come in?

It's their laws, you know, that that wait, you know, to count those other votes afterwards.

Uh, it is nice as soon as we do that logic and accuracy test.

At that point, we're allowed to then start counting the vote by mail ballots, and as the early votes are coming in each of those, they we're all uploading them and stuff like that.

They answered question.

Does anybody know those results prior to the election?

Probably there's two people, myself, and also the IT director knows those results.

Now, if I'm on the ballot, I don't know the results.

Okay.

Safe and secure.

Well, two reasons.

There's about three times the state statute, says one is that I can't know those, as well as I cannot release those.

My wife would always say, how's the race going?

Not mine, but other races, and I said, you know, I'm not gonna tell you.

You know, so but we do know those.

Now, I will another thing that I do as supervisor is at 7.01, you know, we'll push out the results at 715.

But I'll look at the early votes and the vote by mails, and if it's a landslide, I'll call a candidate.

So if you're ever a candidate, Donovan, if you're ever a candidate, you are, and my phone rings to you at 705, you want to take that call.

You know.

If you don't get a call, wait for the website to waiting for the precincts to come in.

You know, but you can ask like Judge Virginia Norton, she'll say that I'll remember that call until I die, jury calling and congratulating.

And I have to be bullied me, I don't make that call unless it's a landslide, because I don't want to say one thing, and then the election date comes in and go, Oh, my bad.

I don't think you're gonna win.

But I'll tell them also, I've told people, hey, here's what the results are going to be released, and they want that, and you know, and I always say they appreciate their supervisor again, but I can't do that until after 7 o'clock.

And then at 7 15, we normally push out all the results, and then we have to we have to continue to push out those results, and we try to do it on a 30-minute basis.

That's why, you know, you don't have to keep hitting uh upload or you know, refresh.

About every 30 minutes, we'll hit it.

And also, state laws change.

We cannot go home until all vote by mail.

See, there's still some that we may get in election night at 7 o'clock that wasn't reported at the 715, because people can turn them in downtown, you know, at 7 o'clock.

So at that point, we've got to bring those out, they've got to verify the signatures, and then you know, if there's no questions on the signature's validity, then we've got to upload those and and the and to the computer.

But we have to we have to have all those done before we can go home, you know, and so um that's why we try to get those in as soon as possible.

So any questions on this part?

Okay.

Do you have a backup computer for that one that's configured in case that one's like struck by lightning, you know, before we have.

So there is redundancy on this.

Yes, sir.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, sir, yes.

Um, and that's important also.

And and we do the same thing of redundancy we've had in the past, sometimes our website provider go down.

And how do we get the results?

Because you talk about people freaking out on that website and there's no results, you know.

Uh, you know, we'll put up a we'll print it out, we'll put it up in a PDF, we'll do something there, and uh, so everything we can do to try to get those results and let people know.

Media is typically here, so they're putting that out, they're wanting to do interviews.

Um years ago, it wasn't like pushing out of the internet.

So, really, candidates, uh the parties, everybody was here waiting on results.

You know, but now it's like you can watch the website if there's a problem.

Usually the calls I get is we have like 159 precincts today, and so the calls I get is our map that shows the election night returns will also show precincts reporting.

So when they have precincts in the district they're running in, and they said, you know, precinct 302 has a reporting.

Why?

Okay, then I'm able to because we're communicating.

They may not they may have an issue with their Wi-Fi and they couldn't upload it, and then they had to go to the drop zone to upload it there, or they're bringing it in, you know.

So we'll let them know what's the issue, you know, and those kind of things.

I will say this was now almost two decades ago.

I was not supervisor, I was city council member, and I was on the canvassing board, and uh they were waiting on a precinct to come in, and uh back then we did not have you know, again, uh a website showing precincts and those kind of things.

All we knew was where's that precinct, and the poll worker, the manager had taken it home.

She was tired, so she took everything home with her.

It was her last election, also.

I remind you, poll workers, you know.

And it hadn't been, it was it was gonna be, it was gonna be.

It caused her to be our last election, but from that standpoint is with my staff, we're not going home until everything's out and everything's back in so that we can reconstruct an election because the end of the day, if it ends up being real close, close is again within a half a percent, then it means that we have to look at all the ballots for the over and unders.

Within a quarter percent means they're all running back through high speed counters to count them again, and so when they're that close, believe me, the person when it's close, we got the calculators.

Is it is it gonna make that half percent?

Is it gonna make that quarter?

Sometimes it looks close, but it's not within that half of percent or quarter.

So, any other questions?

And I could say as someone, you don't want a close race.

It's just my first race that I lost, city council.

I was ahead by two votes at the end of the night, and then the vote by mail ballots came in, and I lost by 46 votes out of 13,000 votes.

So it gave me real empathy.

So I do have empathy for candidates and their patience and waiting and going through the process.

So, but anyway, all right, follow me then.

Do you all have a preferred uh coffee vendor for those late nights?

Everybody uh, our motivation is trying to get out of it.

Are you not?

You know, we have a full-time staff of about 35 employees.

However, it takes about two thousand employees to put on an election, so we go from 35 to 2,000.

Part of that 2,000, obviously, is our full-time staff is about the 1800 poll workers that we hire, and they're all paid.

And then also it is uh additional warehouse and IT personnel and rovers, and also our call center, because our staff could not take all the calls if we were relying on our staff downtown to take the calls.

So this is our call center.

We activated about how many days before about 60 days?

No, no, we're uh about three uh two weeks prior to early voting.

So four weeks before.

So a month before is you know, we bring in seasonal about two months ahead of time.

Uh but it's also our command center on election day, and by that, I'm here.

An attorney from general counsel is here.

Uh my staff, my IT people are in here.

We're here to answer any questions.

Voters have poll workers have.

The three networks are up on these TV screen.

That screen over there is live activity of all the events, so we know if there's any uh polling location that an EVID is down and we don't have connectivity, we can monitor on that uh monitor over there.

So that's that process here, so that everyone is one place.

I'll never get my first election as supervisor in 2005.

I thought, wow, election day, I'm gonna get out there and go to precinct and go see poll workers.

I did not make it to the first one.

They said you need to get back here.

You know, because what happened was these they're no longer working here also, these people, but somebody had switched the number of ballots.

It was a primary, in other words, the number uh that you print for say the we had estimated for in a democratic precinct, there was so many that you needed because there's so many Democratic voters and so many Republican.

They had switched the numbers.

So we had 10 times the Republican ballots in some precincts and one-tenth the number of ballots in the in some precincts.

So, needless to say, it was like get printing, get them out there, we got an issue, come back, and so I've it's sort of like to keep it lucky.

I stay in here the entire election, so do not go outside, do not, you know.

But I was looking forward to all the polling locations.

They cook a lot of food, and I saw these desserts and opportunities to you know, glad hand and go around and see everybody, but needless to say, um, I don't do that.

So this is our call center, and these are where we take those questions during election day and and throughout that process.

Any questions?

All right, as you come this way, you also um we're fortunate that many of our call center, many of our call center workers come back every election.

They're retired, they come back at that point.

I note this one right here.

Uh this gentleman had been with us, Stephen Smith for several elections.

Uh, he passed away after the last election.

Uh so we memorialized him for the next election.

The leadest picture, dedicate that cubicle to him.

But again, our poll workers are like that.

If we had to start every election with people who had never done the work, it would be very difficult.

So we do get new poll workers, we do get new call center people and stuff like that, but a majority of everyone that comes back has done it before.

That makes my job and my staff's job a lot easier because we're bringing them back up to date, they don't do it every day, but again, it's a lot easier to get someone up who's done it.

So, any questions?

All right.

Like they're just in there.

Are they gonna see that other people are looking at looking through that would be funny in the media?

Yeah, that would be really good.

Frank, yeah, okay.

This is the future museum.

So, and I will say, also, we had a veteran's wall right here.

The veterans wall is moving down to the other end to honor our vets, and so uh we're waiting when we do this, we'll complete the the extension of the veterans wall, which basically, and if and yourself, anyone who's a veteran or family member that you want to honor them.

Uh what we need is we'll print the photo.

We just need to email to us and their full name and their highest rank when they got out of the service.

And so we'd be glad to honor any of your family friends or yourself.

Lanel, do we have your picture yet?

Yes, sir, you do as of October of last year.

All right, and we'll put you up there.

So we'll bring it.

Yeah, maybe.

But this is where the museum will be.

I'm really looking forward to it.

They've done such an effort on it.

You'll really see the history of voting in Duval County.

So all right, we'll come this way.

One thing you notice is that we try, it's about transparency.

That's why the rooms, the glass windows, to make sure every aspect of what we do, someone can look.

And it's open election day and things of that nature.

Things are restricted, obviously, where there's mag locks, but nothing's going on that you're not allowed to watch and see.

Uh and we'll talk more about the campusing board meetings and LA.

But uh what I'm gonna take to now is Carmen's favorite.

This is the vote by mail, right, Carmen?

Yes.

Hey Carmen, your favorite place, the vote by mail center.

Uh, yeah, I know.

Uh well, especially since we spent almost two million dollars on it.

But uh vote by mail, just to give you, I mean, the highest uh use of vote by mail is obviously 2020 uh during COVID uh because people were afraid to come in to vote.

Um at that time, Duval County probably did close to 120,000 vote by mail ballots.

Uh right now, vote by mail has dropped off considerably.

Um, I think right now we've got about 21,000 in the queue, and of those, probably close to 3,000 are overseas, military and state department people, so about 18,000 domestic voters have requested for the 2026 election.

So you see, yeah, it's a considerable drop.

Um, because again, it's it's a preference, you know.

We all our responsibility is to let people know when laws change about vote by mail.

Such as, you know, now with Senate Bill 90 several years ago, you have to renew your vote by mail after every general election that's in an even year.

So therefore, everybody in 2024 voted by mail on January 1st of 2025.

There was zero in the queue from vote by mail.

So we notify those who need, and let me tell you, there and even even on the executive orders and stuff, they recognize there are homebound people, there are people who travel, there are people who cannot vote any other way than vote by mail, you know, and so we never want to take away someone's right to vote, you know.

So we want to make sure if we don't ask it in the state of Florida, it's uh it's not that you've got to ask, and also in the state of art, different than other states is that these no supervisor can send vote by mail ballots to every vote that is done in some states, and so that that is something that's not done in the state of Florida, but again, we have notified everyone who voted by mail before in 2024, and it's their option that they want to renew.

And we did that notification about two weeks ago, and we had about 11,000 people re-sign up, you know, so it almost doubled our numbers.

So, again, not knowing they had to sign up.

Any other questions?

Well, where'd you go, Cliff?

Well, yes.

I know he's gonna do the demo, I don't want to have that.

Yeah, no, go ahead.

But um, so uh the governor said that like thousands of thousands of people have moved here, they're coming from other states, they have other voting cultures, voting practices and laws.

Do you know if there's ever been any consideration that allows somebody when they do register?

Like a lot of them are doing it through the Department of Highway and Safety Motor Vehicles at that time to go ahead and request a vote by mail ballot that's actually that goes with the registration?

Because now this and it's by state law, there is a specific form asking for specific information, and so there's no, you need that information supervisor to in order to validate that request.

And you can only do it for your immediate family members, you can only do it, you know, so it's it's trying to limit and make sure someone doesn't bulk request for anybody.

So uh to answer your question, there is no check the box and it'll be sent to you.

Because we've got to have your signature requesting that form, you know, on that form saying I want this, you know.

Yes.

I appreciate the pop-up you have on the website lately.

The reminding people they need to decide.

That's it.

Again, our I do not want all of a sudden it's three days before the election, someone says, I never got my vote by mail ballot.

And I always vote by mail.

And so we're trying our best.

If that's the way you vote, then we want to make sure we give you the information you need.

So all right, Cliff is filling in for Darwin.

Uh Cliff is our IT director, IS director.

He's the direct, he's the guru.

Okay, but he knows this equipment as well as all does the programming for all the other equipment and everything, his staff.

So, Cliff, take it from here.

What have you got here?

Yes, this is all granted by Blue Crest.

And uh this section of Blue Crest uh mail stream.

You think of it as the out balance?

So pixel envelope and it's in the packet, and the inbound envelope, CBC sleeve, and uh the ballot, depending on the balance ballot.

If I mentioned that size of blue crest vantage, and that's the invalid, that's like a two separate now.

Also, just uh FYI.

Um I think it's gonna happen for Justin goes.

Is it gonna happen for the primary?

The I voted sticker, they're released.

Alright, we will have our first I voted sticker on vote by mail secrecy sleeves because that's one of the things those who vote by mail want to have a sticker.

I requested secrets.

They are.

Yes, they are.

All right, I think I'll try to run this down.

The real line, like we would have ballots in this section, receiver six years with that.

I vote still on it now.

That's how we address it.

That's about 5,000, 6,000 an hour, depending on the reaction.

And also, if any reason that machine put two ballots in an envelope, it weighs that and kicks that out.

So that it knows the weight of what that should be.

So this is on what envelopes.

This is on the return envelope.

What you're seeing there with the name and the barcode is on the return envelope.

This is the return envelope.

We also was the first county in the state that did a flap to cover your signature so nobody would steal your signature.

But that's what you see there.

It goes through this verifies.

This also is a process, so we can give credit to the voter also by reading that.

Yeah.

What is the post office?

That's what you did.

This particular post office uses this here.

This code.

Yeah, and uses that code, those two codes.

So they're not the same.

This code and this code is different.

Yeah.

This is a line just to the voter.

This information here.

Right.

This is the USBS.

Right.

So the tracking of the ballot is not done by this, but it's done by this with the post office.

Right.

Which is required.

It's not on the actual ballot.

No.

The ballot itself has no identity to the voter.

Once they come in, and the process is, and it'll explain, is when they come back in, they'll run through that machine.

And what it's doing is it's capture a signature of the ballot on the ballot so that they never leave here the ballots.

But downtown, the staff can then pull up the voter who's voted, check the signature to all the signatures that we have on record.

If it matches, hits yes, it goes back to the equipment, it goes back out, and then we open them up in the front of the public.

When we open them, it's an open separate, and then that now we can no longer identify that ballot to any voter.

And then they do it that quick, so they're not looking at it either.

Oh, that's this one and that one.

So is that signature technology the same as what's used for petitions for qualifying vote or something like that?

It is the signature verification on petitions and on ballots is all manually.

There are some counties that will use the bank technology like they do on checks, and you can set it to the degree that you want acceptance or rejection.

Sensitivity, we do not use that.

We use now by state law, every poll worker and not poll worker, but every staff member that reviews signatures, including myself and canvas aboard, has to take signature verification training so that we can know how to spot fraud versus you know duplicates in the end and someone tracing and all those kind of things.

So our staff has to take that training.

Our staff looks at everyone, and then when if they're rejected, then two things happen.

The voter gets notified that your signature was rejected.

Now that's for two reasons.

One is if the voter actually signed it, the voter has a chance by five o'clock Thursday to cure that, which means come in, show your ID, and we'll count it.

If the voter didn't sign it, someone voted for them, now the voters alerted.

Hey, they just called me and said there was a vote by mill ballot, and I never voted that.

And then we turn it over to the FDLE and the Florida uh Crimes Division of Elections, and they would investigate that.

So two purposes there of notifying the voter.

Uh then it goes to the canvasing board.

The canvas aboard there in front of the public to pull up the signature that's been rejected, all the signatures, and the canvas and board, again, with a vote of two at least, can vote it up or vote it down.

You know, and if it's rejected, again, voters notified, they can still come in and correct it by five o'clock on Thursday.

You know, so that's that notification process.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Um, so and also on the outbound, uh, when he gets finished here, they run them through there for postal zip codes so we can get bulk mail status that helps us save our costs.

Uh we also not required, but we're one of the counties, we do pay for the postage coming back in.

Um, because when it's not paid for what they found out is the elections office were paying for it anyway, because it didn't have a stamp on it that mail they'd do it anyway.

So it was easier to let's just pay for it on the inbound.

Yeah.

So, all right.

Cliff, other things you want to show the out there?

I realize, but that's awesome.

I mean, that's it.

Maybe it has a camera, so we have a new image.

Yeah, of each of the signatures.

That camera capital.

It was five times as fast as that.

Yeah, what is the point of the extra move?

That's different passes as well.

I'll come fast and then incoming pass.

We have those pockets too that we have a different uh city.

So if something is being read, yeah, the camera over there in the first bin is reading each one.

We can have our code, who the voter is and capture the city calls.

Also part of our uh renovation, we have an extreme ballot storage room.

Uh you may wonder what do they do in all the ballots when they uh when they come in vote by mail, or they come in during early voting, it goes straight to the storage room.

Again, limited employees in there, and that's where we store them because again, we've got to recreate that election if we have a recount.

So if the FBI codes.

All right, yeah, uh DOJ, FBI, CISA, Homeland Secure, they all come.

In fact, we have a meeting.

When is it?

Maybe May 7th with all those acronyms at the FBI headquarters.

So uh we'll know then what security threats and what their plans are and how we communicate.

So now let go beyond it now.

But no more, but this one.

Yeah, that was part of the renovation of the light.

That's why they don't get people from coming.

And here basically it's, you know, you gotta realize this building that you're in, we occupy about 55,000 square feet.

The building itself is one million square feet, so I don't ever see us expanding that way.

So unless we do the election for the entire state, but uh all our DS 300s are back there, our e-vids, uh, we do our logic and accuracy test in the back area, and the public comes to that when we're testing the equipment.

Um, everything is color coded uh for all the precincts.

All the poll workers know that what's to be in bags.

There are election night that it is is a wonderful thing to watch.

Uh, we are so excited when the box trucks line up out there in the parking lot to start dropping off equipment, and they're just processing everything because again, we've got to account for everything when it comes back.

Um, it is it's a great process at that point.

Uh I do always show as you come back this way.

Election equipment lasts about 10 to 12 years.

And it's not cheap.

Election equipment is about uh for our DS 300s and evids, we probably spent six to eight million somewhere in that range.

Uh and they last about 10 to 12 years.

Which is not a lot of elections because you do basically you do seven elections every four years.

You know, so uh at best you're getting somewhere out of there anywhere between 14 and 21 elections, you know, before you have to buy new voting equipment.

But the thing that outlasts everything is voting boosts.

Now these are newer ones, but the metal ones that you see on that side over there are the same one used for the 2000 election with the punch cards, and you still open them up and occasionally find a chads in there, and you flip it over, and that's where the punch card system would go.

And our museum, you'll see all the equipment used in the last uh 40 years, 50 years.

We even got a lever machine that's around here.

Right on the other side as well.

Yeah, so these booths though is shaky.

Yes.

Uh that they're we replace them as they get them.

They have they have lasted a long time, so uh, but that's our equipment and what we do in all the bags.

So any questions here?

Okay.

Well, we're gonna go into the uh into our meeting room and and uh continue y'all's EAP meeting.

So we'll head out.

What's the easiest way?

If you want to go this way, you can put that forward.

If you go to our right, you'll see the lover machine and a little pocket.

This nicely, um, right, and then that's what I need to do.

Oh, uh, yeah, that's in the mid-70s.

Yeah.

Right, you voted on leverage machines.

Oh years.

Yeah, okay.

We're gonna restore it a little better.

And it was interesting.

You talk about technology and equipment.

The way this worked is you went in, there was a lever here that you closed, and that automatically closed the curtains.

They're torn up because every voter wanted to open the curtains and close them themselves.

Obviously, thousands of voters.

But what you do is you make your selections and push down the lever.

Okay.

Well, and it totally up there because again, got important voters.

Only voting pointers left down will register.

Guess what voters would do?

I poked for this one, this one, this one, but I don't want anyone to see this, so I'm gonna put them back up.

Thinking that just the action putting it down.

But what happened is it stayed down, and then when you did the lever to open the curtains, there's there's wheels in the back with numbers.

It would register for that.

Maybe this candidate A is wheel number 12.

It would go over one more.

And so you say, well, no electronics, no internet, no wired to anything other than there was a light in here.

But um, but from a standpoint, where's the human error?

Somebody had to write down those things correctly.

Okay, again, do you had a trust they would write down the right ones for the right people and the right number?

Who would audit?

Who would do that?

Every system, you have to look and say, where could there be a potential fraud, errors, human errors, and even this system and the punch card system had its system?

When you have the museum, could you turn it out this way so people could see the gears in the back?

Yeah, we'll we'll do something so we can see the back and come back into that because it's it's neat because like you say, there's all these little counters back then.

They run out of money when they started buying curtains.

Yeah.

And you know, hey, our guys, you know, looking at equipment.

Can you imagine this thing is not locked, you know?

And loading out there wasn't a lot of precinct, but that was some heavy equipment to get back in.

When was the last time we used that for voting?

I want to say the punch card system came in, I want to say somewhere.

Did y'all have a number?

1980.

I want to say maybe 76 was the last presidential election in Duval County that we used the lever machine.

Wow.

Wow.

Jimmy cards because I was living in Waycross, they used them into the 80s.

Yeah.

The punch card was like, oh man, this is so great.

You know, the punch card system.

There's no electronics, you don't have to haul this heavy, it's just those little silver boxes, and you give them a card and they go in there and they punch it out.

Well, unfortunately, once again, voters punch only one.

They would say, oh, I'm gonna punch with this one and this one, this one.

And I go back to the 2000 election with Bush and Gore.

There was that race was decided by 537 votes out of 10 million casts in the state of Florida.

In Duval County alone, there was over 6,000 overvotes.

See the DS 300, you overvote, what does it do?

It kicks it out because it will not accept it.

Punch card, you overvote, you just turn it in until we go to count it.

You know, and what happened was a thousand people had voted for uh uh Al Gore and Libertarian candidate Harry Brown.

Why did they do that?

Because Congresswoman Brown said, make sure you go in there and vote for Gore and Brown, and they did.

It wasn't her brown, it was Harry Brown.

That was a thousand.

Five thousand had voted for everybody but George Bush.

Because the instruction was vote for anybody but George Bush.

And they voted for everybody but George Bush.

Had it been the technology of the DS 300, it would have changed the history of elections.

Yeah, you know, so technology is important, and it's important to always look and say, where are the situations that will prevent an accurate election?

You know, so love the history of it.

So follow me, we'll go to our meeting.

It's a little bit of a lot of people.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

But we wanted to let you say that.

Well, I thought it been a business practice of this family.

Well, what's different about this panel is is different how we've done this.

Very seldom is there a replacement like what we did.

We changed who the appointees was.

Typically, it is you, you're coming up for re-election, but they haven't approved the re-election, so you stay until the re-election.

But in this case, the council moved forward on his legislation that specifically said he was replacing you, so that's why it is different than what you typically see, you know.

But hopefully, as a voting member, you'll be back soon.

So I'm advocating for it.

So I'll turn it over to our chairperson, whoever who's great, you're still in.

So we'll open uh with introductions.

I'll start with my right.

All right.

My name is Donovan Bradley.

Gloria Einstein, Carmen Martinez Lenel film, Austin Quickly.

Ed Williams, Robert Maldonado, Justin Gicolo.

Jerry Hellman, Brandon Russell Council Research.

All right.

We have a quorum.

Yeah.

We do the approval of the December minutes.

May I give a second?

A motion.

A motion.

Yes.

Motion.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed.

So move.

Supervisor of election update.

All right.

I give you a couple things.

Justin, you pass his a couple things we want to talk about.

One is we were very excited.

One of the pieces of legislation, wasn't a lot of legislation passed in Tallahassee this year, but one of it was House Bill 461.

House Bill 461 was volunteering at polling locations.

Representative Michael introduced it on the House.

Senator Yarborough introduced it in the Senate.

And it passed unanimously.

And if they like it and they end up being an asset, then maybe they come back in the future and be poll workers and actually be paid.

But that did pass.

We're still waiting on the governor's signature, but that was one piece of legislation that passed.

The other piece of legislation, it was a little more controversial and obviously was not unanimous, was House Bill 991.

House Bill 991 is considered are called the Florida Save Act.

As you know, there's the Save Act that's going through on the federal level.

This was referred to as the SAFE Act on a state level.

First of all, there's nothing in the SAVE Act for voters that will impact either the primary or general election in 2026.

It is effective January 991 does is uh specifically it's geared to how registrations are done to prevent non-U.S.

citizens from registering.

And so and part of that, and I'll cover that in some of those statistics I gave you, is the registration process for supervisors of elections and staff is a ministerial role, which means basically uh currently and even in the future, when someone signs up as a voter, I you do not at that point have to show your passport, birth certificate, anything like that.

You check the box and you sign a oath that you are uh you are agreeing to everything you signed here, or it's a perjury and uh a criminal offense, but if you check you're a U.S.

citizen, I must move the process forward.

Um, or if for some reason you don't check that box, and we'll send out verify why you left it out, and then let you know that you can't register.

But the state of Florida, the division of elections starts the process of verifying whether or not a voter is a U.S.

citizen.

And in doing so, there's a separate part of the legislation that helps them do that because uh starting in January, as you get a driver's license, renewed or a new one, or you come into the state, uh, like you have done with the uh real ID law, which is basically what got you the gold star on your driver's license.

You showed who you were.

You had to show proof.

If your name had changed, uh due to marriage or some reason, you had to show as you do currently today, uh, why your name changed.

Here's a marriage certificate.

Here's a naturalization, you know, that I changed my name.

That is the way it's worked.

And so now, when you get your real ID in the future, you will show citizenship to the highway safety motor vehicle agent.

You will show a birth certificate, a passport, a naturalization certificate.

So, and your driver's license will indicate U.S.

citizen, non-U.S.

citizen.

So again, they will let us know if a voter someone who registered to vote is a non-U.S.

citizen.

So when they let us know, we then that's when we start the process, we have to do process before we remove them from that registration.

Send them a letter, say, listen, you know, these are the facts that show that you're not a U.S.

citizen, and if you can bring forth evidence that you are, then we can get a copy of that evidence, send it to the state, and complete your application.

And so that's where we get involved in this Florida Save Act 991.

So that'll be where citizenship will be a process of HSMV, as well as we're in the back end if for some reason uh it does not indicate or they don't have any evidence of the person being a U.S.

citizen.

And so uh that'll be the change.

The other change to it is uh the number of IDs that were allowed and are allowed through the end of this year, are gonna change.

They're gonna drop off.

They're gonna drop off student IDs, uh community center IDs, uh, credit cards and debit cards.

Uh, those were forms of ID that could be accepted.

Uh the other forms that were accepted, such as uh military ID, driver's license, Florida ID, uh passport, um, uh government ID, uh any of those as they were in the past will still be accepted in the future.

And so that's some of the things as far as new business on the legislation.

What I passed out to you also in these uh numbers is a couple things.

A lot of times we look, everyone goes to the website and looks and says, okay.

Uh we've got 461,000 voters.

You know, uh, first of all, uh we've got 7,000 total fewer voters today than we did July 1st of 2023.

So you're thinking, okay, well, 7,000 people went away.

No, that's just the net result.

What this form shows you is the process and the reasons voters get removed from the rolls and the numbers that did that.

We talked about four in other meetings.

There's three types of statuses of voters.

There's the active voter, the inactive voter, and the ineligible voter.

The both the voter, active and inactive, are allowed to vote.

They have not been removed from the rolls.

The way you become inactive is not by not voting.

The way you become inactive is you move and you don't tell us where you moved.

And so basically we sent out election mail that's non-fortable.

It comes back from the post office saying they're no longer there.

We then are required to send a piece of mail that is fortable, that gets forwarded to you, and you must respond in 30 days.

If you don't, you move from active to inactive.

Are you safe there?

Sort of.

Here's what happens.

If you go to vote, you're going to update your address.

If you don't vote in two federal elections as an inactive voter, you move to ineligible.

It means probably most likely you've moved out of the state.

You really don't care about updating us, you just don't want to vote anymore.

And so the first list is since 2023, the 61,302 voters that were moved from active to inactive.

The next list is those that were moved to ineligible.

Sometimes you don't make the jump from active to inactive.

In other words, when we get the notification from the state that you're a civil rights felon, then you know it's not an inactive to ineligible.

If you're deceased, it's not an inactive to ineligible.

As there are 3,931 felons since July 1 of 2023, 21,322 are voters who have died.

Other reasonings there, if they didn't list the Florida address, residential address.

If they asked for a hearing because they were moved to ineligible and they didn't come to the hearing, that's a default to ineligibility.

If you're adjudicated by the court system, not by me, but by the court system, usually it's family members taking a family member to court that they're new long, they're mentally incapacitated.

Then we get notified by the court and you're removed as a voter.

45,000 moved out of the county.

Some may have become voters in other counties, but in our county, they moved off the roll.

Since July 1 of 2023, we have identified 139 non-U.S.

citizens on the roll.

They're not always the person registering's fault.

Sometimes it will actually be they check the box, they did not check the box US citizen, but human error happens where staff is processing 99.9% of applications are U.S.

citizen.

Here comes one that's blank and they don't catch the blank.

So they put them in the system, and then all of a sudden the state catches them, comes back, and then they're removed for being a non-U.S.

citizen.

Not their fault.

If it is their fault, and they're vote and they and even if they have voted, then the Florida Election Crimes Division goes after them with FTLE and the state attorney and prosecutes.

It has nothing to do with me prosecuting.

They're the agencies that move forward on that.

So that's your non-U.S.

citizens.

Duplication registrations.

That's someone can be registered, they married in a, they end up processing the application as a new voter instead of a change of name.

Can be a duplicate registration.

Office errors, again, if we process someone that should have been processed.

Believe it or not, 5,227 voters said, I no longer want to vote.

I am taking me off the rolls.

And they give us a written request to take me off the rolls.

And so we abide by that request.

The 33,000 are basically those that were inactive that missed two federal elections, now they become ineligible.

They can re-register again.

It doesn't prevent a person from re-registering.

But again, they have to start that over for that reason.

So again, that gives you the party breakdowns of those ineligible.

And then also, you know, we're not just trying to just keep our rolls clean.

We're adding voters.

The next list at the bottom, voter registrations that are still active today, and why there's two lists here.

We've added since July 1 that are still active on the rolls today, 68,000 new voters to our voting rolls.

The reason the next list says 89,000 is we made them active, and then they moved and did something else.

So again, it doesn't always mean that they stay here since 2023.

The last thing is I mentioned before vote by mail requests.

We're up in the queue right now of 21,354 and domestic, it's uh almost 20,000 and overseas.

I said more than that, but actually it's 1,428 of our overseas voters.

So that's the numbers I always like to share.

We did 991.

Let me share one last thing just to cover for the point of interest.

We just especially we're honoring the city council is honoring our poll workers.

Uh the day will probably be sometime in August.

I think August 11th will be our poll worker recognition day as city council.

And we'll invite all poll workers who want to come at that point.

City Council wants to recognize them for the hard work and everything, and so that'll be August 11th of 2026.

Uh that will be done.

And just for the record, just to let you know where we're at.

Just now I'm not going to go into November, but the August primary is next week.

We do qualifying for our judicial candidates.

Many of them are coming in our office now pre-qualifying, which you can do the week before, bringing us their check, you know, and the forms and completing all those.

The end of next week, we'll have if any of our judges are challenged.

We do have two what we call open judicial seats, which means an incumbent's not running.

So we'll see who files and qualifies for those.

So we will have, as far as for those nonpartisan MPA voters, we will have races on the ballot.

That's something we try to get out, especially school board races.

Anyone can vote in that MPAs, minor parties, as well as our judicial races, and we will have judicial races.

First day for us to send out their overseas ballots 45 days before the election.

The petition deadline for the school board and those candidates is May 11th.

Qualifying for the fall elections is June 8th through the 12th.

It'll end on the 12th, so we'll know who's going to be on the ballot in August by June 12th.

Then we'll send out our domestic vote by mail ballots on July 9th.

We will do book closing for the last day to register for the August election will be July 20th.

And then we'll do our LA test for the equipment for the primary on July 23rd.

Early voting for the primary will be eight days.

10 days of early voting.

It'll be from 10 in the morning till 6 in the evening.

It'll be Thursday through the Thursday the 6th through Saturday the 15th, will be our early voting.

We adjust early voting based on what we think the demand will be and the hours based on that.

We're typically in a general election.

We may do the full 12 hours of early voting and the full 14 days, sometimes in the general election.

And then we come down to the election is on August 18th.

That, sir, is our update, the supervisor.

Well, an update.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Very informative.

We appreciate it.

The next on the agenda is old business.

So a couple questions.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Are we with uh polling places?

We have everything.

I'm gonna we actually, and that's one of the challenges has been uh over the last few decades is places wanting to be polling locations.

We tried to use as many as possible that are government owned.

One, we don't have to pay for those.

Um, but that's not the reason we don't expand the number of polling locations, is because if we can find them, we will.

Just as a point of reference, when I'm supervising before, we had 299 precincts in Duball County with 200,000 less voters.

And today we have a hundred and sixty and sixty uh precincts.

So you see the drop off is not because of just wanting to be efficient.

It's because, again, of finding those locations, and also a lawsuit that when it came in, we can't just say, Oh, well, we can find locations in City, City Council District 5, so we can add four more there or five more there, but we can't find them somewhere else.

The lawsuit we faced when I came in office was under the equal protection clause, which says you've got to give an equal access to voting throughout the county.

You can't say, you know, someone who was playing politics could say, Hey, I want more in my political party districts, but less over here and make it harder for someone to vote.

So, and uh not that that was being done intentionally, but there were some districts that had as many as 18 and some as few as I think eight or not, eight.

And so that's where the lawsuit said you can't do that, you know, and so we mediated and came with a happy medium of 11.

11, which we can have no more than 12, no less than nine to 10, okay.

Yeah, 11, so 10 to 12, and so um, so yes, we've had I'll let Justin cover how many have backed out what we're working, but we do have probably eight or ten changes that will be coming before the primary.

Justin, you can so right now we're uh sitting at 11 polling places that decline to continue being a polling location.

Uh the districts that are affected or uh where these polling places are found are district one, district two has uh district two, district three, district three is uh kind of a was a temporary change.

Uh, the polling location was going on renovation uh during 24.

So we're just going back, so that's not that big of a change for uh that community.

Uh district five, district six, eleven, and fourteen.

Um, as of right now, uh, they have been quite challenging to find people willing to open their doors uh for voting uh in the climate that we're in, as well as stuff that we require and with agreements and attorneys nowadays.

Um I actually talked to our precinct facilitator.

I used to do his job back in 2008, and he said, How'd you do it?

And took to kind of up when I started, we had 314 and stuff.

So yeah, and we went down to 299 years after about it from there.

So he goes, How'd you do it?

I said it was a lot easier in the sense that attorneys weren't involved, uh, the political political climate was a little different and stuff.

So we've had a challenge.

Um we've gotten all but four sites kind of locked in and stuff that we're just waiting on signatures.

Uh the additional thing is the city because we do give them us basically a facility fee to open to turn the lights on or have someone come open for us.

Uh, but in order to do that, they have to become a supplier with the city of Jacksonville.

Um I just found this out this past week, and it's probably why some of the sites turn us down.

If you ever do supply, uh, come up vendor for the city, you have to go online and fill out all the things.

But when you print it, it's this thick.

Oh, and so it's just straight intimidation.

Uh we have we've we always when we go out, we tell them we'll come sit with them to do it, we'll do it on the phone, do it over a teams meeting.

So we're trying to kind of guide that stuff because some of these churches that I mean they're there Wednesday and Sunday, it's just they're small, but uh we try to go through that.

We will have some uh polling locations because of the the because of the polling locations closing.

We're actually going to be reducing the number of precincts in that district.

Um, as of right now, district 14 is the only one that we're kind of solid in that that's going to reduce by one precinct and district 14.

But we won't go below our minimum.

And we're correct, we will not go below the 10 on there.

Uh and then two other ones are waiting to hear back to see if we can get uh the two sites to say yes, if they can, then we'll obviously just continue with that.

If not, then those are boundary changes as well to ensure we don't do below the 10.

That's been agreed upon that.

Anything else on that?

Good.

Okay, thank you.

Well, no other questions?

Um, I think this is old business because we did talk about it last meeting, um, but since then the this verif, well, deverification form for people who signed petitions for constitutional amendments has gone out, and I I was what I was trying to convey at the last meeting is we need a big disclaimer that says if you sign this petition, you don't have to do anything.

Uh but I found this even to me as confusing and scary and vaguely threatening.

Um we did not design it, nor are we allowed to change it.

Um it is from the division of elections, and it's specifically it it accomplishes I think what they were looking to accomplish.

Yeah, which is scare people.

Um, so I'm curious, is this has been out of a couple weeks ago, couple, well this says well, I don't know.

Yeah, have you gotten many of these back?

So they actually don't come back to us.

Uh so it's it's a two-step process.

Yeah, so we have to notify if if all of us sign the petition, the elections office accepts the signature, we notify you to say, Hey, we accepted your signature for petition block.

If I said, I didn't sign that, my wife signed it for me, and I want to turn her in because I'm really upset that they want that on the ballot, then I can send that to OECS.

So it's actually not coming back to our office, it goes to the office of election crimes and security.

We sent it to the petitioner.

We sent a petitioner, but the petitioner, when they when they complete it, they're not coming back to us, it forwards to them.

To the election, and so we got and then they will reach out to us if they believe fraud has happened.

Uh it was very I think they received.

I mean, we've had the number, uh we did close to over 100,000, did over a little over about 120 something thousand.

We signatures we verified this last cycle, but it's that July.

OECS received less than 100.

And so, and most of the time it was they forgot they signed it, and stuff.

We didn't get the full investigation subpoena for this and that.

We did for a few, but we have no idea where that's consensus.

And it's additional cost, because we paid for the postage to the voter who signed, and we also pay for the postage.

Yeah, going to OBS.

Yes, yeah, and it's a heavy piece of the yes, yeah.

In order, so the sponsor uh for us to verify on behalf of the sponsor that signature, it costs them now today, since March 1st of this year, $4.25.

And that gosh, I would should cover all our costs when it comes to so the sponsor has to pay for all this and stuff like that, yeah.

Wow, but there are sponsors that have that undue burden correct, yes, and stuff, and the in that case they also are restricted a little bit of how they can collect, but that falls on our office to pay petitioners if you have an undue burden, and so but they can go out you know and gather without paying people, and then we have to verify and do all this and not charge anybody.

And the candidates' petitions, the cost for those is not changed in the last three or four decades, it's ten cents per petition, which I can tell you it costs more than ten cents, but but I always say legislators are also candidates who get petitions, it's not gonna change.

So they um so it's the same process when people sign for a put someone on a ballot?

No, it's it's it's different.

We do not have to do that uh when it's a candidate petition.

But we have to do it on a constitutional.

Yes.

The initial petition is a different ballgame from candidate, two different sets of rules.

Well, it's uh I just think it isn't a pleasant petition, a pleasant piece of mail to get.

I think it makes people nervous.

Um so when when you said a lot of them were people forgot that they signed the petitions, how do they determine that?

The OECS basically they do the investigation, they'll contact if you send it back.

Yeah, so they'll contact you and say, why is this fraud?

Blah, blah, blah.

Did you not sign this?

They've done their full investigation and stuff like that.

It could be dropped, it could be, like I said, my wife signed it.

I she signed it.

No, no, no, you're good.

I signed it.

Change my story.

Then also they'll verify the signature with us, and we'll come back and say, No, that's actually their signature.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

This might just be my ignorance of the mail and ballot.

Is there any um any disruption?

I think there's a case out of Mississippi that's the Supreme Court just heard about taking mail in ballots, postmarked before election day, but received them, I think five days is what the what the Mississippi law is.

Is that impact anything with the well the state of Florida one?

Those uh coming back in don't get postmarked.

Okay.

First of all.

Second thing, Florida law says must be in my hand by seven o'clock.

Okay.

So basically, there's not a need for post office.

And we'll go down, we send someone down to the boat post office and say, Do you have any?

Even at, you know, at before they close there, but we know that when we get the three o'clock or five o'clock, that's the deadline.

We're not gonna get any more, but we'll check.

The only place we get like last minute is people have gotten lazy at times and said, Well, I can't make it back to my precinct, I'm gonna go to the downtown office and vote by mail.

And they get upset because unlike a precinct, if you're in line, you can still vote.

If you're in line to get a vote by mail, or you're even working on it, we'll go.

You have 20 seconds, you have thir ten seconds, it is seven o'clock.

If you're over there and you haven't turned it in, we'll take it from you, but it is it came in late.

Okay, so um the early voting days for the primary.

Um, I mean, that was a fairly recent um decision because I had already signed up to work the polls uh in those first few days that that aren't happening.

Um what is it based on that that you think you're not going to have people coming out and and that you reduce the days?

We look at a couple things, and it's it's based on several factors.

One is we look at turnout numbers, we look at previous elections, how many took advantage of early voting.

As we talked about a shift away from vote by mail, well, it's not going to early voting, it's actually going to election day.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I thought it was going to early based on my contact with voters, it's going to early voting.

It's going to election day.

So we see no indication that early voting, though we've expanded early voting as far as locations.

Because again, our reason to make sure early vote or something like that is because again, the reduction of precincts, we don't want an hour, two hour lines of election day.

Because what'll happen is some people won't wait in line.

So we've now, in a sense, by our inefficiencies has caused people not to want to vote.

I mean, they could have stayed in line and voted.

We didn't take away their right, but from that standpoint, you know, it is shifted.

So we look at demand and and we're we don't have to be fiscally responsible.

If we don't think the demand's there, then we're not just gonna do it because we can, you know, and and other counties are the same way.

We look at it, adjust, and and make our call.

Um, so far we've been good at that, you know, calling what how many days and what the turnout is.

And as you know, anyone who's worked early voting is the demand increases till the last day.

Right.

The first day, it kind of is a bump because I'm a first day early voting guy, because hey, it's in my office, why not?

You know, but it you got the first day, I'm gonna get it out of the way, and then it drops, and then it comes back up.

Well, and that's my next question, which is I was disappointed to see that the Sunday before the election wasn't even one of the options.

We always have at least one Sunday, and and from that standpoint, so people can have souls to the polls, but from the other standpoint is I will tell you from an IT if Cliff was still in here, to get ready for that Tuesday is very difficult.

We have to we print backup registers in case the events are down.

We have to get all those put together, everything together.

We have to do so many reports and everything for that.

That extra day makes for a smoother election day.

I'm sure, you know, if demand required it, we thought there was such a demand.

I'm not saying demand meaning I really want it, but demand meaning the volume of people using it, then we look at it and typically we take we bite the bullet on the general because we know we want to get those people to vote prior to election day.

Okay, so that was my next question was you're not gonna take away that last Sunday on the general election.

It's not our current plan.

Okay, that there's this caster at the bottom, right?

And again, I have to look at the budget, I have to look at everything and make that decision, but we have not set the hours or days for the general election yet.

Okay, can I get uh so the piggyback off Cliff?

It's really our candidates director and our voter services director, and the staff at the city's copy center that makes the preferred paper registers that Supervisor Allen mentioned, they're there at basically at midnight to about 2 a.m.

assembling those registers to get them back to our office Monday morning so that we can get them to the managers are picking up the yellow bag.

When it's done on Sunday, yeah, so they're there that if we go to that seven o'clock and stuff, so by pushing not having Sunday, we have basically a normal business day hours that people are used to with the body to get through.

And we we've adjusted sometimes, even on the weekend ones because even during a general election, what we found is people do not get up on Saturday and go vote early.

I mean, they will vote, and you know, and on Sunday, they typically aren't getting up when if we opened it at seven in the morning, we're not seeing them there.

You know, it's usually after church or at least after nine o'clock or ten o'clock.

So can you do a half test?

Well, we we can adjust, we can do a minimum of eight hours, okay, and that's our minimum.

So we we look at adjusting those two.

Also, the other side is we're fortunate yourself and others who want to work early voting, but we also know, and uh you know, we have to break those up in shifts for one reason, is it puts a lot of demand on individuals to work if you have to 14 days prior to working election day.

Yeah, and what we found too is some would work early voting and not show up election day.

Yeah, that's a problem.

Yeah, that makes a problem too.

So thank you, right?

Any other questions, statements?

Right, so are we in old business?

I guess it is.

Anything else on old business?

There's uh when I we put some old business that uh question uh Gloria had uh about the audit and stuff.

Yeah, we cannot uh at the last one she was uh forgot the term you used, but basically we cannot choose our audit.

In other words, we can't say what race we want, everything is random.

There's no leeway in that.

Just I told y'all to come back and oh right, for triple check and everything.

I say it.

Risk limiting on risk limit, yes, and stuff.

And I told you I would triple check just to make sure I did.

It's just how it's laid out there.

There's no other will around there.

Um, also on uh Bobby's uh you asked about poll workers where we were at that time, um so we are fully staffed for early voting and election day.

Uh right now, the only thing that we have is basically substitutions.

Uh so in other words, someone has committed to it, but since has said, Oh, I can't do it, so now we're filling holes and stuff like that, and we're building our standby pool.

Our standby pool is uh workers that uh will come as of now to the election center.

Uh they will be paid a minimum of four hours.

Uh they are there in case uh if I'm a poll worker and I call out sick.

They have someone, we have someone now to replace me, we can send them to that polling location.

So they're fully staffed for the day.

And we also do that for the remote.

Uh supervised voting.

Also, also we are uh just a kind of thing.

We have actually increased the number of sites that are requesting supervised voting.

We goalize poll workers for that to ensure that we have staffing proper, so all that is also.

And then the last thing on the poll workers is the request from Supervisor Holland to our staff that we go above and beyond what the statute says is all uh polling locations are staffed with at least two R's and two, two Republicans and two Democrats in every group.

The state law only says you can have all of one party and have someone who's not of that party.

You can have an MPA and six Rs or six D's, you know.

And although that's the state law for transparency and confidence after the election, so one side or the other goes, well, look at all these precincts.

We didn't have any of ours there.

They could have done this or this or this.

Well, guess what?

We know we're putting both parties in there.

So if there's any shenanigans or something like that, they're there.

Yes, there can be poll watchers, but again, the poll workers knows exactly what's going on.

And so I think it adds more transparency and integrity if we have both parties represented in every precinct.

I tried to get that in state law, and I didn't have any counties supporting it.

Yes.

If I may, so there's been a lot of tension going on.

We have a potential redistricting, not redistricting going on.

There's an executive order out there, which is not a law, but is an executive order about vote by mail.

There's a lot of nefarious stuff going on out in the community about different entities, forces, elected officials, election officials.

Do you have any concern about the safety of voters at polling sites or poll workers at election sites for our August or November election?

Well, obviously, we work very closely one with Jacksville Sheriff's Office, and we have a contact there, and we're communicating throughout, not just for the safety of the poll workers, but to let us know if something's happening in the area.

I remember years ago there was a bank robbery.

Let us know to shut down to make sure that's why you see police cars and why they're chasing in the helicopters over top.

So we're communicating there.

Um we also have a meeting it's May 7th at the FBI headquarters to meet with the FBI, uh, FDLE, the state's crime people, uh, Homeland Security, everyone to brief us and open up lines of communications.

You know, as of this point, we've, you know, they also will brief us.

It was the there was the uh call a month or so ago, and most of it was uh not the security of the are at the polling location, it was whether or not your systems uh were going to be hacked or anything like that, and so what kind of you know uh firewalls and what do you have to protect your your systems?

And so again, they're monitoring that, and and this meeting will know more, and we'll update y'all as we find out.

But um, someone asks, are we gonna have any type of law enforcement at the polling locations?

The answer is no, because uh again, we know of no particular uh you know, but if something comes up, if we get threats, we inform them if they want to put uh undercover people or something, they will.

As you know, even in the one election where we had what we thought was a potential bomb threat, it was basically a homeless person had left the bag uh in the parking lot.

Uh everyone responded, all the law agencies verified.

We were up and running within an hour, and it was a it was able to also send the voters that they needed to have to vote to our downtown office and they could vote a vape uh vote by mail ballot.

So we'll do whatever it is to continue the voting and make sure everyone's aware and safe.

But there's no right now any specific things that we've been alerted on.

All right, we'll go to new business.

Okay, uh this maybe for Brandon more so.

Have you heard anything about vacancies on the board?

Yes, I know.

My term's up tomorrow.

Ms.

Martinez and Austin were uh April 16th of last year, and then um Mr.

Willing is joining us now for this film.

So I think we have and then there's a mayor's vacancy, so I think there's four out of the nine are technically vacant.

So yeah, so um Donovan obviously is new, so his term is until 2028.

Um Gloria, your term is also until 2028.

Um Austin, it looks like your term expired tomorrow, but since it's your first term, the way I understand is you serve until movement on it.

Um and then your wanted yours, yours was Mr.

Curry, uh mayor, mayor.

Actually, yours expired last year.

Which one?

Yeah, almost last year.

I'm still here.

It's still here.

Okay, so the mayor needs to reappoint.

Reappoint um again, yeah.

Are there's very vegan?

Um I'm not entirely sure.

Okay, that so that maybe.

And then they have a second vacancy also.

Yeah, there is that's a vacancy, and that was I believe hers.

Lenel is filling that vacancy as soon as they get the legislation.

The last I heard there was some ADA requirement on how they submit legislation and that delayed it, but um, that was the vacancy we had, but obviously we need to communicate to to Garrett or whoever.

I did I sent him an email as soon as we walked in here.

But on Austin also on the vacancies are on the those who have expired, yeah.

Okay, and calling us away forward.

Yeah, Pauline's aware of all that, and she's the one that kind of coordinates that with Garrett about the voice and commission as soon as like I get something from her, then I'll communicate about it.

Yeah, and then just renewed some, I told somebody I would renew.

Is that what you have?

So I have you down as your term expiring um on uh April 16, 2025, but again, you're in your first one, so you kind of continue to serve.

I don't know if they've prepared that legislation yet, but that would come in the form of legislation to reappoint you or to appoint somebody else.

And she was appointed by SOE.

No council, she's council.

So it was Bobby.

Yeah, um, I didn't know.

So we came on about the same time.

If you can give me, because I'll I'll also we'll follow up and try to get these.

What I have is both of you, your terms ending April 16th of last year.

Right.

Me?

Correct, right?

Yes.

I think we're pointing at the same time, yeah.

And Austin as well.

Yeah.

And Bobby, yours is last time, or trying to partial and two full terms.

I think I'm out now.

Okay, so yours will be a vacancy in the council.

Yeah, okay.

So then, and then so the two councils and two mayors.

Okay.

All right.

So I'm confused.

Uh what do I have to do?

So to the extent that you need to do anything, you know, I guess it would be to reach out to whoever nominated you, so council president, um, and see if they're moving on drafting legislation to get you there, or you can also email Colleen because she's the one that manages that as far as like coordinating with Garrett or the council president on appointments.

So Ed is a council person, right?

No, he's SOE.

SOE.

There's how many SOE?

So there is one, two, just three of those, right?

Two, one, two, three, three.

Yeah.

Okay.

If you can send me a list also, yeah.

We'll we'll we'll also pursue.

Um I think you termed out, termed out.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

I just want to then as far as first term or is that codified somewhere that you just kind of stay on until you're going to be able to do that.

I have not read the legislation.

That's something I've just understood.

Okay.

And that's been communicated, like aloud, and so I just think that is what that meant.

Yeah, I asked Colleen last time.

I wasn't sure for like voting purposes and forum purposes.

So she says for form and voting, you serve until you are replaced.

Okay.

Even though the legislation says that's what she's buying or something.

That's what you said last time.

So you'll serve for two years after it's hard.

Yeah, yeah.

I was on the waterways commission for 13 years.

And they just never renewed you.

Just every uh chair would come and say you just stay here.

Well, they only run efficiently on filling the vacancies is the SOE.

I will.

But I'll do my best to try to get the other two to move quicker, you know.

So the other new business.

Well, county wide, drive, or I can't.

Yeah, yeah, a couple other new business to tell them about that.

So uh back in March, uh, our office uh every year we are required to go into every to go to the public schools, private schools, colleges, universities, stuff to do student voter registration.

Uh this past year.

Uh we visited 28 schools for our countywide drive.

Uh that's 11 more than participated the previous year.

Uh, we collected uh close to 3,000 applications during that time.

Uh that's consisted of uh pre-registered, you can pre-register at age 16.

Um, and then uh some of our brand new, they were 18 at the time, as well as some basically when I said submitted application, and they might not be new.

They pre-registered 16.

They might be 17 or 18 now, and guess what?

They're kind of into the parties now, 16 and stuff like that.

So we have everything from there, as well as change of addresses and stuff like that.

So we're out there from those uh sites doing that, including the colleges.

We do make this a uh competition between the schools.

Uh we break it down into public and private, um, and then into tiers of categories of student population, and we uh award a freedom award trophy to the schools with the highest percentage of registered students at the stuff.

Uh for the public schools, just to kind of go through this real quick.

Uh our large school uh category for public schools first because high school is the winner in 2026.

Our medium public school was Terry Parker High School, and our small public school is Bridge Day Success Academy.

For the private schools, our large private school was Bishop Kinney High School, uh, the medium was the bowl school, and the small uh private school is Pace Center for Girls, uh located here in Jacksonville, and then for the college and university, uh Edward Wards University.

Cool.

Uh one from that side, and then we'll redo this again in 2027.

Right?

Question.

How often do you guys do that?

We do it annually.

Um and stuff uh we try to do everything in the same kind of time period and stuff, but because of schedules and stuff, we will try we will alter that a little bit.

So some went in the fall, and we'll just do it for this.

Uh some actually partner with third party voter registration organizations, and if they do that and they let us know, we'll still include them as a participant in our countywide drive and stuff like that.

No, thank you.

Um, I probably know the answer to this because I know how proactive your team is, and how much that is appreciated in the community, but with everything moving towards the Ford ID and the Florida driver's license, I know organizations who do a lot of outreach.

We realize that a lot of young people are not getting driver's license because they're not driving.

To include, we see this on college campuses, right?

So are y'all really encouraging them to at least get a Florida ID when you're out in the schools or on the college campuses since that's really gonna be a prerequisite going forward after January 2027?

We explain it to them, you know.

Um again, you're in an age group that's from 18 to 21.

16.

Yeah, and that really is the key that we're gonna do.

Yes, yeah.

But fortunately, they they do not have to have the part ID or the part of driver's license.

They do have to have a social, the last four digits.

Um, so but we we do try to educate them on the importance of that, and also it use it as an ID.

You know, most of them need an ID of some sort, usually when they had 21 for that reason.

As we all know, but uh you know, so but it is an encouragement.

I'm sorry, that was part of the business.

You just mentioned that last one.

So yeah, I talked to one of them and stuff with nothing, like I said, nothing formal, it's just encouraged to go get it and then to complete it.

At least you put your last more to register or pre-register.

It's just that whole thing with the online voter registration is just so easy once you have that.

So well, thank y'all for the word that they'll do it.

Any other comments?

All right.

Next meeting, June 17th.

Back downtown, back downtown.

Who who made it downtown?

We won't we won't identify those people.

I do want to say, Bobby, thank you for your service.

You know, we appreciate it.

And I as you know, a lot of people, if you don't realize, I appreciate all y'all serving on this, because you serve two roles.

One is you get information out from our office to the groups that you're familiar with, you know, and you get to ask the questions and learn for them and really disseminate our information.

So we just appreciate that, and so uh thank y'all for being members and those who are someday we will be renewed.

Continue coming, please.

Careful with me.

All right, can I give a motion for adjournment?

So moved.

Second.

All in favor?

We're adjourned.

Thank you, Mr.

Holland, for a wonderful tour.

And an update.

Uh we appreciate that.

Thank you.

Your hospitality.

And we had a visitor.

Would you like to you like to join the panel at any point and submit?

You can give us a resume if we have a vacancy.

You're a voter.

I know.

Yeah.

You're a candidate, right?

Yes.

That was why I was asking.

Yeah, I knew that.

What do you candidate for?

Yeah, there's one right here.

So she's running against you, you didn't know that.

All right.

I'll see you at the beach.

So, yeah, city council.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, yeah, city council probably not.

Oh, that's why I'm not until you're I don't know.

I'm also very careful about what I say because I don't want to break any rules on our stuff.

Yeah.

But we'll check.

I mean, you could serve until.