Spalding Board of Elections meeting
Called to Order at 6:02pm
Public Comment:
Dr. Yoshunda Jones: I wanted to give an update on legislation. I wanted to report SB221 did die and we hope that it stays dead. I want to thank everyone who spoke in opposition. SB129 We were able to get passed thanks to citizens reporting issues. We hear your issues and are fighting for them every day.
Agenda: Adopted
Minutes: March 14th
Page 2. Amendment that evaluation can indeed take place in Executive Session
Passed
Election Supervisor Report
Update on Jarvis: On April 20th there will be a Q&A
Voter registration Audits take place on odd years and are currently being undertaken now. This is making sure physical artifacts are matching digital records.
As far as doing an election Jarvis is not tested yet?
Supervisor: No.
Budget Review
A Copy of fy2024 year budget proposal is presented to the board.
Staff will be different than it was last year and we are looking at 5 Possible elections, 4 for sure.
The budget in 2020 did not have the legal amount necessary for absentee ballots.
I also could not tell you where and when grant money was applied
Bylaws Amendmending
Articles 8 new section
Absentee Ballots currently clarified based upon Id and social security card.
Under suggested amendment people need to provide adequate information for application as satisfactory proof of relationship.
What would that be?
Director: The law would define that. Most of article 8 isn’t necessarily needed. These are things that the office and board would have to follow. This is simply my opinion.
How is proof you are related to someone else relevant to a signature match which this bylaw should be clarifying?
Director: The law does not rid of the signature match. We need to be careful how this affects what the law states. This needs to be fleshed out a bit.
This appears to me something to me to be something that should be under standard operating procedure rather than our by-laws.
My working assumption was that this applies to the board as well as employees. I thought it appropriate to include a certain level of guidance.
Next section in Article 8
Drop Boxes are available in voting locations from 9 to 5 with 24hr security surveillance except the last four days of an election.
Director: The last four days do not need to be written. We might just need to say drop boxes are available in accordance with code
Director: The next line says only workers can provide food or water. What you are saying is if there’s no line there doesn’t need to be water in the line. I do not feel we should put a strain on the staff or budget given that we would be in the middle of running an election.
Dexter Wimbish: If we really want to get down to it we should just put the election board shall provide water. It would help ease voters’ worries about disenfranchisement.
Director: If we can get a legal way to do that I’m all for it. We had over 12,000 voters in the primaries. Do I want to be affiliated with something that looks like we are enticing people to vote? Are you willing to come every day to make sure the water is stocked?
Dexter Wimbish: I appreciate your honesty but your attitude is not personable. How we got to a place where we argue about water is ridiculous.
Director: There’s a keyword from my point of view, The members of the public are prohibited. My confusion about this is about why the public is mentioned here and the public is not governed by these by-laws. Let’s remove the part about the public I think
Board Discussion
How do we handle these edits?
How about we create a scroll doc? Idea to create a scrolling document with edits is carried forward
The Evaluation of Election Supervisor Kimberly Slaughter Discussed in Executive Session
Board member comments
I encourage you to help us deal with duplicate registration. Our workers do the best jobs they can
EXECUTIVE SESSION/MEETING ADJOURNED
These meetings are open to the public by Georgia law.
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