 So tonight I'm going to start just by letting all of our panelists introduce themselves and talk a little bit about what their relationship is to elections in Clark County, what their interest is or what work they do related to elections. So we'll go ahead and just start here. Hi, I'm Lisa McGlawn. I'm an election assistant with the Athens-Clarke County Board of Elections and Voter Registration. I've worked there since 2018. I started as a poll worker, so I've come up through the ranks and now I manage the warehouse where the equipment is housed. We have over a million dollars worth of equipment and that's my responsibility to make sure it's well taken care of and that you can vote on it on election day. Good evening everyone. My name is Charlotte Sosby. I serve as the Director of Elections for Athens-Clarke County. I come with 34 and a half years of elections experience. I joined the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government in 2016 and I love elections. My name is Rocky Raffel and I'm the Chair of the Board of Elections. Hello everyone. My name is Broderick Flanagan and I am the Executive Director of a 501c3 nonprofit, the Economic Justice Coalition and we've been doing voter registration since the early 2000s. We took a break and started back up around 2008, I want to say, and we've registered or updated the voter registration information of nearly 23,000 people in the Northeast Georgia region over the years. So I wanted to start tonight with a question about how does the number of registered voters generally and the percentage of voters participating in elections in Athens compared to overall state rates, to national rates, does being in a university town affect that number? Are there other social and economic factors that might affect what percentage of registered voters we have here in Athens-Clarke County? Currently in Athens-Clarke County we have roughly 72,000 registered voters and our population of course is close to 130,000, so I would say that's a pretty good percentage when it comes to registered voters and we're always looking for ways where we can encourage our community to register to vote. We conduct voter education sessions and we host our National Voter Registration Week of course and we want to attract our community. When it comes to voter turnout, it really depends on what type of election it is. So normally we try to prepare of course for 100%, who wouldn't want 100% and so we keep that factor in mind and we always go back and look at what history tells us, which it tells us a lot about what the voting habit is for our community. And so depending on the election, unfortunately the special elections and run-offs usually run pretty low digits. I've seen some very low voter turnouts, 9% if I could think of one of the lower percentages and that was in a special election like a referendum. So I'm going to say something like a splosst, but when we have a gubernatorial election it's usually in the 50% tile, but it's something about when we have the presidential election that just brings everybody out and that's when we are in the 70% tile. One of the things that recently we were listening to some of the webinars that we were part of different organizations and we found that Georgia alongside with Texas, we're right there under Texas when it comes to voting early. So we know that there's some habits of voting early. I encourage voting early and that's one of the things that we try to make sure we do is have as many opportunities for our voters to cast their ballots early. Our board is very gracious about providing additional days and times, extended hours for our advanced voters. And so we're like up in the 58%, I believe, when it comes to advanced voting. But yeah, that's where we are as far as our population and I'm going to leave a little bit for Rocky and Lisa to add to. Yeah, I don't have a lot to add. I would say that on average across the state we're a little lower generally than we should be as far as turnout usually. A city like ours should probably be having a higher rate of voters which is disappointing to me every time even if it's an east gloss. The board's always asking how can we get these people out? How can we tell them this is happening? How can we explain that everything is important and that you should vote on everything because it affects your life and all that. I think from our standpoint over economic justice coalition, when you think about going further into the data and looking at the racial demographics or the racial breakdown of the vote, in many cases African Americans are still turning out very disproportionately lower than their counterparts. And so we try to find ways to encourage other minority groups to participate civically as well to increase those numbers and that type of engagement. We believe everyone should have an opportunity to participate in the democratic process and we try to find creative ways to engage those populations to get them to turn out, to get them registered to let them know about the upcoming elections. That's a big bulk of the work that we do. I won't go into that right now but there's just a lot of reasons why people sometimes from those communities don't show up to vote but we're dedicated to staying engaged with those populations and keeping them informed through a lot of education, advocacy and engagement. I don't think anybody talked about college voting. So I can do that a little bit and then Charlotte might have something she wants to add. Then UGA I think does affect our voter population in that they come and go every four years. So our registration numbers sometimes fluctuate, showing that decrease in increase. Not every student that comes here registers in Clark County. They may stay registered in their home county. So what we try to do is a lot of education with the college voters about how to maintain their voter registration properly so that they don't walk into one of our precincts thinking they can vote and when they're registered in their home county because that can be very frustrating for them when they don't understand that process. We also hold voting when we're invited on the UGA campus at the Tate Center usually during 2020. We were asked to hold voting in Stegman which was really wonderful and had a large turnout. We also held a voter event recently on the UGA campus to give them some of this information and help them understand what their responsibilities are towards their registration and what might happen if they go to the DMV and move their driver's license from to maybe to their new college address but that will relocate their voting registration unless they fill out the paperwork properly and they don't always know that. So we just try to be there for them. Can I have one more thing? Yeah the one thing that I would add to the Tate Center thing is kind of like a future of elections dream that I have is so with the Tate Center there's only Clark County voters that can vote there. It's some day in the future if we can have universal voting where all the students can vote at the Tate Center because I think it's doable hopefully but I think we need to change the laws and stuff to do that but I mean where else in the state do you have a representation of the entire state? People from all over so they can just cast their vote while they're at college and not have to drive four hours down the way across to vote. There's also a lot of people who come in to work every day from surrounding campus as well so I can see that. I think all of you have already been touching on some aspects of outreach that either Atlas Clark County or the board or NGOs do to try to get people registered to vote. Is there any more you'd like to share about maybe some of the outreach you've been doing and you were already talking about UGA project did you want to share more about? Sure the Economic Justice Coalition of course we're a nonpartisan nonprofit organization we do have reach in the Northeast Georgia region though we serve about a 13 county region which includes Athens Clark County and we have canvassers and coordinators that go out and try to recruit volunteers on the one hand and train them in voter registration practices and best practices and protocol to make sure that we're registering people properly. We want to make sure that when we register people that they're able to cast their ballot you know but sometimes mistakes and mishaps happen so we try to pay attention to those details when we're filling out the voter cards or updating somebody to change their address or something like that. And so we have people that go out on a regular basis to what we call hotspots we'll go to grocery stores if we have permission, gas stations, civic centers, libraries and outlying counties, schools, school events sometimes where parents will be frequent. I've learned recently that youth can register to vote at 17 and a half if there will be 18 in less than six months to the next upcoming election they can go ahead and register if I'm not mistaken. And so you know just knowing things like that and equipping our canvassers and coordinators with the information and knowledge to go out in the community and really encourage people, we train them not to be too aggressive but a lot of times people say well what's the use of voting you know and we have a lot of conversations about that as well a lot of people are discouraged from voting for a myriad of reasons and we want to combat that because again we think that people should participate in the civic process and what version of democracy we have you know we want people to be able to participate in that because non-participation means something as well you know and so yeah yeah that's what I say about that. From the board's perspective it's not so much about education but providing the access and the opportunity and the convenient places to vote so that the other groups won the candidates and the non-profits can do what they need to do to bring the people to vote for their candidate. So I know that recently the changes in polling places have been improved and you have this great map. Down here I encourage everybody to take a closer look at the map before you leave tonight but do you want to share a little bit more about maybe some of the thoughts behind some of the changes that happened and what maybe were some of the benefits that we're hopefully going to see from these changes. Yeah so the first thing I'll say that I always say is that there was a net zero. We started with 24 we ended with 24 so that's important to note. Some of the polling places we just simply outgrown you know room space parking accessibility some of the buildings won't exist in the future such as the mall. Some of the polling places were actually out of precinct so people were having to drive out of their precinct into another to vote and just an inadequate space. So some of the new locations are the community room at the airport and so those, Charlie could probably explain more of the technical pieces of this but we basically just took all the lines away when we started the process. We took all the lines away we said okay which precincts are working which are not and then we looked at alternative solutions for that and then the wonderful Athens-Clarke County GIS department used their sophisticated mapping tools and first just set their program to say this mini voter who's the closest what's the nearest precinct to your address. So then they did that but then we ended up with lopsided precincts you know some would have a thousand and some would have five thousand some locations can handle five thousand voters some cannot so looking at making sure that it's balanced so when you go on election day you're not super long line here and nobody at the one down the street. Yeah I think that's about it yeah. Yeah and we also took in consideration with our new voting equipment of course it requires a certain amount of watts and circuitry and so we know how many or how much voting equipment we can put in each location and then making that determination how many voters can vote in a minute or an hour a lot of those things were taken in consideration so that we could cut down on lines like Rocky said you know you didn't want to have a precinct that had a long line and then you go down just a block away because you know our landmass is really small and the things I like about Athens-Clarke County and so these 24 precincts they're close by but then you're going to have a voter who lives just across the street from someone else who's going to the left side to vote where this person across the street is going to the right side within the same vicinity and then there's not a line down the street you know so those those were a lot of things that were taken in consideration I'm excited about the change there every single precinct line was adjusted and so we've got to make those changes and of course inform every voter that was affected by the change and when we'd make the determination of how many of those voters are we may end up just sending every voter in Athens-Clarke County a voter registration card because this is a big buzz that's going on right now that you know there's going to be some polling location changes so we don't want because you don't get a card your concern like well did my precinct change so it may be that everybody in Clark County every voter in Clark County will receive a registration card so yeah and I've seen a lot of polling location changes and this has been really one that a lot of energy a lot of legal things were looked at I mean we died at every I crossed every T and when we get ready to do our data changes we're going to do the same thing to make sure that there aren't any errors and and of course any voter that has any questions about where they would vote then that's something that can be accessed not just through our office but my voter page through the Secretary of State's office and those changes will be effective the March election so it won't be any changes that will be seen yet because we do have an election in November so we can't really touch anything yet but December during Christmas holidays that you will be having conversations with your family around the table about your polling location change I can imagine yes very excited I guess speaking of the I thought it was interesting you mentioned about having to have so much tech how much tech you know support that you need to have just to have the setup right to have enough power outlets you know all those things you mentioned at the start Lisa that you're in charge of a million dollars worth of equipment share with us a little bit more about what the process is for safekeeping that equipment what and I guess just a little bit more about about the machines in general okay well now you found what I love I don't know how I ended up with this position to do this but it really has just um I love it so much okay so I has I'm pretty sure everyone in the room has voted on our new voting equipment it's not really new anymore we've had it for three years now so hopefully I won't have to explain as much as I would have in 2020 and so we own I wish I had numbers in front of me but I think it's close to 300 ballot marking devices we have 48 precinct scanners we have close the pull pads that we use I believe we have 164 so it's a lot of equipment and then all of this equipment is connected to uninterrupted power supplies because the ballot marking devices don't have batteries in them so if the power goes out it has to be connected to something to keep everything going so we own a number of I think it's like a hundred less little less than 200 uninterrupted power supply batteries that weigh about 50 pounds apiece yeah and we have printers for every single ballot marking device we also have three central scanners that we use to run our ballots our absentee ballots through on the couple of days before the election when we can start early tabulation and then on election day and sometimes on through the night depending on how many we have we've done that before and we have our election management system which is the computer that we use to tabulate the votes and that runs the election project which is what is loaded into the ballot marking devices so that you can vote each and every election testing I can tell you a little bit about that oh you asked about safeguarding so safeguarding the equipment the equipment is held in a secure warehouse well it's in a secure building at 2555 Lexington road if you ever want to know where your election equipment is held I work in that space and it's in the center of the facilities management building so it can't be accessed from an outside door our inside interior doors are have secure locks and alarm systems on them we have a video monitored security system on them so there's a camera going 24 hours a day while we're working in there and when we're not there we know what's happening so it's very secure and my the room where the election management system is held is on a separate in a separate room with separate locks so no one goes in there unless they sign in and I know that they're going in and out for testing every election before the election we get what's called an election project and that has the ballot on it and everything that we need to run an election we load that into the election management system and then I do what I need to do with that to produce the USB devices that are loaded into the ballot marking devices and then we run a process called logic and accuracy testing it's open to the public so I encourage you to come if you ever we would love to show off what we do and have you there with us while we do this process so basically what happens is we run an election we run an election on that equipment we test every single ballot we test every single piece of equipment and how it interacts with each other and then it's uploaded into the election management system and we make sure that those results are accurate before any piece of equipment is ever sent out we we we test every single piece of equipment before it goes out and if something is found that is not to our liking no matter what it is it could be something very minor like you know maybe we can't get the time to set correctly on the BMD it just doesn't go out and we put out we have enough equipment that we can replace it with one that's operating completely properly and then the Secretary of State's office helps us repair any equipment that is broken can you anytime you touch it or like open it there's talk about the tamper yeah yeah all right so we have logs it's our equipment maintenance log basically like any warehouse would have where every piece of equipment has a serial number on it every time we touch the equipment is documented every time a seal is open we documented that we broke that seal and the number of the seal and then replace it with a new seal so there is a lot of security that goes on with each piece of equipment and we track all of it so that if you ever came and asked us hey that BMD over there what locations has it been to how many times has it been used what elections was it used for has it ever been pulled for maintenance we can tell you which is very important I think so that everyone knows that their equipment is in good working order and just to add a little to that once the equipment is tested is set aside for election day and then it's the seal is logged on the recap sheet that the manager the poll manager receives at the polling precinct there to verify that that's that same seal is on there to make sure that it has been has not been tampered with from testing on to election day and then once those votes are recorded on election night there's another seal that's put on the machine it's recorded on the recap sheet by the manager and it's verified by our office when it returns to the warehouse so there's a log of every time it's touched every time a seal is placed on it and it's verified every single time and as Lisa mentioned it's open to the public you can go you can watch it bring a friend that may not vote like you that may vote opposite of you so they can come and watch it media come and come and see what they're doing watch what they're doing it's this they're doing good work good honest work in that warehouse and just to allay your fears no one ever touches our equipment unless someone who is employed by the Athens-Clarke County Board of Election and voter registration knows about it okay so I guess I'd like to know a little bit more about and and I think I'd like to hear from from all of you on this but maybe a little bit more as to what what about what Athens-Clarke County is doing but also what you hear from people on this on this topic but what is being done to make you know voting more accessible for people with altered abilities or or even like the quantity and locations of drop boxes for absentee voting I'd like to hear a little bit about your both perspectives there too so what's being done and how people are perceiving it I guess with me so I'll talk a little bit about the drop boxes so in the during the 2020 election there was an emergency plan that was put in place by the Secretary of State's office and the state election board that allowed for counties to have drop boxes for voters to return their absentee ballots and if you recall during the 2020 election you as a registered voter in the state of Georgia you received an application for an absentee ballot in the mail so it was encouraged that there be no contact during that time of the epidemic so the drop boxes were put in place and if the time at Clark County had I believe eight drop boxes throughout the county and they were pretty much I'm gonna say nine okay yeah cuz I think we added one at the last minute yeah so they were pretty scattered out and then you know not like close vicinity of each other but scattered out where we could provide that access to all of our voters not just in a certain area downtown or in different areas of Athens-Clarke County and then in 2021 there was a Senate bill that passed Senate Bill 202 that only allowed for counties to have only one drop box depending on your population your voting population and I believe the threshold is a hundred thousand you could have more and so that meant that Athens-Clarke County qualified for only one drop box and that drop box had to be only available during advanced voting had to be monitored humanly monitored because at the time we were just monitoring our drop boxes by camera but there is a human that has to actually be available to monitor that box so I'm gonna say we moved our drop box inside the office because that's the only way we could monitor our drop box humanly monitor it and to be able to close it down when advanced voting was not taking place and so if I was gonna talk about the number of ballots that we received through our drop boxes compared to 2020 it would be really hard to make that determination because there was a pandemic going on at the time epidemic one on exam so it'd be really hard to to make that make that estimate but I will tell you that our voters didn't really hear any complaints from our voters here in Clark County but I did notice that it was being utilized during advanced voting and yeah I wanted to kind of comment on that but hope y'all will add more the question was related to how do we assist people that are not able to make it out sometimes are differently able to help them vote yeah that's a great question I just want to make sure I'm staying on message within our organization economic justice coalition we do offer rights to the polls for more seasoned people or people that have been around more seasoned seasons than I some people called them elderly you know and but you know so we do offer rise to the polls for those populations and people with you know able differently able ability we want to make sure that you know again everybody has the opportunity to participate and so we started doing that I can't pull any exact numbers off the top of my head right now but people do get excited about rise to the polls I started doing that when I became a neighborhood leader actually before I took on the role of executive director with economic justice coalition I was on the board but I would do that position I would offer people rights to the poll around that time as part of my work schedule and so some of the residents in my zone really appreciated that and they will ask me like hey are you going to come pick me up for this election you know and so I really appreciated them for asking that as well and for for relying or leaning on us for that type of service you know that the impact is immeasurable in my opinion and then we one of our state partners does monitor like the closing of polling locations because again certain people in certain areas they don't have transportation or can get to certain polling locations for whatever reason and so we do keep a close eye on that I know sometimes like they just mentioned earlier that different locations close for myriad of reasons at the same time we have to strike a balance in between like you know what the board of elections or state agencies are able to do versus you know what's good for the community you know and the community perception of that some of that is you know balls down to communication you know and talking to people about why certain poll polling location may be closing but we do keep an eye on that and then we also just do voter protection education you know there are certain mishaps that happen I think mistakes that happen sometimes when people go to the polls whether they put a wrong address on their voter card or they move during that process and their ID on their or their address on their ID doesn't match which is on their voter registration and so there are a lot of different ways in which people get turned around we try to do voter protection in those cases as well and then we also offer like absentee ballots for people or at least encourage people to fill out absentee ballots we can't turn them in for them of course but we do let people know about like what are the deadlines for absentee ballots and then we help pass those out or help people understand where to get those and what to do because some people are just unaware of that process you know and don't know what to do or how to do it and we try to inform people on that to or point them to websites that have that information you asked about educating disabled voters or helping to provide for them so recently we had there was a national week of disabled voter education week or disabled voter rights week and we held an event the library that was just for that and we put a lot of effort into that we had transit there to help people understand ways to get to the polls and how to use their transportation effectively if they needed help we had a computer there and an application available if anyone wanted to apply to be a poll worker we could help them apply and get them in to help us because we love to have all kinds of people from the community help us on the polls we didn't have the turnout that we wanted but we were really there we were there and tried our best to provide that information to the community now the American with Disabilities Act and the Help America Vote Act require which we want to provide these things but they require us to provide a piece of equipment that is accessible for people who are visually impaired or you know they need to they need to use headphones you know to listen to the ballot so we have that available to them they can increase the font on the ballot if that helps so that they can see the writing a little bit better so that has to be provided there for them and then when we were considering these precincts we also had to the precinct changes we had to consider places that met ADA requirements so that people can get in and out easily and there are a lot of requirements and believe me we go out with our tape measures and our device that measures the pounds per inch to open a door to make sure that everyone is that we comply with these laws and everyone is able to vote as easily as everyone else I think that generally at least to my opinion that the longer early voting periods in more locations has been seen as a really positive way to make voting more convenient for people and it sounded like from those numbers you quoted earlier that that people in Georgia definitely do embrace having the early voting it does seem to me though that that requires perhaps even more trained poll workers and so has it been easier or more difficult to recruit poll workers than it maybe was in the past maybe five ten years ago or and maybe what are some of what are you know drawbacks that keep people from volunteering in the polls or what you know what issues are or making sure that workers are representing our community as a whole I think that would be me to answer that first I manage our poll worker population we have about 300 poll workers not all of them work every election some of them work one election and then I never hear from them again but they're still on our rolls but we have a lot of dedicated poll workers I see one sitting in the audience right now who works every single election and we we love them it takes an average of 270 people to run an election there's usually six to ten people that work each polling location it's a long arduous day so it takes some stamina you don't have to be young to have that stamina but you definitely have to be able to make it from 6 a.m. in the morning until about 8 p.m. that night we it's been interesting since I've had this job I came into this job so I can't tell you what recruiting was like before 2018 but I can tell you during the pandemic when this became my full-time job recruiting was a nightmare but we managed to do it we pulled from this Clark County workers to and I think as when Broderick said he was a neighborhood leader I think I remember during that time I had him on a list I could call him as a poll worker because we were so badly in need of people of course things have settled out now and usually when we open our application which is about three months before each election with sometimes we'll get as many as two or three hundred applications I mean it's it's been a lot like during 2022 we got several a lot of applications more people than we could hire we want to you asked about all of these locations that were opening up and early voting locations it does take a little bit more skill or experience to help in an advanced voting location but that's changing too because that was because of our check-in process but our check-in process has changed now to the state has made it much easier so it's like working on election day so I think that that's going to open up some opportunities for our poll workers we're looking very closely at providing shift work for our early voting workers specifically so because there are so many hours and so many days in a row and they also work election day most of them they're exhausted by the time election day comes around so we're looking at providing shift work for them so that we can you know maybe just have someone come in and work half a day and that'll be a lot easier for people to dedicate that time to us so you ask what the challenges are mostly with early voting is you know people have jobs and they have lives and it's hard to ask somebody a couple of times a year hey just don't go to your job for three weeks and come help us it doesn't work that way so we're piecing together schedules with as much as a hundred people sometimes to make early voting run just the early voting locations but it recently changed and I don't know it off the top of my head 1560 to 1794 so 1794 is what a manager is paid and then you have assistant managers that have an in-between rate there and then our clerks make 1560 an hour so it's not it's it's volunteer bringing your you're taking your time away from your normal job but it's not volunteer you will get paid for the time that you're there and you do become a part-time temporary employee of Athens Clark County when you do this yes and students yes oh yeah so I know how much you wanted to hear I didn't want to hog the mic so student poll workers in 2020 we worked really hard to develop a student poll worker program and we were hiring from the high schools because when you're 16 years old you can be a poll worker my son of course started at 16 because I'm his mom so he had to and he still works with us to this day and we have several people in our most of the people in our office their children who have been old enough have worked with us our student poll workers were just a joy to have they are faster on the electronic equipment they're not frightened of it they have a great time they lift the spirits of everybody that they work with we've had a few of them who have stuck around on into their college years and one is a poll manager now we just we love her to death there well there's two actually then their boat one's a student at University of North Georgia and the other one's a student at UGA and they're still with us we have not been able to recruit as heavily in the schools as I would like for between 2020 and now so our students are aging out but that's one thing that I really want to find the time to get back to doing is going into the high schools and recruiting again that was a lot that's okay there's just one thing I wanted to add is you know bills that have come out in the past like SB202 and some of the other ones that didn't go through the legislature last year they're filled with tons of unfunded mandates and new forms and new things and new rules and and it's just piling on the workload so that that I think contributes to why we have a challenge in getting new people or folks that have done it forever that said that's enough so and then also given the current climate of the world and related to elections there's a lot of pressure there's a lot of eyes there's a lot of you're not just an elections clerk you're it's very serious work I mean we've seen what's happened to election clerks in Georgia so I think those are things that people think about when they're applying to this job procedure which can involve in certain circumstances intervention at the County Board of Elections area and I'd be very interested to sort of talk about those aspects of your incident but I do want to tell you how I compressed it at least from my point of view this is what a terrific job you're doing and I was elected in Texas and we have worked in Texas for many years so we say that with great respect what you're doing well thank you so I think the question was about maybe it was a bill a couple years ago where they created a committee they could essentially take over boards of elections is that your question yeah so as a board member that's a person I'll speak personally first is that's another that's an intimidation I'm not not worried about that we're here to do a job for the voters so I'll say that but as a board we're just trying to find the line between how do we follow the law and the rules that are put forward by the state election board but how do we innovate within the law how do we find that one little thing that makes it a little bit better here and there much like you know we were talking about the pullpads or not the pullpads sorry look at the wrong line the drop boxes so that was an innovative way to provide access well what happened in 2020 some candidates won some didn't and then they created bills based on conspiracy theories that are true and now we don't have drop boxes that's how I believe it all went down right so just finding ways to be innovative in what we're doing one of the things we're working on currently we're in the process of selecting a vendor is providing our elections materials in Spanish are we're not going as far as the ballot itself but we're hoping to have a sample ballot that's printed in Spanish and some of the education materials that are in the office is you know a way to innovate try to do new things yes so Georgia is a top down state so we follow the Secretary of State office seeking their leadership on a lot of the bills that are passed in legislature and then within our counties we try to create best practices and not only just the state the Secretary of State's office and the General Assembly it's also the state election board and so those that's where our rules and regulations come from that followed by that are followed by the acts or the bills that are passed and so and then of course our state our election board our local election board again creates policies and and things that that tag on to those bills and rules and we just follow with best practices 159 counties and then there's 159 ways to get our jobs done but I appreciate you sharing that about being an election judge I always wondered what you know the election judge versus what we actually do when it's about basically the same thing what the poll workers do so that's interesting and I hope you'll consider joining us I think you'll hear about a lot of states doing it because it's it's a big topic when we went to our national conference I attended a breakout session and I specifically wanted to go to hear about that and I was surprised at how many states are already having shift work so I brought it back and I said you know we're going to talk about this I know it's been something that we've you know we've kind of touched on but we're going to try it out in November so hopefully by the November hopefully by the November 2024 election we'll have it all worked out yeah yes so yes I'm so excited about this so I wanted to get some kind of feedback and engagement with our community so I share it with the staff I said y'all I think we need to come up with our own advanced voting sticker we have the Georgia Peach and that's a sticker that everybody has but I would like for our voters to be traveling like maybe to a meeting during advanced voting and they go into another county and somebody has on a sticker and it's recognized oh that's a Clark County advanced voting sticker I want to think we're the first county maybe in the state of Georgia who's doing this and I'm really excited we had so we pitched it to our community I actually turned in for myself and mine didn't get picked well I'm surprised but anyway so we I think we narrowed it down to like four finalist yes yes there was some some classes some folks I think third graders or fourth graders that has submitted some they were adorable but we will be announcing we will be announcing I think tomorrow the winner of our sticker contest and yeah I think it's going to be revealed tomorrow I don't think it's been revealed yet but we've revealed it to the winner I think and I think Athens is going to be very pleased about the sticker and I have Lisa doesn't know this yet but this is what I want to do is I want our advanced voters to receive two stickers when they vote early I want them to receive the advanced voting sticker but I also want them to have the peach sticker so they can wear it on election day because one of the things I don't like to see is that an advanced voter is out walking in the community and somebody thinks they didn't vote you mean they haven't voted you know so have that peach sticker as well so that they can have that on election day that's important I remember my grandmother having her peach sticker and she kept it on her apron and one day she was at the grocery store and she had her apron on and I don't even think she knew it and I said grandma you know you got your peach sticker on don't you she said oh I wear that everywhere and when I'm baking so yeah and and I've seen them on the back of people's Bibles like a preacher's preaching I go my God he's got his peach sticker on this Bible so I'm excited about our sticker and and I'm and I'll say this too we went to our national conference there there were states that brought in some of their stickers and we went back and was able to pull some of their stickers and they were just yeah this was like a trading table and it was just amazing we're people want those stickers so yeah I'm really excited about ours yes um yeah and uh I'll just go out and build on what Bruce said I also think that poll workers should be treated the same way that jury duty is everybody should have to do it everybody gets paid to get selected through it's a system we have to do just very close but um that means it I wonder if all of you have to talk about the challenges of battling misinformation just in the current culture that we have especially around the the technicalities of voting I mean I like Lisa you went through all of those different layers of transparency that we have but you know most people don't know it and that misinformation still passes through so much so I wondered if if you all could talk about any challenges you all have especially challenges that your office has received including like any OR request which I know has been happening around the state and then to Broderick I wondered if you could speak a little bit about just the challenges we're interacting with the public around that you know how that misinformation creates so much distrust and apathy you know around our voters I'll start with the misinformation and then one of the things I do as chair is I make a proactive effort to talk to the media to explain what's happening to keep folks informed what little media we have in this town just to explain what's happening educate people just be a face in the community so people know that they can trust our elections office and they can trust the process and you mentioned Lisa talked about the transparency but that's like a 16th of all the other checks and balances in the system you know everything happens in pairs everything happens in a bipartisan way if necessary there I remember during the 2020 election my colleague who is the Republican appointee and the Democratic appointee for the board there was a question about a ballot had got like stuck under a lid of the Dropbox or something and the two of us sat down and watched the video and we both agreed and concluded the same thing that we should indeed to count this I think is what we did but you know working together trying to to get the right info out okay so missing disinformation is a huge problem it's a problem all over the country it's not just in elections it's in everything it's hard to know what to believe anymore but for us Charlotte mentioned going to our national conference some of the breakout sessions that I focused on were the missing disinformation sessions that were held by Homeland Security and the FBI and CISA please do not ask me right now what CISA stands for it's basically the cyber security a branch of the of Homeland Security they're worried about it too there's not a lot of things well I shouldn't say that there are things that we can do at the level that we're at make sure that we're constantly putting out accurate information make sure that when our clerks or Charlotte or I talked to someone on the phone that we're patient with them we're giving them the correct information we're assuaging their fears as much as we can I mean sometimes it feels like being a counselor the closer it gets to elections but that's our job so we don't mind doing that for me where I deal with it the most is people that come to observe election processes in the warehouse so after elections when we do our risk limiting audit they'll be hopefully not as many people as there were in 2020 but hopefully there will be people who come from the community to watch us and people always have questions some people come because they're skeptical and because they want to catch you doing something but by the time they leave I think most of the time we've won them over and they realize that that their votes are in good hands in Clark County so a lot of times it's just a face that we put on for the community making sure that we're out there talking to them telling them what we know as the truth with the job that we do every day and hopefully correcting mistakes or just misinformation that they have about the processes that we do and hopefully it makes them feel better yes and I'm always encouraging them to get involved so you can see elections from all sides and there's no other way to see it than from a poll worker standpoint and you get to see you know how all of the security measures are in place when you're trained as a poll worker you understand the fact that there's not just one person who is in the room so to speak all the time touching one thing all the time so it's all about doing things in teams all the processes in teams and signing oaths because every poll worker every one of us have taken oaths and we'll take an oath talking about open records request with boy were we flooded with open records request after the 2020 elections and usually those come after election periods but open records request never stop we have an average of maybe four or five a month and again it's about being transparent honoring those open records request according to the open records act answering them timely is definitely proof that we're not hiding anything we're being very transparent and of course we always encourage our community to come out to our sessions that we teach so that we can provide any type of changes that might have taken place in the general assembly I talked about the session that we started we started the sessions to be held every odd number year and so in 2021 we talked a lot about our the changes in senate bill 202 and so I feel that getting ahead of that with our voters that they weren't really surprised when the 2020 elections came up because we put that information out there so that's one of the ways that we deal with the misinformation is again like Rocky said getting ahead and trying to get information about the changes in the processes yeah and thank you for that question Tim and so from my perspective and the ways I see it showing up and deal with it I'm still learning a lot myself I started off as just an observer of local politics in 2014 of course I that was around a time when I actually started voting in local elections I had never really voted in a local election prior to that I don't think and so once I got involved with economic justice coalition that's when I started to learn about different things related to voting the misinformation disinformation one of the things that we do through economic justice coalition is we partner with a state agency that keeps up with the changes in different legislation around voting and things of that nature and so staying up to speed and abreast of those things is it helps us tremendously when we run into people that share misinformation or try to tell us misinformation about the process and so we try to stay up to speed with that and educate people on that when we can but it's still kind of hard because people tune into their information vacuums and they hold on to that for their life sometimes I've seen it and they won't budge from it and then one specific thing that I wanted to speak to that I've run into a great deal of and again I had to educate myself on this because I wasn't even aware of it was people with criminal backgrounds not thinking they can vote or re-register to vote and so as I understand it if you have been convicted or are convicted once you pay your fines and fees, once you serve your sentence and once you are off probation or done with probation you can then re-register to vote and so that is something that I had to learn I had to educate myself around because I was under the impression that they couldn't vote either you know and so I have also myself been you know because I used to tell people I was like you know you're convicted of failing you can't vote you know and so yeah just being mindful and being educated and humbling yourself when you don't know and learning and finding out the correct and proper information and then sharing that with community members One note on the felon thing actually Georgia is one of the more liberals not the right word as far as no some states it's gone for life some states you have to go in front of a board that's essentially never going to even put your case so Georgia's you know I don't know we'll just leave it at that but you two can go I had one more thing I was going oh yeah so as far as misinformation so the board is the superintendent of elections so we're the ones essentially signing our names affirming that the results are correct I mean I'm sure everyone in this room would not put their name on something unless they believe it to be correct so you know I literally put my name on it and attest to it being correct so Sure So with the open records request they do show us a two to four a month right now but as we move into 2024 that will change rapidly it will begin to ramp up because one of the things that couples open records request and miss and disinformation is groups putting out survey they look like survey forms online and you fill it out and the next thing you know you've requested information from election offices all over the country you know and it's actually used as a denial of service attack it makes us so busy answering within three days because we have to stay within the law all of these open records request that are basically just repeats one after another people not even knowing what they're asking for that we can't it makes it very difficult to continue to do our own work which is the purpose of those so if you see those please do not fill out those surveys unless you do really want the SOVC report from the 2019 election you know or something like that don't do it unless you really really want this information and if you do then yes please ask for it I want to create chaos in the audience yeah it's it's so we make a mistake and then they comment like it's only calculated One more thing I wanted to add too was that I have heard of and witnessed situations mostly not in Athens but in more rural counties or heard horror stories of people trying to go vote and then being turned away from the poll for reasons that could have been avoided or fixed but not sharing the information on how to fix it and so we could talk about that a little bit in terms of provisional ballots and things of that nature I'm not well versed in it so I did want to bring that up because I've heard of that happening and then that's why we do some of the voter election and protection education training that we do to inform people that hey when you get turned away at the polls give us a call let us know the situation and if we can try to help you rectify it and figure out a way to let you cast your ballot that same day or the next day then that's what we are here for to try to help you do that so if I can elaborate a little more on that when a voter shows up at the polling location and their name is not found on the voter list they have the option of voting a provisional ballot but before they do that our poll workers contacts our office first so that we can rectify the situation because it could be easily something that they're at the wrong polling location or that their name was misspelled or the date of birth was transposed for some reason that the voter registration wasn't found that their name was taken off of the voter list and captured by another county correctly or their name was removed because somehow their mark deceased they really didn't pass away but they had the same name as a voter who passed away and the wrong voter got removed so there are errors sometimes that are that are done mistakes and so that's an opportunity to correct that because a lot of the times when a voter goes to vote that's the only time that they're going to have contact with our office is through that poll worker so it's important that the poll worker calls our office so that we can reconcile with that voter and find out why their name is not on the voter list but again if nothing is able to be resolved at the time of that conversation then the voter is allowed to vote a provisional ballot. One of the things that changed in the 2022 election is if a voter goes to a polling location between the hours of 7 a.m. and 4 59 p.m. then they have to vote at their polling location can't go to the wrong polling location and say well I just want to vote a provisional ballot you have to you can only vote a provisional ballot in the wrong polling location after 5 p.m. Again you have to be registered to vote okay so that's that's a new new rule and with that cut down on there's some good good and bad things about that with that count what it did improve on is if a voter goes to the wrong polling location before 5 p.m. they have to go to their correct polling location one good thing about that is they're going to get the ballot that they're assigned to they're going to get the ballot that has the districts in it that they should vote in so from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. you can vote in the wrong precinct but you may not get the ballot that has your districts on it that particular precinct may not have that particular paper ballot with your districts on it so you could be in commission district 2 but that precinct only has commission district 1 and 9 ballot so then you're not allowed to vote on that okay so that's that's talking about the out of precinct voter but if a voter's name is not on the list for whatever reason then once it's not reconciled with the poll manager and with our office then the voter's voting a provisional ballot we take 72 hours from that time to try to reconcile and determine if that person's ballot should count or not and if it is determined that it is able to be counted then we send a letter to the voter to say your ballot counted and then in the future this is where you should vote because technically you voted by the wrong at the wrong precinct or we were able to find your voter registration and was able to make the correction so that you would not have this issue the next election but then there are some voters unfortunately that we that voter provisional ballot and we're not able to determine if the ballot should count and so that from following that we do send a letter to the voter to say that your ballot was not counted but here is a voter registration form or we did receive your voter registration form from where you filled it out at the time of voting and that your new polling location will be this particular location so we try to reconcile all of those situations that if a voter that happens again you know it's they won't have a problem with voting. I think we're about ready to wrap up for the evening but I thought at first I would let maybe just start down the project and come down the line and just any you know I just feel like what do you want people to know about elections and Athens right or what do you want people to tell their friends about tomorrow and just or any last words you want to utter whatever you want to talk about I'm open. Yeah, economic justice coalition you know being with 501c3 nonpartisan we look for events and places to do voter registration we do intentionally reach out to areas where there are large populations and people of color who are usually not engaged sometimes in the process to try to get them engaged but again we register whoever wants to get registered with us and so we also try to work with people who are unhoused in certain situations informing them that they can get an ID at the board of elections a free voter ID and many of them run into so many other barriers though from having an address and to the emirate of other things including you know just trying to find a good quality of life and so we do though try to reach out to all those special populations and inform them engage them let them know what's going on in the community provide opportunities for them to get engaged look for a partnership we have a partnership with Athens-Court County Library and other spaces here in Athens trying to work with ACC transit a lot of people go through our transit system at a multimodal center and so I've been trying to reach out to them to get them to allow us to do voter registration there because I see so many people when I ride the bus sometimes coming through the multimodal center and then just want to encourage everybody to go out and vote some important elections are coming up can't tell people how to vote but we do want people to exercise their right and encourage your friends to vote as well I think I've said most of what I wanted to say you know our board is a hard-working group of five very dedicated individuals who have five different opinions and we find a way forward we find a way to to provide better access to the ballot move it at that so I just want to encourage everybody to always keep up with if you're registered to vote or not my spill to my family is if you didn't vote in the last election you need to verify if you're registered to vote because things happen there are eras that could hinder you from voting and the day of the election is not the day to check the last day to register to vote is not the day to check the day that you go and vote is not the day to check you should be checking your registration prior to the last day to register to vote to make sure your name is on the voter list and I encourage everybody to get involved and you can get involved by first voting and then two becoming a poll worker in your office there's something that you should do and you could contact our office for any of those opportunities I also encourage you to see if you could be on a list of poll watchers so that you would have the opportunity to come in and observe the voting process because nobody can just come in and observe you're either going to be voting or you're going to be a poll watcher or you're a poll worker selected or appointed by candidates or by political parties so if you want to get involved those are ways to get involved and of course our office is always available you can contact us if you ever need us to come and speak to you your Sunday school class if you want to host something at your house whatever we're available we'll be glad to come over it's our life and we love it I don't think Shora left me anything to say I was ticking off in my head alright do you have the early voting dates it starts on this early voting for the list is next year the last day to register to vote is October 10th for the November 7th election early voting starts on October 16th through 11-3 and what's the next one our last day to request an absentee ballot is the 27th of October so I mean I could say a little bit about our office I don't know if you realize how small our office is and how few people make this happen for you on a regular basis in Athens-Clarke County we have five full-time employees that's correct right one of those is an administrative assistant and Charlotte is one of them and then we have three elections assistants who do various portions responsible for various portions of the job an absentee ballot clerk and then an election assistant who runs the office and the registration portion and then me and then the rest of our employees are part-time employees and they're dedicated people they have a part-time job so they come and go you know every couple of years and we miss them when they leave but we're a very close family and we work very hard for you guys well thank you all and try to come to a board of elections meeting every once in a while I've been to the last few and they're not very well attended they're not very lively either they can be at times so yeah I mean there's an opportunity to give input public comment we always encourage over EJC people to go get involved with local politics and to voice their opinions concerns, ask questions, raise questions give suggestions and so yeah please come out thank you for hosting us well thank you for everybody for coming