 Okay, I think we should start. We're about to begin an Arlington Public Forum via Zoom to discuss the upcoming election scheduled for Saturday, June the 6th. This forum is a collaborative effort of Envision Arlington, the League of Women Voters and the Election Modernization Committee in concert with the town manager. Together we invite you to ask questions and share comments once you have heard the update on plans for the election to assure the health and safety of all voters and election workers. I'm James O'Connor, Assistant Moderator of the Arlington Town Meeting and Chair of the Election Modernization Committee. I'll be moderating this listening session. Please note that this forum is being recorded and streamed by ACMI and that some attendees are participating by videoconference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Even if members of the public do not comment, participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Let us begin with an interview presented by Adam Chaptilane, Town Manager, followed by Christine Bongiorno, Director of Health and Human Services. And now our manager, Adam Chaptilane. Thank you, Jim. And good evening, everybody. Jim, I've been letting people in from the waiting room as you've been speaking. If you don't mind- I'll be glad to do that. You don't mind taking over those duties while I speak. Sure, all right ahead. Thank you. Yeah, it looks like we have about 72 people participating in the meeting right now. So that's great. So thank you, Jim. And thank you to everybody who's participating in this meeting tonight. Obviously we're doing all of this in this sort of new world, new normal that we're trying to learn from and try to understand. And what I wanna do tonight is speak very briefly about some of the discussions that we've internally had to date, talk about what our thoughts and current plans are for safe conduct of the election on June 6th. But mostly I wanna hear your thoughts, feedback and try to answer your questions tonight before we finalize plans, hopefully by the beginning of next week. So I wanna start by saying some of you might be aware that the select board voted two meetings ago to ask me to serve as a liaison between those groups in town that normally conduct elections. Those groups normally being the clerk's office and the select board's office. The clerk really serving and working with the board of registrars to be the clerk of the election and the select board's office working to staff the election, working with the poll workers and really being the operational side of the election. The board asked me to step in because of really the, as Dan Dunn, select board member called it, the new lane of voting that's been enabled by the special state legislation that was passed due to the pandemic, which is allowing for this early voting by mail or just, let's just call it mail in voting. For those who, there's really no excuse needed, right? It's not like an absentee ballot, it's just early voting by mail. It's new, there's gonna be a lot for us to process and it's gonna be new to people. So we wanted to try to figure out how we could best manage this. So for anybody wondering why the town manager is involved, that's why. I also wanna state I'm not by any means an election expert, but I do think I have a good ability to work with town departments to figure out the best ways to get things done. And I can also say that now, well over a decade ago, actually my first job in municipal government was serving as the director of the elections department in the city of Fall River for about a year. So I do have a little bit of experience in managing and operating elections. So I'm gonna try to call all those memories and experiences back over the course of the next five and a half weeks. So with that said, I think the big thing that I wanna talk about tonight are the two big things are, how are we gonna make sure people get access to these ballots by mail and how are we gonna safely conduct voting on the day of the election. And I definitely wanna help from Christine Barnjono, our director of health and human services on the safety part. So for the first part, one of the requirements of this new law is that there has to be a signature, a physical signature provided to be able to request a ballot by mail. So there's ways around the details of the application or necessarily even having a physical application in hand, but there has to be a signature. And you could take a photograph of a signature and text it in or email it in, but that's a very complicated process. So what we've talked about with the assistant town clerk and the select board's office and town council is putting together a postcard that we can mail to every registered voter in town. And what that postcard will do is allow you to put your name, address, date of birth and sign it and return it to the town hall and thereby request a ballot by mail. And that way, you don't have to find the application, you don't have to print the application and then find a way to return the application. We're gonna send the application to every registered voter. On that same postcard, we will provide return postage. So you won't have to affix a stamp. The town will be paying for you to be able to return what in effect is your ballot application to the town. So Janice Weaver, the assistant town clerk is working on that with the printing company that we normally work with for elections. They've told us they can manage the printing and mailing of these postcards. We're waiting for a date of when they think they can get them out. We know we need to get them the voter database, but we're waiting to hear back from them about when they can get them out, but we know they can do it soon. So we'll be able to get those postcards out to registered voters. So that's, I think that that's point one that I wanted to share with everyone. Well, let me add, I'm sorry. On that card, we are working to finalize the various languages that we will include on the card, which say important police translate. We have a draft that currently includes Spanish, French and Mandarin, but we're working with the staff in Health and Human Services to put together the proper list based on our demographics of the languages that we should include on the card. And we should have that finalized again, also within the next several days. The next area I wanna talk about is the safe conduct of the elections or the safe conduct of the polling places on election day. And that's safety of both the poll workers and those coming to vote. So we've had discussions with our director of health and human services, Christine Barnjorn, and we're gonna ask her to share with the group in a few minutes. About how we can safely conduct it. But I know one thing she's gonna say is we wanna be able to limit the amount of interactions that folks have with one another, how much they walk by one another. And to do that, we wanna have as big and open a space as possible. We also wanna make sure we have poll workers to work all the polls. And just stating a fact, many of our poll workers are in the vulnerable population that is most likely to be impacted by the coronavirus. So staffing the polls will be a challenge. In talking with the board administrator, Marie Kruppelka, her conversations to date have demonstrated that we are gonna be challenged with getting enough poll workers. What we've determined today is that the bare bare minimum we need for each precinct is one check-in worker or check-in inspector and one check-out inspector for each precinct. So we have, based on that, 42 people. So 21 precincts, you need at least that check-in and check-out, we need 42. And then you can have a warden for up to five precincts. So we need at least five wardens to be able to staff. So we basically have to make sure we can find 47 poll workers. So we're still working through this, but what we plan to do is go through existing poll workers, see who with the proper PPE, personal protective equipment, and with a, you know, in gaining comfort with the understanding of how we're gonna structure the voting locations, see if they're comfortable to work. And depending on how many people are willing, we'll then start to talk to town employees who serve in other roles who are not part of the vulnerable populations to draft them into service to work the polls. So this is still in motion. We're still working through this, but what this basically is pointing towards is the likely consolidation of polling places. We've talked about a lot of things. We've talked about consolidating down to one very large location at the high school, but based on the need to have a check-in and check-out table for every precinct, as well as frankly, the Secretary of State's office's opinion that one location would not be an appropriate measure for us to take, I think we're looking at potentially reducing the number down to five polling locations. So that's basically a 50% reduction from what we have now. So again, we're still working on those details, but we wanna make sure we can do this in as safe a manner as possible. Again, making it safe for the poll workers and those coming to the polls. So that's something we're still working on. The last thing I wanna say before asking Christine Barndrono to share, and Jim, I don't know if you've noticed if Christine is joining us or not, but... Yes, she has by telephone, but she'll have to indicate which is her phone contact. Great, great. So the last thing I'll say is, and this is something I'm interested in hearing feedback on, but I'll tell you our thoughts is how do we best allow people to get their balance back to the town, their balance by mail. So we've talked about erecting drop boxes in several locations in town. These would be locked drop boxes for people to be able to deposit their balance without postage. So we're looking into the viability or the feasibility of that. We do plan to talk to the post office about how they might be able to cooperate with us on ballots being mailed back without postage and how we might be able to work with them on a financial arrangement for that to happen. I can't guarantee anything in that regard, but we're working on it. And then also seeing whether or not we can have a drop-off, a safe drop-off box at town hall, both on election day and run up to the election for people to bring their ballots back. So we're working on that because again, we wanna make sure that we're not erecting any barriers for people to be able to return their ballots in boat. Or frankly, we're trying to remove all barriers for people to be able to vote. So I think that's the entirety of what I wanted to share tonight. And if you think it's appropriate, Jim, let's ask Christine to. Christine, can you raise your hand so we can find you there? There are two. Adam, if you can look on the last page. I see her, I see her. Okay, well, you just click on her to speak. Christine Fungarno. I'm muted, Christine. Okay, can you hear me? We can, yes. Okay, perfect, thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you, Adam, thank you, Jim. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to give my opinion on how to best protect the community during the voting in June. So when I was first asked to think about this process, I started to think about it, similar to how we run our influenza vaccination clinics, making sure that people aren't crossing paths and that there's just little risk of people interacting as much as possible. So I first started thinking about there being possibly one location just in order to be able to really contain the process. But when we learned that we had to have multiple, I think it definitely spreads it out a little bit, which I think is fine. But the biggest pieces we wanna start thinking about is just the entrance and the exit at each of the spaces that are chosen and making sure that we're able to sort of create a line in order to have people queue up at least six feet apart from each other as they're entering the space. I would recommend that we look at the occupancy limit for the spaces that we're using and doing a 40% occupancy, similar to how the grocery stores in supermarkets are sort of managing the internal workings of their establishments during the coronavirus during the pandemic. So while people are in line, I would ask that there be volunteers on the exterior of the building asking the voters to place fabric face coverings on their face or some sort of a barrier, whether we give them a mask or they're required to bring one with them. I think it's important to make sure that we're limiting any potential for transmission of the virus while people are waiting, even if they're waiting six feet apart. I think, again, hand sanitization is an important key element as well. So as people are entering the line or entering the building, I think if we are able to provide them with sanitizer, once the voter is in the building, once they enter the space and they go up to the pulled worker, to the person working at the table, the worker will be required to wear fabric face covering as well as a face shield and then gloves. I think those are the three big pieces that we're going to recommend for the workers. We'll also ask that there be a plexiglass barrier between the voter and the worker in order to, again, just cut that potential for any spread of the virus. So once the voter checks in and gives the address, they'll be given a ballot and a pen. The voter will bring that to the voting station once the voter has completed their ballot. They will bring their pen and their ballot to the next, to the checkout station. And again, the checkout station will have the same precautions as the check-in station. So it'll be the plexiglass barrier and then the worker with gloves, face covering and face shield and then the ballot will be fed into the machine and the pen will be dropped in a bucket. So the hope is that we have enough pens to give everyone a new pen throughout the day. But if not, then we'll have to sanitize the pens and then redistribute at the beginning with the front of the line. In between voters, I would ask that the work stations, that the voting stations be wiped down with some sort of a cleanser, an EPA registered disinfectant in order to just again cut down any potential spread of the virus. And then as the voter is leaving, and we hope that the voter can leave through a separate exit door, so then there's no crossover between entrance and exit, we will ask that we will provide a hand sanitizer for the voter on the way out. And again, it may feel like this is going above and beyond, but I think given the extreme, we're seeing that this is an incredibly contagious virus and we wanna make sure that there is just absolutely no chance of spread at the voter, at the voting precinct. So that is really at the heart of what we're hoping to put in place or what I'm recommending. We also wanna make sure that residents just do their, they vote and they leave and not kind of engage in conversation with anyone or use the restrooms. We're really hoping that people are in and out and are not sort of walking around and having conversations. Additionally, anyone that needs to have an assisted text device, so anyone that may have visual impairments, those machines I would also ask that those be wiped down and that there be some staff available to do that as well. I think that sort of covers everything on the inside and the outside. I think we would just, we've been talking with facilities on the logistics of setting up the lines and the stanchions and the plexiglass barriers. But I think again, just really at the heart of it is the hand sanitizer, fabric face coverings, the six feet distance and just really pushing people in and pushing people out as quickly as possible. I think that covers everything that I wanted to share. Adam, I don't know if you have anything additional that you think I may have missed on this one. No, I think you covered it very well. Thank you, Christine. Thank you, Christine, because there was a question, what are the safety procedures for voters and poll workers? So you've done an excellent job of asking the question before you knew what it was. Okay, fantastic, thank you. Okay, now it's time to begin the public input section of the forum. Let me just lay some ground rules first. I will take clarifying questions on the town's plan first. You'll have 30 seconds to ask a question due to time limitations. Not all questions may be answered this evening. After all the question, I will then open it up for general comments. You'll have up to two minutes for your comment. We will also use a Zoom polling feature to measure voter intent. All questions- This meeting is being recorded. All questions, comments and poll results will be presented in detail to the town manager, election officials, town clerk candidates and the select board. You may have already submitted your questions by email. This option ended at 2 p.m. today. Some of these questions may be answered now. You may submit your questions via the chat feature. This feature is available on computers and smartphones and they may be submitted, but they'll only be seen by the hosts. And we will- Jim, somehow you got muted, Jim. That must have been a ghost. Can you hear me now? Yeah, we've got you now. Okay. So you may submit your questions via the chat feature. Questions will be available only to the hosts, but they will be presented. May also use the raise hand feature at the bottom of your screen. This feature allows you to indicate your desire to speak and you'll be called on in order as your name appears. I will be taking names and then I will unmute your microphone when I call you to speak or perhaps Adam will do that as the co-host. Some participants may find it under the ellipsis, the three dots at the bottom of your screen or the more option that is also down there depending on what format of operating system you're using. If you're joining us via just a phone, use star nine to raise your hand and use star six to toggle between mute and unmute. Make sure you can find these features now so that you'll be free to ask a question at your convenience. Please be prepared, concise and clear with your questions and comments. Again, in this listening session to allow for as many residents to participate, questions will be limited to 30 seconds and speaking time will be delimited to two minutes unless extended by the moderator. So we'll begin now and we received a number of questions earlier today. The first question is what is the difference between early voting by mail and absentee voting? In discussing it with the manager, this question we can really discuss simply by saying for the upcoming election on June 6th, there'll be only voting by mail. It'll be treated because of the statute passed in March that all absentee and early votes will be treated the same. So, Adam, do you wanna add to that? Yes, I mean, well, there is a legal distinction between the two. I don't want anybody to get that wrong but the moderator tonight is absolutely correct. For the purposes of the June 6th election, there is no difference. The second question, should the number of precinct locations be limited and when will this be determined? Adam, I think you addressed that to some extent earlier but do you wanna elaborate? Yeah, well, I'll simply say the plan is to have at least our recommendation ready for the select board's consideration on Monday, May 4th. Okay, what are the town's plans to staff polling locations given that many of the workers are over 60 years of age and are at risk? What is the town doing to get more workers if needed? And will workers, poll workers be given hazard pay? So I think I tried to cover most of that in my remarks. So we are gonna work with existing poll workers. We don't wanna refuse poll workers the opportunity to work if they would like to work but we obviously also are not gonna enforce poll workers if they don't feel it's safe. So again, we're gonna start with existing poll workers, see if they're comfortable working, we'll then go to existing town employees for them to work. And then if there's further help needed, we'll put out a call for other folks in town who might be willing to work the polls. I'm sorry, the next part was, will we be providing them personal protective equipment? The answer is yes. No, will poll workers be given hazard pay? So I guess the honest answer is I don't have an answer for that tonight. I think it is a fair question that I can talk with the select board's office and see if it's reasonable to consider something. Okay, the next question pertains to voter outreach. The town needs an extensive voter education effort. And what are those town plans? How are we going to get information out to the voters to know that the election is on June 6th? So there'll be two things that will happen that will be, I think, effective tools. One is the postcard for the ballot application. That'll be coming to everyone's home informing them about the election. Also, because of the likely changes in the polling locations, that will actually generate another mailing. Another postcard will have to be mailed to folks telling them about the change in their precinct location, their voting location. So that will also be telling folks about the election. We further plan to put up more sandwich boards than we normally would in signage and more places than we would to inform residents about the election happening on June 6th. So we'll have more clarity on that also in coming days, but we do plan on, in a physical way, publicizing this more than maybe we would as we have in past elections. And then beyond that, we've had a lot of conversations about what the town can and can't do from a legal perspective about providing candidate information. And I know the town council has spent a lot of time working with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance, and the town is limited in using town resources to provide candidate information. We do acknowledge that there were, it was town meeting member candidate information provided via town resources, I believe either last year or the year before. And that's because the Office of Campaign and Political Finance looks at town meeting members as sort of a different category of elected official than the other seats that are on the ballot this year. So we of course want to be as helpful as possible in spreading information and knowledge about candidates, but I think we're gonna focus from the town perspective on informing people that the election is happening and hope that our partners with the League of Women Voters and others in town can take the lead on informing voters about those who are on the ballot. Okay, thank you. We have a question via chat and it's from an attorney, Deborah Butler. And she raised a question about the information that is on this card, the fact that it has name address and date of birth and asked whether that would be a identity risk issue that we should be limiting information. So if Deborah is present, I will call upon you to elaborate. Did you raise your hand? I think I can find her, Jim. Let me, yep, there you are. Okay, I see her. Hi, Deborah, please relate your question. Okay, the combination of address, birth, date and name is sufficient for identity theft. I and many others filled out the absentee ballot form and mailed it in or took it in in February. I realize a postcard is cheaper than an envelope with a return envelope, but it's a heck of a lot less secure. Adam, do you have any comment or do we have a legal opinion from Agheim? Is he present? No, Doug's not here tonight, but I do know, I'm just trying to, while zooming here, bring up the most recent draft of the card. Make sure that I was accurate in what we're gonna require on there. I mean, it's a fair point. We're trying to obviously balance reaching out and reaching as many people as we can with this and balancing that against the concerns raised by Ms. Butler. So let me just try to find the postcard here. If you have a file on your computer, the screen share function would let you post it for everyone to look at. Yeah, so what we're asking for this is a full name, date of birth, optionally, your email, your telephone, and then the address for the ballot, which I mean, you have to put an address where you want the ballot mailed, if you want a ballot mailed to you. I mean, there's certain just real world practicalities that go along with voting by mail. So we'll, you know, let me talk about this with Doug and see what might be possible, but I'll say, you know, a concern. The full date of birth is a real issue, Adam. And when you combine that with an address, it is actually very concerning. And I wouldn't put that on an open postcard myself. I would never use it or do that. And I'm unlikely to be alone in that. That's off-putting. Whether it's legal per se or not, that's a question that can people be required to put that on an open, visible postcard. That may be a legal issue, but as a reality, people are going to be reluctant to do that on an on-sheath postcard. So you're going to cut down your rate of return if there's a full birth date and an open, on-seal document. Yeah, like I said, we'll check with town council as to whether or not the date of birth is required and determine whether or not it's appropriate for us to send it out in that manner. Okay, we have a person who raised their hand, Patty Sotel. So if we can unmute her, Patty. Okay, hi everyone. So I guess first disclaimer, as an employee of the town of Arlington, so my comments tonight, I'm representing myself not the town of Arlington. So the question that I did have was whether we're looking at a potential legislative change. Given the push for mail-in voting, if we have an extraordinary number of mail-in votes, is it possible to have a change in legislation to be able to process those ballots before June 6th? Because I guess I'm just worried. I know typically we have like 4,900 people vote the April elections that turn out pretty low, but if we're mailing to residents and we get this tremendous turnout, how are we going to allow the election workers and any other staff to be able to process all those ballots on one day? Do you have an answer, Adam, for that? I think I've read somewhere that there's already a legislative effort to request that. Giving, so I can double check on that. I can talk with our delegations if they think about that. Crystal Ball-wise, I have no idea how the secretary of state and other legislature would act on it. But I think from a practical point of view, it's a fair point that's worth following up on. Thank you. Of course, thank you. Okay, we have a question from the chat from Cindy Starks. I am not at my Arlington address. How do I get the postcard and ballot sent to me elsewhere? She said, she lost sound. I'll have to think about this and talk it through with the assistant town clerk. I don't know that there's a way we're gonna be able to send the postcard to addresses that are not your registered voting address. However, you can have the ballot sent to a different address. You'll just have to, you'll have to contact the clerk's office to be able to get that done. Would that not be possible that they could submit a request for an early ballot or a mail-in ballot for the secretary of state's guidelines to send a signed note to the town clerk request one? Yeah, totally. The challenge here is we're gonna be using the registered voter database to send out these postcards. So the postcards are gonna go to the address that you're registered to vote at. Again, you're totally able to use the absentee ballot application, the early voting by mail application and requested ballot be sent to another address. We're just not gonna be able to get that postcard to you at a different address. Okay, we have another interesting question from Greg Dennis. Could you state, wait a minute, could you state the procedure for counting the ballot from someone who votes early and then shows up on election day? Okay. Janice is the clerk, the assistant clerk, do you have thought about that? Yes, once a person's early voting, our absentee ballot has been processed and if they take them down to the polls and the poll workers have already processed that. Any, if the person shows up afterwards, they just can't vote again. If they do come before their absentee ballot, our early voting ballot is processed by the people at the polls, then they can vote in person and that's noted next to their name. And then if they, when they get to the absentee ballot, they'll see that the name's already been crossed off and they won't use that absentee ballot. So they'll only be able to vote once. Okay. Another question is, will we still be able to use form found on the secretary of commonwealth website for a municipal early ballot application? And I believe the answer is yes. Am I correct, Janice? Yes, you can use any of the forms that they have on the website or on the secretary of state or the Allington website, but it's just not necessary to have a form. That's, if it's not easy for people to get a form, they just have to write a letter. And I just would like to make one comment about the date of birth. Basically, I don't know if it's illegal that you have to have it, but sometimes there are people in the house that have the exact same name. And we don't know which person's sending it in if it's the father or the son or whatever. It's not a lot, that's not a lot of people that they happen to, but that's one of the reasons and that identifies that the voter voting is the same person also. A question was emailed in a high volume of requests for absentee ballots or in this case, we'll call them balanced by mail is likely. What is the town's plan for ensuring that all the ballots will be mailed promptly? And can the town hall staff manage all the extra work that this process will take? Yeah, I'll let Janice answer as well, but Janice and I have been talking between the existing staff in the clerk's office and other staff in town hall. We will make sure that we're able to supplement the clerk's office with enough staff to be able to process the applications that come in. Right. Right now in my office would just have, each of my coworkers come, they come in one day a week. I'm there every day, but they come in one day a week and they've been keeping up with all of the absentee ballots. And we also have to, that's another thing we have to, it's best to get the ballot, the absentee ballot or early voting ballots in as early as possible because all of the information has to go into the computer before it can go out. So we do have four state computers and I've already planned to have each of the girls and myself be on a computer so we can get them in promptly. Okay, well that relates to a follow up question, which what is the process for the clerk's office to handle last minute voter registration after the postcards have already been mailed to registered voters so that someone would be able to get a mail-in ballot? Well, when I was talking with LHS today, I asked them that question. He's going to send me some empty postcards and my plan was to put them in with the acknowledgement that the care and the registrar will be sending out. She's finished with a lot but she's getting hundreds and hundreds a day so it's very difficult to keep up but after the cutoff it won't be as bad but that's what we're gonna do. We'll put the little postcard, it'll be empty but we'll put the postcard in with their acknowledgement if they want to absentee vote or early vote, whatever. Okay, thank you. One asked, can one also request an absentee ballot online from the town website? As long as we have a signature they can request it any way they want. We just need the signature with the request. So I just want to add a point of clarity and Janice tell me if I'm wrong. We don't have an online form so you can't go on to the website. Oh and fill it out, is that what you meant? Yeah, so I mean you have to download and print out the form and it is the website but there's no online form because of that requirement for a signature. Right. The next question, by what date should postcards be returned? As soon as possible because the more you delay the when the voting list goes out it has to be marked absentee ballot and it's automatically done when the names go into the computer but if the list is already printed and we get thousands more we have to sit there and manually go through the voting list and mark down with a red pen that their absentee or EV, whatever it is. So that's just added unnecessary work. The sooner they send it back the better it is. Janice, do you have a sense of what the, is there a legal last day that... Yes. The last time you can request an absentee ballot is noon time before the day of any election and it's not the post markets that you have to have it in our office by noon. But they can bring it into your office. Is that correct? Well, not if we're locked down. They have to put it in the drop box I guess. Okay, well, that's an excellent segue to the next question. Do all ballots, including drop box ballots need to be received by June 6th at what time and what date? June 6th, the close of the polls. We'll be checking obviously we'll be checking the drop box and we periodically go over to the post office to see if ballots have been delivered and we call them when it's later in the day and they always tell us if there are any more ballots. And could I just say one more thing about the postage on the ballots being sent back? This probably, I probably shouldn't broadcast this but we've never had a ballot be refused when it hasn't had postage. The post office does not refuse to deliver it. So I'm not spreading that around for no one to put it in stamp on it but I'm just saying in the event that someone is unable to do that. And some people I think just forget to do it or don't realize they have to do it but we've gotten plenty of ballots over the years with no postage. And I did speak to a postman about that and he said they don't just not deliver them because they know how important it is. Okay, then I'd like to call on Gordon Jamison who was the first to raise his hand. So I'll unmute you Gordon. Okay, can you hear me? We can. So I just had to, the introduction was very well done by Adam and Christine. I just had a couple of comments there that it'd be nice to have sanitizer on the way in as well as the way out. Who's gonna, just a query as to who's gonna wipe the voting booth desks off and then more substantial on the postcard. I've received in the past things where you open up the envelope and then you fill out the stuff in the inside and the envelope is designed so you can then seal the envelope and mail it back to the address. And that would be a brilliant way to take care of the question that Deborah brought up. And then finally, my last issue that was brought up through the conversation was Janice talked about, you know, it sounds like on the day of, unless the legislature says otherwise, they're gonna have to walk these through the process. So let's say there's 600 or 500 at a precinct, does that mean they have to go to the check in to the check out and then shove it in the box or what? So why don't we focus on the postcard and the process for the ballot, the rest of it I can follow up with, because I'm just wondering if there's enough workers to do that last part. Well, that's something we're still discussing how many workers are gonna be required at each polling station. But certainly as a warden, I know that we have to check people in and out just as if they had, you know, voted in person when we get an early vote to indicate that they have in fact been returned and they get checked off on the voters list. And then they would be inserted in the machine. And that to my knowledge, can only be done on June 6th, the day of the actual election. We can't fill the ballot box early even with official ballot. So that would be something of concern. If a lot of the, if there's a lot of voters that show up on foot, as well as a lot of ballots that came in early. Okay. I think that, if I may. Please. I mean, I think to some degree that ties in a little bit to one of the prior Speaker Patty Brennan's, Patty Brennan Sattel's comment about potential legislative relief about being able to count some of the early voting ballots before election day. So that's not an answer tonight, but I think it's an avenue for pursuit that could address that concern. That's been, excuse me, just for a second. That's been on the mass clerks Google list. And then it's been asked and Ms. Cheltas and Ari said that absolutely they cannot be processed earlier than the day of the election. So I don't know where the legislation came legislation came from, but she's already stated that it can't be done. Okay. Next person on the list is Len Diggins. And are you somewhere here? Do you see him, Adam? Yeah, I mean, I unmute him. Yes, please. Yeah, Jim, it doesn't seem to be letting me do the unmuting. How about now? There he is. There we go. Okay, great. Sorry. I think it's a configuration of my Zoom. Sorry about that. So a comment and a question. So I do share that concern about the birthday on the cards being on. And so whether it's legal, if it's legal to be actually, I really would like to see us do something to not mail that out because scammers are going to scam and we really don't want to do anything to kind of slow down or make floating by mail less palatable because I would very much like to see this done all the time for all elections. And my question is, are other towns having elections at this period in this timeframe? And if so, are you aware of what they're doing and what practices they might be using that differ from ours? Thanks, Tessette. So I know there were some towns that squeezed in their elections, sort of just under the wire before stay-at-home advisory went in place. So there's some group of towns that were already able to get their local elections completed, that their towns that normally have them earlier in the beginning of March. And then there's a group of towns that are all in the same sort of same boat that we're in and having the same discussions that we're having and having the same concerns about, depending on how things go over the next four to five weeks, whether or not it'll even be safe on June 6th or 13th or whatever date a town might have selected. I haven't heard from my colleagues the same degree of concerns that have been raised here about access to ballots. I do know many of the towns have reduced the number of polling places and are going with a leaner team of poll workers like we're doing, but I'll also ask around again. I, you know, on a daily basis, I'm checking in with a group of 10 to 15 other regional managers and I'll see if there's any others that have come up with any other best practices we can share. Thank you. It was a comment that came from Adam Battak of the Election Modernization Committee and he raised the question, is it possible to send in a scanned or photographed copy of the mail-in ballot request? I'll let Janice answer that, but I think the answer is yes, Janice. You wanna take that? Trying to unmute her. Yeah, okay. Yes, we can have it by any communication as long as it has your signature on it. Be faxed, it can be emailed and yes, you could copy the form if you want. And I don't think you, you don't necessarily have to put your birth date down. I mean, we're not going to reject it if there's no birth date on it, but I understand your concerns. And I will talk to LHS about the idea that Gordon Jameson had about folding the envelope over and sending it back that way. And I don't, you're probably not even gonna have to put your name and address on it. I've asked him to put it on both sides of this postcard. So when it comes back to us and when it goes out, because a lot of times we can't read the writing just because people do it in a hurry. I mean, I do it myself. So we're having the names and addresses printed on both sides of the post, postage, whatever. Hey, thank you. I will ask about that, what Gordon suggested and see if they can do it that way. Okay, the next person on our list is Julie Zill. So Julie, please begin. Thanks. I guess I have a couple of questions and I know it's a concern not to put too many things on the postcard, but I guess, will there be anything on the postcard to give people guidance if they've already sent in a form? Does it, is it bad to send the postcard in if they wanna be doubly sure? Also, I guess voter confusion is sort of a thing with this much change. Will the postcard say, don't ignore me because you might not be able to vote at your usual polling place. Some clue that they really wanna do this even if they think they can just vote down the block like they always have. Yeah, hold on, I think Janice is better suited to answer the first one than I'll take my shot at the second one. Okay, well, I think that is gonna be a bit of a problem that people probably will send the postcard in, but I don't think we can stop that because I know people get concerned that they may not have done it and that's why they got the postcard. And the other question about voting at a different precinct that's up to the select and they'll be doing that shortly sending everybody a postcard to say where they're going to vote. But we'll still get of course questions because I think people will ignore it or whatever, but for the majority of people they'll know where to go to vote. And so as to the second part about how much room we have on the card, I know Janice was gonna be sending a proof or sort of a sample over to LHS, the company that we work with to see how much they could fit on a postcard size, document and send it back to us. So I think frankly, again, just a practical answer, we wanna see how small of a font basics come back in and then depending on that see how much more we could potentially add in terms of messaging. Thank you. There was another question in the chat. If you already applied for an absentee ballot, which you did in February for the entire year, will you receive a ballot later on or has it been sent out already? None of the ballots have been sent out. The target date that we have is May 15th to start sending them out. So no one's gotten them yet. Okay, the next person to raise their hand was Bill Berkowitz. Well, I'm gonna unmute you. Thank you. Question about the timing of the postcards. Janice, I think you mentioned you were dealing with a printing company. And do we have a date by which the postcards, not the ballots will be sent out? Well, I'm working with, I talked to them today that he's gonna let me know tomorrow. I tried to get an answer tonight, but he's going to let me know tomorrow when that will be. I'm hoping the very latest next week at the beginning because time is so short. So the postcards could go out really next week and then the ballots would go out on May 15th. You hear that, right? Yes, well, the ballots that we have, we have a ton of ballots now anyway to send out, I mean, applications. So they'll be going out May 15th anyway. And then as we get the postcards in, we'll be doing the same thing with the postcards. You know, sending those people their ballots. Thank you. Thank you. The next comment is from the chat. Well, there are laws, regulations about political campaigning in terms of distance from polling, location, entrance and literature distribution, et cetera. Has there been any consideration of how to ensure safe interactions between voters and campaign volunteers? Given that there could be lines to vote, I wonder about these kinds of interactions. And if the author of that comment would like to raise their hand, they could elaborate on that. That would be Krista Kelleher, who I know was present. Krista, are you there? There you are. I did see her. Where'd she go? There you are. OK, Krista. I was wondering about the interaction with voters and the potential lines that we could see if there's six or more feet apart from voters coming into locations. So that was the question I have. Thank you. OK. I think tonight the best I can say is that's a very good question, and we'll have to think about it. I'm not fully versed on how much control we have to tell people who are campaigning where they can stand. I know the distance they have to stand from the polling location. I'm not sure if we can say, here's the 20 by 20 pen that you each get your six by six spot in. I don't know if we can do that. So I think we'll have to think about that and see if there's a safe way for us to guide people. My gut is going to tell me we can guide people, but not mandate people at safely in that regard. But we can talk about that with counsel and see what's appropriate. Well, I know that our Health and Human Services Director mentioned this morning that she's going to encourage everyone to adhere to the governor's guidelines and that the idea is to have people rooted through the polling places where they won't have the tendency to speak to one another until if they go outside that's up to them. But in the polling location, we don't want to get congregations like it's a subway terminal. So that's still being planned out. The next person who raised their hand was F Malopchak. So I'm going to unmute you, Beth. Hello, Nning. Thank you, everyone. I shared Deborah Butler's concern about the protected personal information on the postcard. So I'd like to know, I'd like some clarity. Is that birth date to be printed on the postcard prior to being sent out? Or does the voter put that on when mailing it back? That's my first set of questions. Quick follow-up, if one goes ahead and requests a ballot via Secretary Galvin's office to avoid the whole postcard thing, does the Assistant Town Clerk Janice Webber somehow know that so that I wouldn't risk having a postcard with my personal protected personal information on it sent to my house? Because I agree with Deborah Butler. I want to do everything I can to avoid that. Thank you. Janice, do you want to answer that? Yes. OK, go ahead, Adam. We're not sending out postcards with people's birth dates on them. Right. That's correct. It has not been stated that is not what we're doing. We are sending out postcards that we want people to identify themselves on so that a ballot can be sent back to them. We've heard loud and clear the concern about the placement of a birth date will determine whether or not it's legally necessary. And if it is, in fact, legally necessary, we'll investigate one of the suggestions that was made about making it safer via a flip, like some type of flip maneuver on the card. But we will not be mailing out cards with people's birth dates printed on them. Thank you. OK, another question via the chat. And really, the campaign volunteers, like signholders, take direction from police officers at the polls without fuss. What about campaigns and will they honor directions if we can get them out in advance? Adam, do you want to respond to that? Is that in the chat? I'm not sure that I fully understood the question. OK, why don't we ask the author of that, Annie LeCourt, to unmute her and let her follow it up? Great. Annie, where are you? I saw you on the fourth or fifth page. We have over 100 people as in folks, so please bear with us as we look through all the names to unmute someone. Annie, are you there somewhere? There she is. OK, I found her. I didn't go seek. Yeah, just in my experience of working on campaigns, campaigns tend to be pretty cooperative with the police officers at the polls and the warden about where to stand. And I would think maybe not one pen for all the campaigns, but if we designated some locations and there were going to be signholders or the candidates were going to show up, I think they would honor that, because we're all used to doing it. So I guess that was my point, was with a little advanced planning, we can make sure that the campaigns know what the expected behavior is about campaigning at the polling places and stay at a safe distance and make sure they're not crowding the voters who are attempting to line up and so on and so forth. So that was just my thought. OK, another question in the chat. What if there was a check box? If there is more than one voter with the same name in the household, can you check and hear the older or younger or something like that? That was by Lynette Martin. Lynette, did you want to say something more? I unmuted you. Oh, sorry. I just was putting it. I didn't realize you were going to say it out loud. It was just an idea to address the birthdate issue. If the issue is that you might have multiple voters with the same name, I thought maybe there could be some sort of a check box thing so you could not have to do the birthday problem. Well, the whole idea of this listening session is to hear from everyone and to let everyone kind of be like a huge melting pot and come up with really creative ideas so that I don't want to keep anybody's chat private if it's not a question about what time are we going to watch the Red Sox tomorrow? Yeah, that's fine. I'm sorry. I just, yeah, if that's what you call that answer. I thought you had a good answer. Steve Revolac, following you asked a question, would it be possible to provide the year rather than the full date of birth, distinguish between people with the same name living at the same dress? And I think that's a good question because more than likely the father and the son weren't born in the same year. And it's to you, after you stop laughing. Well, I think there's not a tremendous amount of people who have that same problem. A lot of times the child has a different middle initial. That's part of the problem is people don't put down their middle initials and they're registered that way. So we could have two John Smiths, but one might be John S Smith, one John T Smith, and they forget to put in the middle initial. If it came to that, we probably could call them or if we got, obviously, if we got two John Smiths, it wouldn't matter. And when they go to the polls, the bar code indicates their birth date anyway. I mean, it's not out there, but it's on the bar code. The election workers cross off so they could distinguish. They could, I don't think they can ask them for their birthday, but I think they could distinguish if it was the father or the son. Excellent, thank you. From Grant Buck, just asked the campaigns to do unmanned signage. Why the heck do warm bodies need to even stand their holding signs for eight hours blocking for a position? Zip tie them to the fence and walk away. Now I have to direct that to you, Adam, because do we have a campaign signage regulation with regard to what is appropriate and what is not? So I think the best way for me to answer that question is that's gonna go on the list of things I'll talk to town council about, but I can't imagine that we can tell campaigns that they can't have warm bodies holding signs. I just can't imagine that we have a legal right to do that. So we'll look into it and see if there's advice. Again, guidance we can give for what people can safely do, but yeah, I can't imagine how we'd be able to disinvest people of their ability to campaign. Okay, before I continue with a person who's on the list, we have exhausted, oh, wait a minute, here's another one. From Ray Brun, Bloom, let's zip tie the campaign. Okay, I don't think I'm gonna repeat that one. He had a silly idea. Are there more questions? If people raise their hands, I'll entertain them, but I do wanna give everyone a chance before I turn to people a second time. So is there anyone out there who's shy and has a question? Michael Ruderman, thank you for volunteering. Go ahead. Thank you, Jim. I was wondering if the absentee ballots, once we have a list of the people who've requested that they get one, are they going to be mailed in stages or is the plan to do one mail drop at the post office on May 15th or as close as we can to that day? That's all. Okay, Adam or Janice, do you wanna answer that question? Okay, on May 15th, we're going to hopefully have every single ballot that we've received mailed out that day. The postman in the town is going to, as we're putting them in, we're gonna stop putting them in probably next week in the envelopes and he can predate the stamp on them. So some of them will be ready to go, but he's not going to send them out till May 15th. So our plan is to send all that we have out May 15th and if we get a tremendous amount in from the postcards, that may not be a possibility, but we'll definitely get them out within a couple of days. I mean, I don't know what the amount is going to be, so I can't really answer that correctly right now, but we obviously will get them out as fast as we can because all the envelopes still have to be, I mean, we have labels for them, but they still have to be addressed and everything has to be put in an envelope and obviously the right ballot. So it may take us longer than normal if we get a tremendous amount, but the plan is May 15th, everything that we have should go up. Okay, that's it, thank you. Okay, thank you. Next person on the list is Jennifer Seuss. Where is Jennifer? I have a quick question, but then I also wanted to point out that the, it is currently illegal to put a sign up without somebody holding it. So it wouldn't be possible to sort of zip tie a sign without changing the legal requirements there. So this is actually just a personal question that I don't quite have clarity on yet. At the beginning of the year, we requested absentee ballots for our son who's in college in California, was in college in California, and we, obviously he's not there anymore, and so if he sends a new request, does that automatically supersede the earlier one or is there some extra step that he needs to do to ensure that the earlier one is sort of ignored? I guess that question would be for Janice as to procedure. Janice, go ahead. Yes, currently we've already discussed that in our office, and currently Denise, who does most of the absentee ballot applications at the moment, has called everyone that is in college or out of the state and asked them to call her back if she can't get them and to see if they still want the ballot sent out because some still stayed in the dorms and some just out of state anyway. So we have been checking with everybody who has a ballot for the year because of that reason. My son has received a call, but so if he sends in something now? If he sent in something now, then we would just take it off. Yes, we would remove his school address at least for this election. Okay, great. We'll probably have to revisit it again because we don't know how long this is gonna last, but that's the plan. That's what we've been doing is calling people. Got it, okay. Okay, the next person on the list was Naomi Greenfield. Yeah, I just had a question about, like for the number of poll workers, because like as I was listening to this, my husband and I were saying like, we should volunteer to be poll workers as like healthier, not at risk population people, but is it better to have more poll workers do shorter shifts? Which I know, I realize might be difficult to schedule, but is it better than getting one person at a poll location that's feeding through a lot of people? So I'll take my best shot at that. I don't, well, I shouldn't speak for Christine. We can talk to Christine, but from everything I've been hearing in the more general COVID responses is that keeping networks as long as possible is the right approach to this. So my first blush reaction is the more people you introduce, the more risk of spread you introduce. So that's my first gut reaction, but I think it's worth exploring. And I did see a question in the chat earlier too, about volunteering. Let me talk that through with council as well, because if we're paying a good number of people to do it, I just have to figure out legally how that works if others are volunteering. I mean, it may, I don't wanna sound like I'm not protecting the town's tax dollar, but it may be more straightforward to pay everybody that works that day for the hours that they work. So let me work through that and see what the best approach is in terms of volunteering. I'm not sure, but I think that question, Adam had to do with campaign volunteering and not volunteering at the polls, but I may be wrong. She meant, you meant working at the polls. I meant working at the polls. Like instead of having someone work an entire day shift, having like two hour shifts and four people or something like that. Right. Okay, the next person, Patty Muldoon. Hi. So I had a couple of questions. My experience with the post offices, sometimes things get delayed, that they are not at 100% functionality and I'm concerned about those delays. And I'm just wondering if somebody is working directly with the post office around all of these concerns. And the other comment that I just would like to make is that the warden is generally busy most of the day dealing with all of the unresolved issues that happen. So I imagine to try, I'm impressed with the concept of one warden handling up to five precincts. I'm not sure how feasible that is because it's a really busy time, but we would see, but I just would think that would be particularly challenging. So my question is about the post office relations. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Well, let me, let me, I'll say I've not yet spoken with anybody at the post office. I don't know, Janice, have you talked with Tony who's our postal person or anybody in the post office about their ability to be quick with mailings? Janice is still muted. Let me know. Thank you. We usually talk, Tony, I've talked with him often, but the people at the post office, we check, as I said, we check with them during the day and we usually send somebody over if there's no, if Tony's not, well, Tony's not there all day anyway and on Saturday, I don't even know if he will be there. But we do go over periodically and pick up checks during, I mean, pick up ballots during the day. And I don't even, I have to check the time that they're closing if they're closing at a different time now, but usually they'll, you know, they know if the ballots are there or not. If I called them at 430, they'd say, well, we've had our last delivery for the day. So there is a cutoff of when they're going to be getting there. I was just thinking of all of the steps along the way, getting the request out to people, people getting the request back, getting the ballot out to people and getting the ballot back, that's a lot of- Well, we don't have any control. That's the thing. We don't have any control over the postal service. It's been actually very good, but there's always a glitch somewhere, but that's, we have no control over it. So that's all I can say. Okay, another question is the town want to include in the mailing literature, whether, well, this would be the postcard, because I don't know of any other literature, whether we want to encourage voters to use the mail-in option and discourage people from voting in person. You want to take that, Adam? I appreciate that sentiment. I think that's also probably a legal quagmire of feeling like it's voter suppression trying to directly telling people to not vote in person. Let me, again, let's put this on a list of things to look at. There may be a way of doing it, saying, please vote by mail or voting by mail, safe, easy and effective. I mean, there might be ways we can get at that point without directly saying, please consider voting by mail and not in person. I fear that would seem like we were trying to tamp down, turn out. Okay, before we continue, I would like to ask a polling question. Before you, when I launched this poll, the question number one is how do you plan to vote? Vote by mail, vote in person, undecided. I'll give you some time to answer the question. Then I will let you know what the results are. I'll just give you a few more seconds to include your answer. We have 63 of 79 precincts reporting. And at this time, if you're on a phone, I am not certain how you indicate your choice. So I'll give you five, four, three, two, one. And we're gonna close the polls. And of the answers of 64 people out of 79, 53 responded, I would vote by mail. Five responded, I would vote in person. And seven were undecided. So I might say that maybe we don't have to encourage people vote by mail. I'd like to share the, I can share the results so everybody could see that. You wanna make note of that. Can everyone see that? Okay, now we have a second question, which is a little more interesting. So I think it's more interesting. Let me end the poll and I have to go to my second poll now. The second polling question, if you were planning to vote in person, those five people that indicated yes on June 6th, would it change in polling location, change the manner in which you cast your ballot? So your options are yes, no, or unsure. And everyone is able to take a position in this poll, but we had only five people that indicated they would definitely vote in person. So I'll start the poll now. Okay, I'll get another 10 seconds or so for people to make their final choices. Five, four, three, two, one. And I'm gonna close the poll. Oh. Jimmy got muted again. There you go. All right, so Eric, you were just in, did you see the poll question? I don't know if he can answer. Can you unmute Eric Helmuth for a second, Adam, so we can make sure he didn't hear the introduction to that. Oh, yes, he said yes. Okay, thank you. Okay, so the results were clearly no, 75% of the respondents said it wouldn't change their position if they were planning to vote in person. Thank you. That helps with some of the decision-making for this. The next person to speak, let's see. Okay, it would not impact me if voting by mail, but I do worry about lower info voters trying to go to their former place. It needs to be marked with signs. Adam, do you wanna respond to that in terms of how the town is gonna educate the voter of their new voter location? So there's the legal requirement to send a postcard to every voter, again, at their mailing address, telling them where their new polling location is. But I think I heard you say that we should potentially put signage on the old polling location and stating where the new one is. And I think that sounds like a very good idea. Okay, the next person for the second time is Eddie Sotel. Hi, Eddie. Thank you. So really just a couple of really quick comments. Whatever it is that we decide whether we say that we can strongly encourage folks to vote by mail, I think it's gonna be critical that we communicate that to people in all the platforms, including what may not be so obvious is the E911, the Reverse 911, which I know we use judiciously, but I think it's important for a couple of reasons. One is to awareness, right? That this postcard is being sent by the town. And then two, to validate that it's not a scam, right? So I think that's important. And it would also be helpful, we've had dialogue about this absentee versus early and I submitted it, what does that mean? I think it would be really helpful to put that at a minimum on the website. So I think it's really, it all comes down to information and education for people and providing them with the proper information. Last comment, as we talk about additional folks to help with the election, I think we should think about the MRCs, which is the Medical Reserve Corps, as well as AEMA, the Arlington Emergency Management Association. Those folks are great. They've done a lot of work over the years with different flu clinics. So they could be used in a variety of ways. And I think they're an excellent resource that we should have. Thank you. Yeah, it looks like Len Diggins has his hand up. Yes, I wanted to ask him, but every once in a while, little Gremlin turns my computer to mute. So Len, you are next. You just don't wanna talk to me. That's okay, I understand. Anyways, I just wanted to say to you, I just wouldn't conclude from this survey of this population that we don't have to encourage people to vote by mail. Cause I will posit that we're not a representative of the sample. You're right. You're right. That is the truth. Sure, okay, cool, thanks. But it was an overwhelming response that we got 90% in favor of voting by mail. Yeah, but I'm just not surprised that this group would respond that way. So yeah, I mean, I just couldn't let that hang out there, thanks. Okay. Is there anyone else? Lynette Martin, I'm unmuting you. Go ahead, Lynette. Yeah, I think that Lynette poses a good point there. And I also wonder about the normal channels, Patty mentioned using the reverse 911. I know we have used that judiciously in the past, but I think it would be good to use it a few times for this, like perhaps once now to tell people to look for the postcard and then another time later to advise about polling locations if they change. Also, it would be great if we could do one reverse 911 call where we have like just one line said in a couple of different languages, like if you need help with learning about the election changes in your language, then text this number. That's something that my campaign did is like having a number where they could text it in their language. That way, you have time to determine like finding someone to help the person in that language. So that would be nifty if that was something we could do and then that would, you know, I'm just trying to think of non-traditional ways to try to reach a wider audience. And then I'm sorry, I do have one more question. Is there a way to work with Arlington's housing housing authority to get some like, some signage put up in our lower income areas because those are the areas where they're not as likely to be on Facebook and social media. And I know that we rely so heavily on social media. So I was just trying to figure out if we could coordinate with the housing corporation of Arlington to try to get messages into those buildings. Yeah, I think that's, I think that we can certainly do that. Okay, we don't have anybody with their hand raised. I'm sure there's other thoughts. Is there anyone that has any more thoughts? Okay, if not, I'm gonna call on Patty Muldoon to make a few comments on the behalf of the League of Women Voters. Where is Patty? There she is. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. This has been a very educational forum. I wanted to add, one of the questions came through was asking about future elections. And I wanted to mention that I'd had a conversation with representative Sean Garbley again today. And he asked me to speak for him that he's sorry he's not able to join this forum, but his father died last Thursday and he is dealing with those issues tonight. So he could not be here. And our condolences go to the whole Garbley family. And I'll just speak for all of us on that. And his father did die from COVID-19 and lived in Arlington his whole life and was a teacher. So I thought I would mention that part. But regarding going forward, whether vote by mail can be a future option, the Secretary of State's office has filed legislation that would continue vote by mail just for the September 1st primary in the November 6th election. Sean himself is planning to file legislation that would make vote by mail an ongoing process that we could use. So he has not filed that quite yet, but there are a lot of groups around the nation and certainly within Massachusetts that are encouraging this avenue to increase voting and to make it easier for everyone whether or not we are in a pandemic. So I just wanted to mention that component and actually I did have one small comment which is if we had one contact phone number where confused voters could call and be pretty sure that that one number somebody was gonna answer and straighten out their confusion, I think we will with all of these wonderful ideas we've heard tonight, at least the town will be doing it's very best to ensure that we cover as many bases as we possibly can. I wanna remind voters that the last day to register to vote is May 27th and that's an important day for students who may not have put their new location down as was mentioned in the call tonight or anyone who's changed their address and that the lead would certainly be continuing to work to try to publicize information about the candidates in a free and fair way, but it continues to be our hope that the town will also make that information available because that is the number one issue that we hear from people that they just didn't know about the candidates. So I'm aware that that's a major area of voter education that we will work on and we hope everyone else will join us on that point. So I don't know, Jim, if we had some other things that I was supposed to mention and didn't, and if I didn't please cover them for me, but this has been a wonderful forum, I'm delighted that we were able to co-sponsor it and with great gratitude to ACMI for live streaming it and posting this on their website as well, ACMI TV. And thank you also to Envision Arlington for co-sponsoring this event and to Jim, Adam and Christine, Janice, everyone for making themselves available so that we can put together the best plan and everyone can find out about it. So with great gratitude, thanks. Thank you. I'll call on Gordon Jameson now. Yeah, just one quick thing on the future mail, vote by mail options. I was impressed when watching a cable show that there's a huge number of states that have no excuse absentee balloting, which seems to have the path to me, it's the path of these resistance towards enabling vote by mail and then the town could always be able to do exactly the process that we've discussed this evening. Once you had the ability to have no excuse absentee, you basically have vote by mail if you wanna prosecute it that way. That's what I wanted to say. It just seems like an easier legislative thing than mandatory vote by mail. It seems to give people the options. I just wanna say that vote by mail never excludes the possibility of voting in person. That we will only wanna maximize opportunity for voters. So always be able to vote in person. Thank you. Eddie, we're gonna mention something about the website. Oh, of course. Thank you. So the League of Women Voters of Arlington has on our website contact information for our candidates. We'll update it by tomorrow, but you can get our voters guide and links to ACMI and Bob Sprague's website on LWVA.com, LWVA or League of Women Voters of Arlington.com for information on all the wonderful candidates. We have five contested races. This is a really exciting campaign that we don't usually see in our town elections. So find out more about all the candidates. Thanks. Thank you, Patty. And Lynette Martin for a second time, trying to unmute her. Can you unmute her? I got it, I got it. Sorry, it might have been me. I was just wondering, can we put a line about the League of Women Voters website on the postcard since they know that you said we can't do anything about the, we can't do anything about sort of advertising the people, but that way, voters know directly where to go to get information. Is that generic enough that we can put that? I don't know what to address that. Yeah, we talked about that exact question with town council this morning. And the challenge is, the office of campaign and political finances position is that we would have to verify that everybody had equal access to it. And though I'm confident that the League will give every candidate equal access, feels like a high bar for us to prove and a potential liability for the town. So we will dig into that a little bit more, but I think there are some legal challenge. I mean, I know the town has the League of Women Voters stuff on their website. So is there a difference? It's sort of a resource expenditure difference in doing it, but we're trying, again, we're trying to verify whether or not we're able to do it. Okay, I mean, that would be awesome if we could, but sure. Thank you for looking into it. Yes, before we conclude, are there any more questions from the attendees? Last call. Okay, I'd like to thank you all for coming. Folks are working hard at town hall to try to save everybody from COVID-19 and I think there's a lot of incredible energy around this town and this is one way to marshal it and enable people to feel like we're a real communal family. And with that, I'd like to ask Adam if you have any closing remarks to make. Thank you, Jim. I really just wanna say thank you to everyone who's participated and provided feedback or even just listened tonight. Thank you, Jim, for facilitating a meeting, this meeting so effectively. Thank you to the league and Vision Arlington, to the clerk's office, really everybody who's coming together, again, as Patty said, to try to do our best in these circumstances to put together as safe and fair in an election as is humanly possible. So I've heard all of you tonight. I think there's some things we'll be able to do, some things we won't be able to do for legal or practical reasons, but this has been very helpful to me. I don't wanna speak for Janice, but I'm sure it's been very helpful to Janice as well. And we look forward to continuing to report out on our plans over the next few days. And again, thank you. Okay, before we conclude, I do see another hand. Sandra Mostaho? Yes, hi, thank you. I had asked this basically the same question that Lynette Martin had just asked over chat and I just wanted to piggyback that. I understand that perhaps we aren't allowed to put the League of Women Voters information on the postcard, but there is also information on our town website, at least on the town meeting candidates, and could we not at least direct people back to the town website for more information about the election and candidates? Yeah, I think that is an easier yes than to direct people back to the town website. There may still be the space concerns about what fits in the card, but from a legal perspective, I think that's a pretty clear cut, yes. Okay, well, thank you all for coming. It's great that everybody had a chance to speak that wished to, and I certainly hope that after the select board meets Monday night, if there are more formalized plans that we can conduct another one of these public forums. We, tomorrow afternoon, the health department, as well as the manager, is gonna conduct a public forum continuation on COVID-19 and how the town is addressing it. So this is a shameless plug for that. Last week, 140 people attended, and I was really impressed with how the town is addressing COVID-19 exposure. So I'm certain that even the interest that we saw tonight, we can continue this type of format and do this again with public notice on the town calendar. So unless there's any more questions, we'll conclude our meeting. I'm just gonna take a quick scan. Seeing none, Adam, do you wanna have the luxury of pressing the button? Sure, I'll hold one. Good night all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.