 Okay, good evening. This is James O'Connor Chair. Made me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. So, Greg, could you do the roll call first of the voting members? We'll have to unmute them to allow them to say present. All right, see if I got this. Adam Beatock. Here. All right, Dan Dunn. I don't see him to unmute him, all right? Myself, Greg Dennis, here. James O'Connor. Here. All right, did you just want the voting members first, Jim? Hey, you can do it the way you're doing it. Anyway, I'm just going to go in order here. Jennifer Seuss is not here. We knew she was going to be absent. Yuhan Sonan, let me just find Yuhan. Yuhan. Here. All right. Okay. Leslie Waxman. See if I get you unmuted. Come on. There we go. I'm here. Great. Maxwell Palmer. Is Max here? He may be waiting. Oh, here he is. He's waiting. Okay. A couple more people showed up. I'm trying, Max, I'm trying to unmute you. Oh, here we go. There you go. Great. Sometimes it doesn't take the first time I press unmute. Okay. Paul Rea. Paul is here. Paul does not have a mic enabled. Paul, can you enable your microphone? I'll come back to him. Sean Harrington is not here as far as I can tell to unmute him. Walter Horn. Walter is. I think he's W.H. W.H. Well, I saw a W.H. We saw a W.Z. and we weren't sure what that was, but. Oh, okay. Okay, I'm not seeing Walter here. Somebody else has showed up, but it doesn't look like Walter. And William Logan, Bill is here somewhere. Yes, S. Logan. Right? Hi, I'm present. All right. Could you maybe just change your name to Bill Logan or something just so I can see inside of that instead of S. Logan. All right. That is everyone. No, there's one more. Ennis Wieber. Oh, Janice. I'm not a voting member. But an integral part of this conversation. Well, I'm here. Okay. Good evening. This open meeting of the election modernization committee is being conducted remotely with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020 due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth in the outbreak of the coronavirus. In order to mitigate the transmission and reduce risks of COVID-19 illness, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Furthermore, all members of public bodies are allowed to encourage and allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. This order, which you can find, just let me turn to this. I got a screen share just a moment while I get it up. You should see on your screen now the order suspending the open meeting law from the governor. And it does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment as the agenda specifies in item five. Even if the members do not provide public comment, participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. For this meeting, the election modernization as committee is convening by video conference via Zoom as posted on the town's website and it identifies how the public may join. Please note that, oh, I didn't record it yet. I have to start recording. It was already recording. Oh, okay. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are attending by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to share your computer while actually screen sharing except for the host is turned off. Anything you broadcast may be captured if it were the case. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town website under the election modernization committee as documents pertaining to the meeting. If you have not received them, I will be screen sharing the documentation as well as providing an opportunity highlight certain points as people wish to speak. As far as the meeting ground rules, we're now turning to the first item on the agenda. But before we do so, for me to cover effective rules for clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. I, the chair will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks, the chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comment, question or motions. Please hold until your name is called and the clerk unmutes you. Further, please be, please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps us have accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage and colloquially with other members, please do so through the chair and taking care to identify yourself. For public comment, after members have spoken, the chair will afford public comment to those who wish to speak and they only need to identify themselves and their address. Once the chair has a list of all public commentators, I will call on each by name and afford three minutes for any comment. Each vote taken tonight will be by roll call vote. So let us begin. Jim, we've had a couple new people join since I did the roll call, one of which looks like a member of the committee. Okay. So should I just repeat those names? Just the people's names that are in attendance. Sean Harrington, your in attendance. Mike Snorri. Okay. And then there's somebody else whose name is appearing as Celia's iPad. If that person wants to rename themselves, if Celia's a real name, I guess it's fine, but particularly if they're a member of the committee under a different name there, it would be good to know that you're here so we can add you to the roll call. Okay. The first item on the agenda as you should see on your screen is the executive order on remote dissipation, which I've already covered. The second item of business tonight is acceptance of minutes for the last meeting. So have all the members reviewed the minutes. And we've just had Walter join. Okay. Walter's joined. Walter, where'd he go? Well, there he is. Walter, if you enable your mic, he's probably doing that right now. I'm not seeing his mic enabled yet. Okay. Walter, can you enable your mic? It should be in three little dots on the top right of your screen. You'll have to unclick or click the unmute or you need to establish your mic. Okay. Well, Walter figures that out. You can tell us you're here, but I can see you. Let's review the minutes. Does anybody, well, first of all, if there is a comment or question, you can go to the three dots on your screen on the top right and indicate that you wanna raise your hand and then I will call upon you. Oh, you don't have, okay. Yes, I'm gonna unmute him. Okay, where'd he go? Celia has a hand up. Okay, well, John Harrington raised his hand. Okay, so I'm trying to find where those dots are. Do you mean if I hover over the videos which is mute my audio, stop videos, it's rename pin video? Right, and you should have a thing that allows you to raise your hand. I do not see that option. Maybe I'm new. Why don't I? I see reactions. Well, I see somebody just lowered their hand. All right, I see that. Okay, does that go away or no? Okay, Celia's iPad two, you might be trying to raise your hand, but at this point, only members will be speaking on the minutes. So, is there anybody else that is a member that would like to speak? Vote on the minutes. If anyone, if there is no one that would like to speak on the adoption of the minutes, I'll call for a motion to accept. If one of the voting members wishes to raise their hand, please do so. Okay, next. Motion to accept the minutes. I'll call for a second. Walter. Walter Horn. I thought I can second myself. Okay, Walter meant to second it. You may wanna check the front of your screen and see if your sound is no volume, Walter. Can you not hear me? I can hear you now, it's gotten better. Okay, having gotten a motion and a second, I call for a vote. So, Greg, could you first poll the ex-official members? Okay. That would be Bill Logan. I should have had a, I should have, I'm gonna just make a quick. All right, I'll start it for you. Bill Logan. Yes. James O'Connor. Yes. Paul Rea. Let's see, where's Paul? People are hard to find. It's not, you're not kidding. Where's Paul here? I don't see him anymore. Okay. Janice Weaver. Here you are, Janice. Here. Do you make a vote to adopt the minutes or consent to the minutes? Well, I consent to them, I'm not a member, but okay. We're enabling the members that are ex-official to consent. I'll take a vote of the seven voting members present. So, Adam Battick, do you see him, Greg? Here he is. Adam? Yes. Greg Dennis. Yes. Sean Harrington. Yep. Walter Horn. Where is he? Hi. Okay. Maxwell Palmer. There he is. Six down. Okay, Max. Yep. Yuhan. You're unmuted. Yes. Okay, and lastly, Leslie Waxman. Yes. Okay. That's an affirmative vote, unanimous vote. So we'll move on to item three on the agenda, which is an update on Envision Arlington Townwide Survey Results. And for that, I'll ask Maxwell Palmer to give us an update. No real update. I just want to ask, Jim, should we just leave the members unmuted? It's a little bit. Okay, yeah, go ahead. All right, I'm just going to unmute the ex-officio and voting members. It's just going to be easier than finding everybody each time. And that way we can each mute ourselves and then unmute ourselves as we need to also. Okay, that's right. So no real report on the survey right now. We'll have a full draft proposal for our next meeting. Okay. Moving on to a report on the warrant articles 21, 23, and 24 that are submitted for the town meeting when excelled. And do you want to give an update? Sure. Did you want to present the draft or? Yeah, so I'll bring it up. Jim, if I can make one recommendation, not to make this so formal, but I think that one thing we could do, which I should have done while speaking, as an example, is because videos don't move up for individuals and it's hard for them to see the face of the person and rather for them to scroll to see who's talking, if we could say our name like we do in town meeting almost before we speak that way, that individuals don't have to go, sir, because right now I've been trying, you and Greg are the top of my stream but the others aren't. That way it's just easier for us to know who's speaking. Yes, not only do I ask you to speak your name, but if you go to the top, you can go to speaker view and then the individual that is a speaker will pop on the large part of the screen, you'll be able to see them, okay? So where were we? Yes, Greg? Yeah, so at the last meeting, I presented some rough drafts of the three motions motions for our articles. We reviewed them and had various comments as documented in the minutes. I updated those motions and I sent them to Dugheim for his review. He didn't have any comments on this first one, he thought it was fine. He hasn't produced his draft yet, but he seemed to have no qualms with anything in here and I would expect his draft to look very similar substantially like this one. Does anyone else on the committee have any comments or questions? And just to review for those new, the purpose of this article is to extend the life of the committee for another two years and we are expanding the membership by adding one member from the Arlington League of Women Voters and one resident under the age of 25 to be appointed by the select board. And the key phrase is right here, all of whom shall be voting members. Yes, yeah. Yes, Adam? Sir, I just really quick, silly question. We added a bunch of seats and we've set the quorum in that to be half. Is there gonna be, is that half of the seats that are filled or half of the seats regardless of whether or not filled? That clarification was that it would be one more than half. So it would be eight members. Will it need to attend in order to satisfy a quorum? Right, but if we only have say seven people who are actually on the committee because the other ones haven't been filled by, I don't know, the town moderator hasn't picked somebody or the select board hasn't picked somebody if we don't have actual people for those spots, are we in danger of putting ourselves on hiatus? I don't think so. That wasn't a concern based upon the current history of the committee and the attendance tonight. Okay. We only have two absences and one of them was a significant conflict and the other I could not reach. So I'm not sure. We have also relaxed the restriction as to who a board can appoint a little bit before it had to be a member of the board. And now if no member of the board, the board could in theory appoint a designee that's not on the board. So for example, Dan Dunn happens to be the designee of the select board right now. If, and he's not going to be a select board member after the election, if there was no one else on the select board who wanted to do it and Dan was interested in doing it, maybe the select board would consider them their designee. I'm not saying that's a possibility in this case. I don't think that's likely in this case. I'm just giving a theoretical example of a little bit more flexibility for the appointing power to find somebody who's interested in showing up. I have a question here, Sean Harrington speaking. I see that we have it listed one resident under the age of 25 to be appointed by the select board. At a curiosity, I mean, so kind of that a little bit onto this point of if we can't find a 25, I mean, I imagine we'll find someone under 25 that's interested, but in case we don't find someone under the age of 25, how does that just stay vacant until we do? And at the same time, I guess my other question would be, is it that their term would abruptly end once they turn 26 or how does that play out as well? I guess that's the purpose of town meeting. These are the proposals, Sean. So I think I'd like to leave that for a later time when we actually conduct town meeting and we discussed the specific report of the articles. There may be opportunity for amendment or substitution. So are there any, before we go ahead, did you have one more question? Yes, the only reason I'm bringing it up now is I think it's good to think of those answers now so that way we have them prepared for when town meeting comes around. And the only other thing that I have to add onto it is when it comes to, if we have someone 25 is if we had considered whether or not to add someone from the senior center or a group from the opposite end to ensure that someone in an older age group was here. Now, being active in town publics, I've always tended to be one of the younger people active, but the average age is higher, mainly out of events, but that's not always a guarantee. So there's just some two cents to put out there and with that, I'll shut up. Okay, any other members wish to discuss article 21? I will take Sean's question about the age, whether that's the age at the date of appointment, which I assumed it was. I will put that to Doug Hine and see if he wants to clarify it further in his draft. It's only for two years anyway. Sorry, this is Leslie, but it's only for two years anyway, so at most they'd end up being 27. I have a question. Yes, Janice. Isn't that a little age discrimination picking ages to be on a committee? Excuse me? What's the purpose of having somebody under 25? What difference does it make? Well, I think we were in our discussions at the last meeting when we talked about members, it was partly a recommendation of the League of Women Voters that we include the young folks and we're trying to get more people actively voting. So it was a concern to try to include someone under age 25 so that we have a better representation. Okay. This is something that we can further discuss at a town meeting. Thank you for that talk. Anyone else? Okay, absent of that, let's move on to article 23, which is the homeroom legislation for the consolidating town meeting member elections. Greg, do you wanna discuss that? Yeah, so everyone, for those not familiar, we are simplifying the process when there is a vacancy in town meeting today. A midterm vacancy generates a separate election on the ballot, which you'll see your normal four three-year seats for town meeting, but you might also see a vacancy in the one-year or two-year seat, which creates some confusion for new town meeting, new people running for town meeting and creates a strategic question, which race they run in and can create some perverse results in which somebody gets a hundred votes, but places fifth in the three-year race and somebody with a couple right-in votes gets in on a one-year or two-year vacancy seat. So we'd like to ensure that the person with the most votes wins the seats. This was all three of these motions, by the way, were all three of these motions or the articles were endorsed unanimously by the select board. And I've heard a lot of positive comments about this one in particular, because this is the way that we run town meeting elections when presupply lines are withdrawn. We looked at the draft last meeting. There was, Doug Hime had a few minor language changes that I updated here. The one outstanding question, there was a question, I believe from Adam, he asked, and it was one of that was on several of our minds, what happens when there's a tie that's not affecting the division between terms of the tie affecting who is elected? And I put that to Doug and he was a little bit reluctant to include that language here because he thought it was somewhat out of scope because this language is only pertaining to what we're changing with respect to determining the division of terms. The rule is throughout Massachusetts for all offices, if there's a tie that affects who's elected, none of those people are elected. That's a failure to elect. But I asked whether we could include some language to the effect of, none of this shall change the current practice in which something, something, in which no one is elected if the tie affects who's elected. He said he would work on that and try to include something in his draft, but he did not yet. That's where we are. But he was happy, he was largely happy with the draft we had. Any members have a question or a comment? Seeing none, let's move on to article 24. Wait a minute, what's it doing here? Which is legislation regarding ranked choice voting. So Greg, do you wanna discuss that? This is the one that was most substantially redrafted since last time. The sentiment last time was that we should, and from Doug Hyme was that we should spell everything out. So I took standard fair, standard model legislation and made a few changes to try to make it consistent with the statewide ballot initiative for ranked choice voting that's going on, but mostly based on the model legislation. And sent this to Doug. He was largely happy with it. He didn't have time to dig into it in detail, but he said it looked good. There was a question, he's researching a question as to whether we can change the housing authority elections at the local level because those are more prescribed from the state he's looking into that. And I know that Leslie spoke to me individually and said that she had some potential suggestions for improving the clarity of this, the clarity of the language here. Yeah, I don't know if you want. Do we wanna, yeah, we could, Jim, do we gonna wanna go into more detailed? Well, any member can address any questions or concerns that they have? Leslie, did you have one? Yeah, can you hear me okay? We can. Okay, I just looked at it this afternoon for the first time and I didn't have time to get too detailed into, but I thought a lot of the way it was written, and I know that Greg said that he got a lot of it from model language, but I was looking at it and I don't know if it's that were made, but some things I think could be explained a lot clearer. I looked at Minnesota's language this afternoon, which I think is a lot like what we're trying to do because they have both single and multi-seat. And I think some of the things that are similar, they said it a little clearer. And I think that I don't know when we have to vote on this language, but I can work on it some. I have some ideas of some things that I would edit. And I have also, I had some things that I might ask Greg why they were included, but specifically some of this stuff about skipped rank and what makes it valid and valid and also about overvotes that I was surprised that they read this way. I might have been misunderstanding what they were intended, but I don't think that it would be easy to go through in this meeting right now. I think it would be easier if I could write some stuff up for the next meeting maybe. Okay. But that time-wise, I don't know when we have to vote on this though. Well, we don't have town meeting until at least mid-June. So there is time for two more meetings prior to that. I'll make a motion that Leslie draft a work on a revised draft with some work with me on a revised draft. I'll make a motion for added clarity and present that at the next meeting. Second. Is there any other member that has a question or comment or concern? Questions about what Doug Himes looking at this Sean Arrington here. My first one is when it comes to the housing authority is it the restrictions in regards to, I know that one of the elections, I believe requires that you have to be, I guess state law requires that you have to have someone who lives within the under the, under public housing or subsidized public housing, I believe to be on the board. And I think one's appointed by the governor. Is that what he's looking into exactly? Or do we not know just yet as you're not clarifying? He didn't have a specific concern like that. He didn't have a very, he didn't have a specific concern. He just had a sort of general concern that, well, housing authority is sort of prescribed by the state and I got to go look to see whether or not anything that the state prescribes would be, would conflict with us. That was it. All right. Any further questions? I'll entertain a second to Greg's motion to continue to work on it with Leslie. Sean Arrington. Is there a second? Sean, second. On favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Some people have themselves muted, I believe. Okay. Well, let's do a roll call. Oh, Maxwell Palmer raised his hand. Where is he? There he is. Aye. I could not mute myself. Okay. Let me see. I could unmute people just to ask them. Yeah. Why don't we take a roll call vote because we should really do that. So, Adam Baddick. In favor. Greg Dennis. Yes. Sean Arrington. Yeah. Walter Horn. Aye. Maxwell Palmer. Yes. Yuhan Sonan. Sonan. In favor. Leslie Waxman. Yes. Okay. And for those members that are ex-officio, William Logan. Is he there? He's not, he's muted. Well, let me unmute him. Aye, I'm here. Someone said I was muted again, but I voted in favor. And you're not now. I'm in favor. Okay. James O'Connor, I'm in favor. Paul Raya, he's gone. And Janice Weaver. I'm muted just in case there she is. Just to vote on what Leslie, consolidating the information. Yes. Yes, I vote yes. Okay. So that will be a unanimous vote by all voting members and a consensus of the ex-officio members. Then we move on to the next subject matter before the meeting. And that is town election. Saturday, June 6th, 2020 has been postponed. On the town website, there is declaration that was presented. Let me find it on page 21 that pursuant to chapters 45 of the acts of 2020 on March 31st, Arlington select unanimously voted to set the new date for Arlington's annual election. Saturday, June 6th, 2020 from 8 a.m. to 8 a.m. A law voter registration has also extended May 27th, 2020. Residents are further advised of additional means of voting for rescheduled elections given present health concerns. First, any resident taking precaution related to COVID-19 in response to guidance from medical professional, local or state of health official or any other civil authority is considered eligible for absentee balloting for this election only for section four of chapters 45. Second, residents will be able to request ballots for early voting exclusively by mail for section five of chapters 45. Chapter 45 of the acts of 2020 has been included in the packet which you can download from the town website. It further states in coming weeks, the town clerk's office will develop further guidance on both absentee and early voting by mail including application processes for receiving and honoring such requests. And I present to you a copy of early voting application which is available on the state website and is in the packet. And now I'd like to ask our acting town clerk if you would like to discuss this matter. I'm gonna unmute you, Janice. Well, first of all, I'm not the acting town clerk but the assistant town clerk. I feel as though I was going to order some early voting applications but to be truthful, they are one and the same now because you can't come into the office to get your application as you could before and vote at the counter as you could before and we don't know when that's even going to be available. So with that said, I'm still gonna order a few more early voting applications because some people feel that they don't, they feel uncomfortable doing absentee voting when they're not going to be absent. But you're right, they are one and the same and anybody can mail one in, fax one in. As long as your signature's on it, we have it and we have hundreds now. So that's what we're dealing with, just getting those out and we intend to get them out by May 15th. So any candidates that wanna send out any of their mailings, that's the date we're planning on mailing out the absentee ballots. And right now, currently we're getting those ready. Okay, as Janice clarified, consistent with, let me find the page 22 of my, let's take a second to pull it up. Right here, the voting by mail is stipulated by the Secretary of State's website is that it's been updated as Janice mentioned and you do not have to submit an official form. You can write a note, send an email, but need to have actually, you need to have a signature on the request. Is that correct, Janice? Yes. Okay, at this point in time, are there any questions or comments from voting members? Sean Harrington again. One, I think first and foremost, thanks to the select board and town clerk's office for handling all this during a very difficult time. This is not easy for anyone. I know that on top of this, what people also don't realize with elections are people are having to collect signatures in order to get on the ballot because the legislature has not done anything toward that and having to diminish the candidates' requirement in order to do that. So it's a very interesting time for everyone. My only thing is that I think that then we have no control over the election date or what the select board chose. I do think that in the future, even though we're about election modernization, that this is someone in our bailiwick, my only concern is whether or not hopefully we are, hopefully, we're past the peak at that point, but models are changing every day. I just saw a model for the southeast, it says that, or heard some word in the southeast that states are looking to push back. They're staying home orders all the way till June 4th. And do we know anything from the select board if what happens in the case that Governor Baker does push that executive order back even further, I guess? Do we have a backup in that regard or is that just not for us to know yet? I don't believe we know that answer, but let's see if any of the other members have a comment. Adam Battak? Yes, Adam. Yeah, all right, perfect. I was a little confused by something Janice was saying about requests requiring a printer. From the materials distributed, it looks like pretty much anybody who wants to vote by absentee or vote by mail can do so pretty easily. I'm not sure that they would need a printer. It says on page... I didn't say they needed a printer. That was in the materials that was just up a minute ago. But I didn't say that. No, this says are available and it also says you may send a note. Right, okay, yeah, here where it says, if you do not have, yeah, okay. I just wanted to make sure that was clear that we are able to provide a vote by mail option to anybody who wants it regardless of whether or not they have technology available to them. Yes, that is true. Okay, good. Okay, Greg, did you have any comment? I don't know. I have a question. This is Johan speaking. Okay, Johan. Do we know in advance how many we're gonna print for the town? Do we have any expectation of how many will vote at home in essence? Well, we ordered about 500 more than normal, so we have 800 per precinct. And we can use, if we do run out of absentee ballots, we are allowed to use the regular ballots. So we have 800 absentee ballots that say on it absentee, but we are allowed to use the regular ballots that go to the polls if we do run out, which I doubt we will because we can't even move in our office right now. We have so many boxes of ballots. So that's about what's close to 17,000 ballots? And that's- Yeah, at least, no, probably more. It's 21 precincts. Don't forget we have to have separate because of the- Right, so 21 times, say 800, 700? I think absentee we had, I think we have, I have to remember what I ordered. I think maybe 500 absentee per precinct, plus they send us about 1,000 to 1,500 of regular ballots per precinct. Okay. So I think we'll cover it. Yeah. It's just something to consider, like if half the people stay at home, can we accommodate? If two voters, if every single voter sits at home, just like, what are the max crazy cases? I know. Well, those are the people that are probably going to the polls and there's plenty of ballots for them. That's for sure. I do have a quite, this is Greg Dennis. I do have a question, actually. Will these ballots be, are we gonna be counting them with our new voting machines? No, we decided the select board and our office decided it would be easier to wait until the primary, only because we had the match election and then this one was supposed to be right on top of it. So we didn't want to start having to rush to train people and learn the new machine. So we thought we had the whole, we'd have basically the summertime to get that all underway. So we decided, all of us decided to save it for the prom, the September primary. So we're not getting a new machine until then. Are the new machines, by the way, this is a little bit unrelated, but are the new machines, are they the LHS image cast ones or? Yes. Okay, thank you. Okay, I'd like to call upon Maxwell Palmer, if he has any comment, so that each member has a chance to speak. Not, no comment for this one. Okay, and Leslie Waxman. I was just wondering whether you already sent out any absentee ballots before we knew the election was gonna moved and whether or not, because you had said something about all the absentee and early voting ballots going out May 15th. I didn't know if that was code for every applied, even if they had applied for all elections at the beginning of the year or if some of them have already gone out. No, none of them gone out. When we first had the applications, we didn't have the ballots that, we didn't have the ballots right, and we decided it would be, it would only be fair to the candidates to not to send them out too early, because obviously people would have voted and then they may not even know who the candidates are. So they thought May 15th would be a good date and then the candidates would know that and they could get their information rather than get it out too early and have people forget it or whatever. That was the date. Well, actually I decided on it, so that's when they're going, we're hoping they go out. We're still typing away on those envelopes. Yeah, I don't bring this up here, but I don't know, have you used, I work for the city of Cambridge Election Commission and we use VRIS, we use the labels that you can print right out of VRIS for your absentee. That would save you any time, especially if you can. But we still have to do all the people that are out of, that was another problem we ran into, people that the kids that were at school and everything, well now they're not at school, but we have to check with every single one of them to see if they're at home or whatever. So that's tying it up a little bit. We just have, the labels are very easy to make. I mean, we just have them and run them off. So it's not a big deal, but that's the other problem that, it's not a problem, but. Yeah, no, I'm glad you thought of that actually. Yeah, I did. It's good to check with you. And also the people that went to Florida, some of them come home now, some of them don't. So we really have to go over everyone that's out of the state. And now, and also I still have to check into this. I don't even know if this is a town ordinance or what, but we're not allowed to email the overseas ballots. We have to snail mail them. Yeah, not for this election, only for federal. It doesn't make any sense, but. I know. So I have to try to get those out a little bit earlier, but that's gonna take a while, so we'll see. Walter, did you have a comment question? Okay, let's move on to William Logan. Oh, as the one of the registrars. No comment. No comment. Okay, I will not make a comment at this time. Our first speaker that requested to share with us, or could you make note of the people that raised their hand? So Elizabeth Dre raised her hand, but the first person up is Addie Muldoon from the League of Women Voters. And I will bring up her documentation as she delivered to me. Hi everyone, thanks for hearing me. Since I wrote this on Sunday and got it approved by our League of Women Voters Board, I have since talked to the state's legislative chair, who's part of the, I love this name, election modernization coalition for the state. And I've talked to Rep Garbley and the secretary of state's legislative director and the secretary of state's election division director, all of which have modified my proposals. So what you see before you is no longer what I am supporting. Our board is meeting tonight in our regular time, so they're looking at my new recommendations, but I could not get them to you in time. We are no longer recommending that we do number one at all because it just does not seem feasible prior to our June election because the state legislature is not gonna do that while they're in informal session. So I would like to skip that part. So rather than looking at those, if I'm looking at my own recommendations as I have modified them, and I'd like to just read them. Okay. And I'll go back to this page. Thank you. Application for no excuse, absentee ballots. The town shall mail all eligible voters information on the new election date and process. And the mailing should include the ballot request forms along with information on how to find the form on the town's website and how to send the information that could also go by email. So that that can be done by sending a request to the clerk's office. And as you've already discussed, it doesn't even require their official form. It just needs the basic information of, well, I don't need to go into it. The voters could take a photo of it and just email that in as an attachment. So adding in multiple options would be helpful. I think the clerk's office is gonna be really struggling to maintain all this work that's coming up for them. But we think the mailing should include a recommendation for voters to get their votes in as soon as the office is willing to receive them because of the additional workload. So that was just one on the application. And the second is on voter education. Once a new plan for this election is in place, the town should undertake a multi-platform outreach campaign to inform the voters of the election changes and new safety procedures. So this would encourage voters to vote by mail under the current state-approved process, which is only good till June 30th. And then the legislature is gonna have to vote again on new procedures. We recommend that the mailing information that should be mailed out to the voters should also include links to the League of Women Voters and ACMI for information on the candidates. Since we could not hold a candidate's night, the voters guide is available online, but no one can pick it up because everything's closed. So we recommend that that information be included as part of voter education. Also recommending that the town could absentee ballots in the local stores that are still open, not absentee ballot requests, excuse me, in local stores that are still open and use social media, ACMI, the Arlington Advocate for additional distribution methods. So that's on voter education part. We're also recommending that the town established ballot drop boxes for those voters who prefer to return their paper request and the only reason that I see for that is it becomes necessary because the lack of a stamp or cost shouldn't be like a poll tax. There should be no cost in voting that could potentially deter any voters. The election day. Concerned with safety during the pandemic, we know that many voters and poll workers will choose to stay home, but provisions need to be made for in-person voting. So recommendation that the town consolidate polling locations. And I found out that the hours can be reduced too. The state only requires four hours, so that's a consideration. Department of Health and Human Services should help select polling locations to ensure that there's adequate distance and issues like that. And they should establish and monitor the safe voting protocols that meet their criteria. The town should determine whether it's feasible to potentially establish drive-through in-person voting, which I understand some towns are doing. So just explore that and provide all election officials with sufficient personal protective equipment, the PPEs for the in-person voting. And voters should use their own black or blue pens, but again, the town would have to provide sanitizer for those who need to use the town's pens. So those are just some thoughts on election day. The administration is a lot of ideas all at once. Sorry about that. The town should make it a priority to order additional envelopes as needed for the mailing just because the state has informed us that there aren't enough print houses. They can print things like ballots, but getting the envelopes ordered turns out to be a problem. There's limited capacity. The town should reach out to election officials to the poll workers to determine how many will still agree to work on June 6th because a lot of them are gonna say no. A new plan to carry out successful voting should be developed as soon as possible for the number of poll locations and the number of required election officials. So we're recommending consolidation for that day. If the number of workers is insufficient, the town should undertake an aggressive outreach campaign to build up the workforce and add them to the payroll and advance of election day. All election related staff must be given paid training and we're aware that the Secretary of State's office will provide election worker training, but additional training will be needed, we think. The town clerk's office and the select board may need to add additional personnel to handle all of these votes by mail. If that's the case, a working group should be formed of officials and volunteers to accomplish this election and to plan for more changes, which we are expecting. The legislation is being drafted now by the coalition and the Secretary of State's office for more changes come the fall. So we think it's gonna really require a lot of different groups coming together to make this a successful election and our future's election successful. So good luck to the town clerk's office and I'm pleased to see that all three candidates for the office are here to join in this discussion. Okay, I will call on the next individual and I've muted everyone. The next person who requested to speak was Adi Sattel. Sattel, so let me unmute you and I call upon Adi. Well, good evening everyone. So what you see on the screen here are really just some thoughts and I wanna say first that even though I am an employee of the town, I'm speaking as a resident and a candidate. I'm not representing the town in any way. I am glad to hear that there's a little bit of clarity on how the election is going to proceed during what are really unprecedented times. I think a lot of this, and I'm not gonna go through every bullet point here, will echo what Patty Muldoon just said. We don't know really what June 6th will bring in terms of the pandemic. I think it does make sense to think about consolidating precincts. We know seven and nine are out anyway because you can't get into Chestnut Manor. And then other than town hall, all the other polling locations are at schools, which may or may not be open on June 6th. So these are just some thoughts here that if we did go ahead and use town hall, it's accessible, there's parking, we have experience there. And it obviously addresses the issue that Patty Muldoon just mentioned about having fewer election workers. I mean, we need to be really careful because many of the election workers are in that class that is more susceptible to getting COVID. In here, there are also some bullet points about how we protect those people, how we sanitize and then again, just how we screen and train and whatnot. A couple of interesting points that I thought were in the last couple of town elections, the voting was about 4,900. If you looked at 2017, there were only 2,200 people that voted, so we're not talking out of 33,000 registered voters, like a ton of people that are expected to vote. And I just made a note here, the red gym at the high school was absolutely my favorite location. Whether it's an election or it's a flu clinic, once you do incident management, it's all the same. So logistically, the high school I think is the red gym is the best location. That's the day of the AHS graduation, so that location is out. So we may want to give thought, the town may want to give thought to consolidating the precincts down into town hall. If you want, I'll just go through the rest of these here. When people have talked about the different options voting by mail, some of them, there's obviously cost considerations that may make some of these options prohibitive. The one thing that I will say, and I'm gonna really just touch on, when we talk about sending a mailing to every single, sending an application to every single resident, in addition to the cost, we really need to think about the timing, whether it's getting them printed, whether going to a mail house and getting them out, then those applications come back, then we have to mail a ballot, then the ballot has to come back. So 59 days isn't a long time. So that is definitely a constraint. I do know, and I think Patty touched on this, that there is some talk about changing the legislation so that people can submit that ballot application online. So that eliminates the need to send out the town clerk's office to send out that application and then wait for it to come on back. So we may have that as Patty indicated for the fall. But here's really the point that out of all of this that I wanna make is regardless of what we choose for a plan, we need to be really clear on our outreach and communication. People need to know what it is that we're going to do, whether we're consolidating the precincts into one and it's town hall. And we need to get the message out on what the absentee ballot application process is. Because there's really two things and people talk about an absentee ballot, but sometimes they mean the absentee ballot application form. Cause it's really a two-step process at this point. So I really think, and I've listed just some suggestions here for how we get the word out. So whether it's consolidating the precincts or getting information out about the absentee ballot application process and then as Janice indicated, then mailing those absentee ballots to people, we need to let the public know what the plan is. Well, thank you, Patty, for your comments. Next person was Elizabeth Dre, I believe. Yes, I wanna unmute her. Hi, good evening. Thank you very much for taking my comments. I have one question and a comment. My question is, has this group now been mandated with running the, how the election, June 6 election will be run or who is the town power, the town group who will be responsible for that? I understand that the town clerk is the chief executive election officer. I'm just wondering who will be responsible for making sure all these different pieces happen. So that's my question. My comment is, I think that Patty hit on it and Patty, well, both patties, that it's education, community education in the nontraditional ways that the town is used to reaching out to people is gonna be really important. We cannot reach out to people just through town emails, the regular media. We have to be very creative about to make sure that voters are not disenfranchised, that voters are aware of all the steps that need to happen in order to vote. So I'd like to say, I can't emphasize that enough. We probably should think about doing that in some different languages to really reach all our voters. And my last comment is that it would be a suggestion to when you send out the application or if that's something that the town does to send out a self-addressed stamped envelope with the ballot, absentee ballot application so that a stamp or getting to the post office is not, does not prevent someone from voting. Thank you very much. Okay, an answer to your question, Elizabeth. First and foremost, there are three parties that operate the election. The select board is charged with procuring and approving the staff as poll workers. The clerk's office is charged with functionally handling the distribution of ballots, materials, collections, recording and submission to the secretary of state. And then of course, the secretary of state via the legislature, if there's any action thereon will make their decisions known as to what they want us to do as a municipality. But we are not charged as the election modernization committee. Actually, what happened as the chair, I attended last week's select board meeting on the 30th. And I was concerned and in speaking with the town manager, town council, town moderator and others, I felt it was very important to give the community an opportunity to express their concerns and suggestions, which is why I called our meeting to order because we not only had business for the upcoming town meeting, but also I thought it was a service that everyone that I've already mentioned totally wholeheartedly agreed that this was a wonderful opportunity to have an opportunity for townspeople to speak because we are the only committee that has anything to do with elections as part of town meeting. And then I like to call on Mr. Diggins who could you maybe put your video on Lenny so we can see you or if you prefer, we'll just speak from the, I'm trying to unmute to there you go. Lenny, you're up. I don't have a camera set up, so sorry about that, but you're not missing anything by not seeing me. So anyways, I wanted to say that I very much support the notion of having a drop-off location for ballots. Selfish draft stamp overlaps would be better if they are affordable, but I think a drop-off location would be great, or drop-off locations would be great. The other thing, I understand the reasoning behind consolidating locations for voting, but my concern then is that, especially if we're likely to still be doing social distancing aid, and so I'm concerned that we just increase the density in the remaining locations. So one thing we might wanna explore is maybe trying to get volunteers, younger volunteers to staff the more voting locations if we decide to have in-person voting, which I think we'll have to do anyways. Another thing too is that if the weather's bad, also if we have like consolidated locations, it might make it even harder for people to do social distancing. So something to take into account. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I'm glad you're having it at this meeting because it gives more opportunity for back and forth than you would have at perhaps a select board meeting. Thanks again. Okay, you're welcome. And the next person I call upon is the next person to raise their hand, Julie Zill. I guess I wanna try to be practical. I mean, I love the idea of mailing at least early voting or absentee, request forms to everyone, but I don't think we can get that done in the time that we have. So I guess I'm curious if anyone has asked whether there's an option of piggybacking on an existing planned mailing like a water bill. Just the tax bills have already been sent for May. But I mean, I think we need to try and find as many ways as we can to get information out to people, but I'm not seeing a separate mailing being really likely. But what would be the process? I mean, we'd have to get the select board to do that and find the money. I believe so. It would probably be a function of the select board, the town clerk's office and the town manager. Okay. If I could ask our assistant clerk, do you have any further knowledge of that, Dennis? You'd hear. Well, first of all, the treasurers would also have to be included because they pay for any postage that goes out. And I think at this point, I mean, I don't know if you realize this, but the majority of people who take out absentee vote applications do it for the entire year. So they automatically get their ballots if they send a request in the beginning of the year. And just this is just for Patty Muldoon just to let you know that the post office is an excellent place to put absentee ballot applications because a lot of people look for them there. I think that you're right, Julie, it is a little late to be doing that. And we do have hundreds. I really think the word is out there and the elderly are the best because they always get their applications at the beginning of the year automatically if they sign up as a permanently disabled, basically from a doctor's note and they automatically get an application every year from our office. And I think that if there's a way that each precinct could maybe get to some way to notify their precinct members, but I really, they're rolling in so I don't see a problem there. And people call all the time about it are email me. I mean, I had 156 emails the other day and probably 75 were about applications. So people do know about it. And there was one other point I was gonna make. Oh, I agree with Lynn. I was gonna say the same suggestion that if you're consolidating now that's more of a double-edged sword because you don't want to have more people in one space. So as hard as it's going to be to find spaces for precinct seven and nine, I think the more space you have the better. And the high school as Patty said is an excellent place, but it's graduation. So if they haven't graduation, I don't even know. So can I ask one last question of a sort of a final thought which is in order to effectively communicate and instructions through all of the channels at the precinct level, the town's recently set up amazing Arlington, which is definitely gonna be able to network at the precinct level. And this is an excellent motivator for people. We need really clear final decisions. You can't launch a media campaign when you don't actually know the plan. So can I put in a strong request that we really pin that down? I mean, I think our best bet is to just get everybody to mail or email. They can email in an applicant. They can email in a form to get the ballot. Yes, as long as the signature is on it. Correct, okay. So I mean, I think we need to just pick a plan and then execute. Well, people are emailing, faxing and mailing in every single day. So that's a good sign at least. Yes, absolutely. So I mean, I guess I just wanna be sure that when we know that's the final plan and that there's not some change looming. Okay, thank you. Okay, and next, I'd like to call on the gentleman that is described as see his iPad. But before I unmute you, you need to identify your legal name and address for the record. My name is Paul. My name is Paul, Raya. Paul, you're a member of the committee. I've been on the call for the entire meeting. And I just wasn't able to figure out how to work this thing. So I apologize. I'm wondering... I'm gonna rename you Paul, sorry to interrupt. I'm gonna rename you in the... Okay. I'm wondering if we need to have some way of communicating with the citizens of the town that they have these options of applying for an absentee ballot or showing up. Do we email everyone in town? Do we have a telephone communication system? How are people gonna know that they have these options in this kind of short notice thing? Well, I can tell you that there was a reverse 911 call this afternoon by the manager to give respect to an individual who served in the military has no family and there's gonna be a social distancing alignment of Mass Ave tomorrow morning at 1030 from DeVito's funeral home to Cambridge line so that with respect from Arlington, we're going to recognize his years of service. So they're able to do that. And I'm sure with the manager, if we were to call upon him to make a reverse 911 call for the purpose of establishing that there will be ballots available at such and such a location if you haven't applied, the registration is available. I mean, we want this to be as user friendly I believe is possible. So did that answer your question Paul? Yes, and what's to prevent someone from voting twice? Let's unmute Janice for that. Do you mean if they did an absentee ballot and then try to go to the poll? Is that what you mean? Yes. Okay. When the absentee ballots are turned into the polling place when there's time the people who work there stop putting the absentee ballots through they don't all do it at the same time because if people are voting they can't. Once the name is crossed off the list if someone came in to vote in person and their name was already crossed off they cannot vote in person. However, if they come in and their name is not crossed off the list but they're listed as EV or AV then they can vote in person and that is noted on the voting list as what they did and then their absentee ballot would not be counted so they wouldn't be able to vote twice. So the person at the polling place would have to go through hundreds and thousands of names to... Well, we have to check the name off the voting list anyway, always. Yeah, but if you're only going to have two or three voting sites there are going to be many more names. Well, either way it has to be checked off by the people who work there. That's just how it is. So it's likely that it's going to take a lot more time. Well, as a warden... It doesn't happen often, I'm sorry. It doesn't happen that often. I know, yeah. It's only been... In my actions as a warden over more than 20 years I've only had one case where somebody came into vote that had filed an absentee ballot. And what we would do because of the fact that their name was checked off I would just simply have a piece of paper of the people that voted in person with their affidavit that they wished to vote in person and then would remove their absentee ballot market spoiled and submit it back to the clerk's office under the filing that we normally do with all ballots that are cast or counted. So that it would not... I assure you at least from my experience it would not be counted twice. The next person that raised their hand for a second time is Elizabeth Dre. Thank you very much. I would like to sincerely thank you, Mr. O'Connor for having this evening. I was also at that select board meeting and felt frustrated. So I'm really grateful for you to make a space for community members to be here. So thank you. I do wanna push back a little bit on what I'm hearing about it being too expensive to provide self, you know to whether it's self-addressed stamped envelopes. And what I'm hearing is that there's a lot of ballots coming in so people know about it. I cannot emphasize enough that we need to think outside of our traditional ways of how we reach out to people to make sure that they understand that every single person can vote and it is so accessible and so easy that even the price of a stamp is not going to prevent them from voting, which is their right. The most comprehensive list I've seen is Patty's, Patty's Sautel, Brennan Sautel's list of all these different ideas which are creative. It's outside of the traditional ways and that is how we need to think for this. So please, we can't assume people know about it. Thank you. You're welcome. Next up is Patty Maldoon for a second time. Thank you. There were so many things to respond back on. I do wanna make a comment about the consolidation. The idea of consolidation is to improve safety. You'd still have to do things by precincts so you'd still have just a precinct list to work with because it's town meeting members, it's a local election and precincts are important. But the idea is to maximize the number of people voting by mail for safety reasons and allowing voting in person in ways that are frankly innovative so that we can have a comprehensive election that will be different from other elections. And I think out of all of the recommendations I made and I'm really grateful that the other Patty made a lot of really creative ideas too. I think that the last sentence that I put, I wanna reiterate that I'm recommending a working group be formed of elections and volunteers to think through this election and the things that are needed to be done in different and new ways. So elections officials and volunteers to look at what's how to make this one work, how to get the word out, how to get the information back in a functional way, in a timely way, and how to also look at the changes that are coming down the road. So we need more of a working group because this is a good, wonderful start. And I know Janice has been working like crazy on this, but there are a lot of changes that need to happen in a short period of time. And I think we need more people consistently putting their head together for it. Thank you, Patty. The next would be the other Patty, Patty Brennan's hotel for a second time. Thank you. I just really wanted to clarify what happens with the absentee ballot and really a question at last for Janice. So when the town clerk's office mails the ballot, my understanding is that it's in return, there's two envelopes, right? One has your name in precinct information and then there's a separate envelope. I guess, so it's a two envelope system when you return it so that your actual ballot is private, but the outside ballot, I think one is brown and one is white, one of the ballots has your name and your precinct number on it. And I believe that the town clerk would take that envelope with your information on it that they have ahead of time to answer Paul Ray's question. And that's how they know to mark on the poll book that this person was a head voted early voting. So that's one of the other ways that we know that people aren't going to necessarily be able to vote twice. So I guess the question for Janice is, can we just address the postage? Are people required to put the postage on or does that come back or do we send them a postage paid envelope? Hi, Janice. The town clerk's office doesn't open the ballots, the people at the polls open them. So we don't have anything to do with that other than when they come into the town clerk's office, we put their names in the computer as being returned. Right. So the only time they name is crossed off is when it's, that goes to the polling place. And there is supposed to be a stamp on it, but I have to tell you there's tons of them come in and then never there's no stamp on them. The post office still sends them in. So that's good, at least. And it is, it's, that's right. The white ballot is on the outside that they mail it back to us. And the inside one is the one that they fill out themselves. Okay, moving on to the next person that raised their hand. And that is, Wuhan, where'd he go? There you are. Okay, Wuhan. Patty, very good document. Thank you. My heart is in my throat with one getting tossed out the window. And so part of this is we need to figure out what the process is for the next and next and next and next election so that we do change it up so that we can have everyone voting by mail. So the question is, is what are we doing because we have other elections coming up after this? What's the, how do we get that moving? So this becomes a normal occurrence as an average everyday voting can happen this way. So sign me up to work on that with you if you needed, you know, this collective group. You and Patty also are mentioning that. Now, Julie mentioned something about process and Janice too is actually mapping out and seeing the process of voting and the different mechanisms in order that need to occur during that. So I don't think we have a good picture where you say this is how voting operates at home. This is how voting operates when you walk in somewhere. And I think we could put something in using symbols, using something that fifth graders could read. I mean, you know, that I would also be very interested in working on, but I think the process in seeing it is really important. But I'm hoping that we can get number one sometime back on the, not leave it to out to dry. We should really still keep on working this. Are you done? Sure. Okay, Janice, did you want to respond to that? Oh, I absolutely agree that the more people we get involved, the better it is because our town election is the lowest percentage of any. And I think it's mostly because it's on a Saturday, but that's not up to me to decide. I did a 10 year study on a piece of paper for the elections for Saturdays, for town elections. And the only ones of course that had any high percentage rate were the leaf blower and a few other high interest ones. But other than that, it's the lowest percentage. And I think it's because we should get more information out and we probably shouldn't have it on Saturday, but that's just my opinion. Okay, thank you. The next person that wishes to speak is Louise Popkin. Yes, I just wanted to back what Elizabeth said about how appreciative I am personally of having, you're having this meeting and giving the public a chance to participate and also that I commend this committee because I see a really good example here of people being collectively rather than individually right. There's no competition. It's everybody putting their heads together and trying to get further collectively than any one person could get individually. And that's the best kind of deliberation. It's ideal. So thank you for that. That's all I wanted to say. Okay, thank you. And the next person is Sean Harrington. Robin had a hand up sooner. What's that? Jeff, just as I was tracking who had their hand up, I think Robin might have had a hand up. Oh, I'm sorry. That's that you are correct. Me, Robin, go ahead. You're totally correct. Sorry, I was muted. Well, first of all, I wanted to say thank you for taking this on and I'm very happy that this committee is in existence now to take this up as a person who supported the original warrant article. I want to also back up what Elizabeth said and mentioned that our town elections are so low, such a low turnout to begin with at a regular time. And with this pandemic, it's gonna be possibly even more dismal a turnout. How are people gonna know? I mean, there are so many people that don't even know that the election was postponed. They didn't even know there was an election to begin with. I know that notifications did go out for the fourth, but I feel that another notification has to go out for the election to everyone in the town. I just don't, and especially if you're gonna talk about consolidating polling locations, how are people gonna know where their polling locations are? They'll go to their old polling locations, find them closed and not know what to do or possibly just not vote. So there needs to be a lot of information going out. I mean, just for our regular elections, we don't have enough information out. We don't have enough signage. We have a few mediocre signs at a few roads, important roads, but really I've only ever seen about three signs up about the election when it's happening. So there needs to be a lot more visibility and a lot more education and a lot more outreach. And that's what I would like to say. Thanks. Well, I do appreciate your comments. Next up is Sean Harrington. Where'd he go? There he is. Hold on. All right, my own mute. I thought I first, all right. First, I wanna thank everyone in the public who's participating tonight. It's really good to see the concern everybody has. You know, just to clarify, we're here as a sounding board so that we'll have a placed event, but this committee doesn't have really any control over these matters from what I can gather. My own two cents on the recommendations tonight from my own viewpoint, consolidating voting locations, potentially even to as well as two to one is a very scary idea, not just because it puts an unnecessary hurdle on the voter. On top of that, you have so many people in one space. All it takes is one individual with COVID-19 to get to everybody else. That's fish in a barrel. Second, mitigating times for voting while understanding is trying to limit interactions that poll workers have with due to their high risk groups and other individuals in high risk groups from being out still puts an unnecessary hurdle on the voter. The goal is increasing access to voters during this time. And I think that's what everybody wants to do, but I think that the best way in doing that or for the individuals here at this meeting, if you are not in a high risk group, email the select board and let them know if you're available to work the town election. That is the most important thing we can do is to make sure that those election volunteers who are in high risk groups, do not have to go out and work the polls and that the town can have people who are not within those groups, able to work them and spare individuals from having to worry about that anymore. I think that all the recommendations have been great to hear when it comes to using non-traditional means of communicating with voters, it gets really tricky. I mean, no matter any, as someone who works in digital advertising and mailing advertising for candidates, I can tell you that there is no specific route that you can take that guarantees you that you're gonna reach everybody. Maybe the town should look into doing social media advertising, but I don't think that that's feasible and I don't think it's a good use of our time. I think that Jim has given a great idea when it comes to a reverse 911 call. But again, my big emphasis is if you are not in a high risk group, please volunteer to be a poll worker. That is what I imagine would help the select board out right now as they go through a list of poll workers that probably by average are in their 70s. And I know many poll workers and I know quite a few who are scared to go work the polls right now. And for now, that's all I really have to say. All right, well, thank you, Sean. Let's move on to Michael Ruderman. So let me come to you, Michael. Go ahead, Michael. Jim, thank you, good evening and good evening to everybody else on the meeting. I know I jumped in a little bit later than others, but let me offer this thought that I think we're facing two questions here. What can we do to make June 6 happen? What can we do to improve and facilitate greater participation, easier participation, all the things that we'd like to change about the way elections are conducted in Arlington in general. Now these may be two sets of overlapping suggestions, solutions, excuse me, dog, sorry, dog is not invited to the discussion. These might be two sets of overlapping ideas, but not all of them are going to work to get us to June 6. June 6, we face the constraints of time and people. We can't throw a whole lot of people at the problem right now. We are limited in the days and we are limited in the ways that we're going to get the information out to people. Voting is so traditional, both good and bad. Some people vote all the time, some never vote. Some will continue to show up at their old precinct polling places, whether or not it's moved, whether or not it's been advertised on flashing neon lights. It's going to take a lot of work to make sure that permanent changes actually do become permanent. We may not be able to make all the changes that we would like to in order to get to June 6. So I think we need to be separating out some of these things about how we're going to make the next election happen and then how we can improve all elections in general going forward. Really, that's it from me. Okay, thank you. The next up is Lynette Martin. Oh, sorry, I'm not muted. Can you hear me? You are, we can hear you. Great, thank you. I'm afraid I had to log on late, but I just wanted to echo a lot of what I've heard here. I heard Elizabeth's testimony and I'd like to echo what she said. I so appreciate the mission of this group and what you're working on before COVID and now in this time. And I agree that we need to think outside of the box how to get this information out. I think that any updates on the election, we should really strongly advocate for the town to do reverse 911 calls because almost all residents have cell phones and hopefully a lot of them are signed up for this. And just lastly, I wanted to thank this committee for giving time for all of the public to speak and engage on this issue. I think that there's been a lot of desire for that. So I really appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome. Next up is Beth Melofchak. Good evening. Thank you very much. And I'm really impressed and appreciate how comprehensive the discussion has been tonight, particularly with what the information that Patty Muldoon presented. And I would also like to repeat what several people have already said, how appreciative I am that you allowed public comment tonight. I did attend the last select board meeting. And so I'm very, very appreciative that the public has been allowed to have a voice tonight. Thank you very much. And thank you for this very important work that you've committed yourselves to. I appreciate that as well. That's all. Well, thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak on the subject matter? Walter. Go ahead, Walter. Yeah, I just wanted to quickly chime in on echoing some of the remarks of Mr. Diggins and Sean and Janice. And that is, I understand the danger and the, you know, the concern for safety, but there is a, as Mr. Diggins said, it's a double-edged sword. And especially if we're going to consolidate precincts, that I think it would be a really bad idea to constrict the hours of voting. If anything, they should be extended rather than shrunk. So I would suggest removing that from the recommendations. Okay, Sean, since you've spoken twice, let me ask if any one of the other attendees, some of which who haven't spoken at all, have any questions, comments or concerns? This is Greg. I can't raise my hand as a co-host, but I did, would like to see a written copy of some of the recommendations. I don't have, it looks like Patty Brenne-Sautel has a document on your screen, Jim. I don't think I have a copy of that. And I know Patty-Moth. That, in fact, is the only one because she sent it to me at six o'clock. And I worked, get it, but I could not ask the town to add it to the available documents, but I will send it to all members of the committee. That's fine, yeah. I just like a copy after this meeting to read through and as well as Patty Muldoon's revised recommendations. If we could have a copy of that, I would like to have that handy too. So in respect to the open meeting law, if anyone requests a copy of any document that was discussed tonight and wasn't able to get it from the website or it's a new document, if you send an email to my email address as chair of the election modernization committee, I will immediately, upon receipt, send you a copy so that keep everyone informed as much as possible. Okay, is there anybody else that would like to speak for the first time? Going once, going twice? Okay, Sean, you're up. Adam's trying to speak. Adam Battick's been trying to speak. I'm only speaking because Adam Battick's been trying to speak for a while and I don't think he knows how to raise his hand in the system, so that's why I raised my hand. Okay, well, let me mute you and turn it over to Adam when I get to him on the page. There he is. Okay, there you are, Adam, please. Thank you. Thank you, Sean, thank you. I think there was something that went by and a few people sort of hinted at it or touched on it but nobody really expressly said it and I think it really needs to be said. Robin and Michael and Walter each got pretty close. When we, if we make any changes to how the election is run, that is gonna create a bit of misinformation out there because there will be confusion as to is it gonna be what I'm used to? Is it gonna be what this person told me is new? Every time we add a new method of communicating this information out to people, we create more opportunity for that misinformation. We start running, somebody, I don't remember who, but somebody said we should take out a Facebook ad. We take out a Facebook ad, somebody's gonna be like, oh, well, do I trust the Facebook ad or do I trust my, the usual? We have to be very careful about any changes we make to the process for this election. It's less than two months away. It's two months from yesterday. If we make changes to how the election functions, it creates opportunity for misinformation and that can be very dangerous. We need to be very careful about that. I do think we need to be aggressive in informing people. I think there's a little bit of confusion that I heard earlier about how absentee ballots, how early ballots are counted. I've worked polls, I've been there, I've watched how this works. To think that they get done ahead of time is that that's not how it works. It was explained during the call, at one point I think Janice brought it up, that they're really counted at the same as somebody who votes that day. They get pulled out of the box, they get run through the machine when there's a gap in the time. So if we have the same turnout as normal and it's just more of it as remote, it's the same workload on the people working the precincts. Just that fewer people are walking through the precincts. So I agree with whoever said, don't shorten the hours, we need the full hours. I worry about consolidating to fewer polling places because of the confusion that can bring in. If that is appropriate to consolidate, and I'll leave that to the people who are running this on short notice, but if it is appropriate, I think that you can't really introduce new polling places. It's gotta be like existing polling places, but fewer of them or town hall, really focusing on the risk of confusing voters and making sure that this is just as clear as can be and as consistent as can be. Because I really do worry about the unintended side effects of leaving voters out by muddying the waters too much. Thank you. Okay, next is Leslie Waxman. All right, thank you. It takes a second. All right, so I don't wanna talk for too long, but I just wanted to say that only changes that I think are really on the table here are the expanded options for absentee voting that we talked about at the beginning, which are set by the state legislature. So that's a change that's definite. And the application of early voting, which means you don't actually need an excuse, which only applies to this election. And that's set by the legislature. So that's done with the only other things I think still being considered would be the hours and the polling locations. And I would think that the only reason that polling stations should be consolidated is because some buildings that are usually, or changed is because a lot of buildings that are usually polling locations might not give permission to have the public come into their building at the time. I don't know if there's any nursing homes or places like that. I know that they're definitely not going to want anybody from the public coming in. So that would probably be fine with another precinct. And then the other issue would be if it's hard to find election workers like we talked about. But I know that usually, I don't know if it's any different for this, but I know usually you have to have the polling location set at least 20 days before the election. And if there is any change in polling location, there are requirements about posting. Notifying people in that precinct. So if somebody's polling location is changed, they will, the word will get out for that. And I think that if it wasn't for the fact that some buildings didn't want to have an election at the moment, I would think that you wouldn't want to consolidate because you, for social distancing reasons. And I think you're also, actually I know that the state has said that you can have fewer than a full compliment of poll workers at each location. Which I think is probably okay since I think the in-person turnout is going to be lower than usual and the in-person turnout for a town election is low already to begin with. So can have the full compliment of poll workers. I think that would still be best because we'll need people to check off the absentee and early voting ballots and run them through. But I think it would probably be okay to have fewer poll workers and have all the locations that still allow the election be held there. I don't think schools should be a problem because the students aren't in school and it's a Saturday. So I would think that the, and I think that if the town needed to pay to have a deeper cleaning or disinfecting after election day, then that might make those buildings happy too. If that was an issue. So that's all I had to say. Okay, thank you Leslie. Next up is Patty Maldoon. Hi, thanks. The reason that I use the word consolidate polling locations is because of, I am also a precinct warden. My clerk is 85 years old. We will not have the same group of workers and we don't want people because of the need to physically distance. We don't want people to vote on voting day. We want them to vote in advance. So once again, I think this needs a working group to put these ideas together. Maybe we'll find that drive through is really the way to go for us. But we need to have the health department put their heads together with us to say, these are what we need to do to protect the workers. We need PPEs, the personal protective equipment, yeah. There are a lot of components that normally are not involved in an election that need to be involved in this one. And we need to pull it together very, very quickly. Certainly as my recommendations have changed over the days depending on new information that each of us gets. And I've gotten a lot of new information. So once again, I think we need a working group that involves a number of departments from town hall as well as volunteers who have interest and knowledge in helping make these elections work. But this one's gonna be different and we need to be prepared for it and we need to plan for it and we need to get the word out. So that's my thought. We need more people working on this together. Thank you. Anyone else have something to say? I see Sean Harrington, you raised your hand. Bye, Sean. Yeah, Janice Weber's been raising her hand. I don't know if she, I think there are a lot of people that don't know how to, I've increased my screen so I could see everyone's video that's on here. And I see some people have been raising their hand. I don't think they know how to use the raise the hand option, but I mean, I don't mean to call Janice. She wasn't trying to raise her hand, but I'm pretty sure she was. Janice, are you trying to raise your hand if you could? Okay. Thank you, Sean. I can never find that raise hand button. I found it a couple of times. It's never there. But anyway, I just wanted to say that first of all, the select board has to, it has to notify by a card or some formal notice when they change polling places. The skating rink has been used before, which is a good place because it's big and people can spread out there for seven and nine. I know it's a hard place for them to get to, but that in the high school, the children will probably, if they go back to school, will be there. We don't know if that they're not going to be there yet. And the idea of cleaning the school afterwards is a great idea. The other thing I wanted to say is the poll pads that we used, that was not crazy early voting, but when we got the poll pads, it worked so well. I mean, we need more obviously, we only had two, but it's so speedy and less invasive of touching everything that I think that it's going to come down to having them at every polling place. And it'll move everything along faster for everyone. So that's just one other thing in the future to think of. That's all. What is that poll pads? Could you describe that? We use them for early voting. And you go in and you just have to give your name, if they put in three letters of your name, it prints out everything about you, your party and everything. And if you're unenrolled, it asks you what you want and when you have to punch that in and it puts it on the sticker and you put the sticker on the envelope and you just go and vote and then you go up front and everything's written on it. It's very easy and it's very, it's expensive, but it's very efficient. And it costs, I think, something like $3,000 for two of them. And it's not that they're so expensive, but the stickers that come out of them are of course expensive. But if we have more of those, you can ask Richard Sullivan and his group, because they did a wonderful job at early voting and it worked, it really worked well. And they had training on it from the LHS people. And I think that's another way to make the voting more efficient for people to move them right through the election. And you can have more people because as early voting, you don't have to be in your own precinct, you can just go through. So that's what makes it really a great idea. So that's just a thought for the future. Okay. Since it's close to adjournment, I'd like to pull the members of the committee. If you have any further questions or comments or other business that you wanted to entertain. So let's start with Adam. But unmute yourself, Adam. You won't let me. Yeah. No, I'm happy. We're doing great here. Thank you. Okay. Greg. No, no further business. Sean. So, um, this will be my last meeting as a member of the Republican town committee. We'll be really organizing as the, um, as the Democrat town committee will be. Um, And I have been informed that someone else on the committee wants to take over this position. And I'm more than happy to let them do so. So I'm, I'm happy to be here with you. I have a lot of great, uh, officers. Um, so I just want to let you guys know that in advance, and this is most likely my last meeting, um, as I'm also stepping down as chairman of the Royal Republican town committee and not running again. Um, and I will let you guys know as soon as possible who my successor is on in both roles as chairman and as, uh, great meeting tonight. The only thing that I will say is I'll be sending an email off relatively soon to Jim and Greg and the committee and a few other people with some recommendations for going past the current town many warrant articles seeing as we're in the middle of collecting census information. And I think that it may be worthwhile looking into the idea of consolidating precincts in general, not necessarily voting places, but precincts themselves seeing as all our neighboring towns have around seven precincts whereas Arlington has about 21. So just a little bit there. Thank you all for a great time on the committee and over now. Okay, thank you, Walter. Oh, I'd like to thank Sean for his participation. And I have nothing else to add to this evening. I think I can speak for all of us that we do appreciate Sean's contributions over the time of his appearance at the meetings. Max. That's it for me, but I really appreciate all these comments tonight. Yuhan. Good progress. Leslie. I'm all set, thank you. Bill Logan. All set, thank you. Thank you everyone for coming. Paul Rea. I just want to emphasize something I heard earlier that I think it's important to try to make this as straightforward as possible for the Arlington residents so that we keep people voting in future town elections. Getting the word out is going to be very important where to go, how to vote so that we don't lose people. Okay, well, thank you. And last, I mean not least, but last, Janice. Well, thank you for inviting me. I really don't have a voting thing, but I enjoyed listening to everyone and the suggestions everyone made were really great. And I'm glad to hear everybody feels basically the same way as far as getting everything out to all of the residents the best way we can. Well, I promise as chair of this committee, as long as I am that I will continue to endeavor to see that we have public outreach during, before and after every election. And that I appreciate everyone's attendance and I'll now make a call for a motion to adjourn. Could one of the members do so? So moved. And who was that? Walter. Walter makes a motion to adjourn. Can I call for a second? Adam? I second. All in favor? Yes. Bye. I believe we have a adjournment. Thank you all for coming. This meeting has been recorded and will be available on the town website. A link will be available to you on the election modernization committee webpage. Please feel free to refer to it in any recommendations that you might offer to the town government. Thank you very much for attending and I appreciate your commitment to attendance here. Thank you.