Board of Elections & Registration - Special Meeting

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[Music] [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] [Music] Order the C County Board of Elections and Registration Special called board meeting. Before we go into our opening ceremonies of invocation, I'd like to do roll call. I am Robin Mayor Knight, chair in district 1. Julia McCulla, District 4. Kelly Stlet, District 3. Clara Harden, District 2. Let us please stand for our invocation. Bow your heads, please. Lord, we thank you for another day. We thank you for a beautiful day that we have never seen. We ask that you allow wisdom and knowledge to work together guiding our thoughts and decisions and actions. We ask that you bless our individual families, our nation, and this world and all of humanity. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. I pledge algiance to the flag of the

United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You may be seated. Has everyone had a chance to review the agenda? Yes. Any corrections or any comments? None. None. All right. Can I get a motion to adopt the agenda? Motion to adopt. Second. It has been motioned and second to adopt our agenda. All in favor? I. I. Any opposes? And stand approved. All right. Has everyone had a chance to review the February 20th, 2025 regular board meeting minutes? Yes. Yes. All right. Any comments? None. Corrections. All right. I get a motion. So moved. Second. Right. It has been motioned and second. All in favor? I. No opposes. Approved. All right. We'll go to section D, public comments for agenda items only. the chair um for taking care of our veterans like you have. I appreciate that and all the thoughts and prayers for everyone for the the health issues we're going through with my family. As I looked over the election statement of votes cast dated 319, 2025 at 10:28 a.m. from the March 18th special election, there were 27 voters or 1% that did not make a selection. And they cast a blank ballot. Yes. 16 during advanced and 11 on election

day. I've never seen 1% by voters cast a completely blank ballot. The majority of the voters was in Woodbine, Waverly, St. Mary's, and South St. Mary's. North St. Mary's and Tarbor were the only precincts where every vote vote cast a ballot with yes or no on it. The other item of interest is the Secretary of State provides an Excel spreadsheet that's available to the public. It's updated daily. It shows who voted and the date that they cast their ballot for advanced voting and absentee information. As of this morning, the Secretary of State reported there were 1776 advanced voters. That is three short of the 1779 reported on the election summary report. I did see a voter that cast a ballot on 3:30 or 33 was added on Wednesday 3:19 to the secretary absentee files. I am sure that there are good explanations for both of these observations and look forward to hearing about them during your pre-certification discussions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. W. Anybody have anything to say to address? Any other comments? Okay. Our elections of supervisor update by Miss Shannon Nettles. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. We had recently we've recently

completed a successful although a low turnout election for the Splast. I want to thank you all for your support. Most of you were with us on election night and I appreciate all of the support that we received from our board members. We're going to talk about the numbers in a little bit. Uh we did have great support from our sheriff's office. I think our sheriff went out and visited every single polling place himself, the actual sheriff. We also had deputies all around as well, just checking in on our pole workers. We didn't have any issues. We also had support from our law enforcement agencies in St. Mary's and Kingsland as well. So, we thank them. Uh let's see. Judge Swed has made an appointment for the uh Mr. Wrap's old seat uh district five. Oh no, I'm sorry. District three. District three. Um Mr. Joe Stell and he is here with us. And we also have an appointment from Mr. Casey, Chairman Casey for Mr. Ray Holland. If I can get those two gentlemen just to stand real quick so we can recognize them. They will be officially sworn in on Monday with Judge Sweat. So, they wanted to come and check out a meeting before they took their oaths. See, we're currently working with the staff on their on our budget. Uh it is due at this time, probably next in the next two weeks, I have a meeting with finance. So, we will go over our budget for next year and I'll be glad to discuss that and send you copies as well. We have a staff meeting next week. One of the biggest things we're looking at to purchase is four additional cages. I think Dennis would agree that we need an additional four cages for election equipment to go out on election

day. So, we are working on the budget for the 2526 fiscal year. Um, and let's see what else. And I'm going to turn it over to Dennis now. He's going to talk a little bit about the risk limit limiting audit which we didn't have an official one but we did do something and Dennis is going to talk about that slide the microphone over. Yeah. All right. Good afternoon board. Good afternoon. All right. Um so um as you all know that with special called elections that are only relevant to the county, the state does not mandate a a risk limiting audit. Um, so in the interest of being mindful of um, our budget and the money that we already spent on this election, we figured it would be um, prudent to still do something of the sort, but keep it in house. So, uh, it turned out that Tarborough's results ended up in a perfect 154 15 against. So, we decided to use them as our guinea pig to test and ensure that the reported results were the same as what were marked on the ballots. So, in our office, myself, Shannon, and Rock pulled out Tarboro's ballots. I handed each of us 10 ballots and we reported our findings and our findings found a perfect 100% match. 15 votes for, 15 votes against, no blank ballots. So that is uh something that was conducted in our office without you know without having to call in anybody pay somebody for their time to come and count the ballots because it wasn't mandated by the state. Um but it did show that we were accurate. Yeah. Thank you Dennis. No problem. And I'm going to talk about numbers in a few minutes. I think I have financials

next. Yep. Um, I want to make sure what copies you all have of financials in your book because I think we might have the wrong ones in your books. I'm not sure, Leona. Those were month ending January. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, I will have to email you the the month ending February financials to go over those. Okay. So, I apologize for that. Okay. All right. Yeah. Yep. So, Dennis and I are going to talk numbers and turnout. some interesting I don't know if you all had a chance to look at all of your numbers that we posted online and that we had but some of the um some of the more interesting ones I think were only two polling places that hit over a hundred people um and that was West St. Mary's and South St. Aries, as you can see, those were also the two precincts that we had the biggest return from. And hey, Jacob, can you put the first? Yeah. Um, the other one, please. Thank you. Yeah. And if you go down to, let's see, the second page, it says South St. Mary's. Um, you'll also have West St. Mary's. They had they were the only two precincts with over a 10% turnout. We had 163 voters at West St.

Mary's. That polling place always always turns Oh,

poor voters went in and showed their license or ID, got checked in, got a card, and what did y'all hear us say when you were in the polling place? Our poll workers are always responsible for making sure that they say, "Is your ballot did is how reviewed your ballot? Yes. Did you review your ballot? Is it marked accordingly like how you had marked it wanted it marked on the ballot um and on the BMD? So, we really really emphasized that in training with all of our poll workers. And I think that um message did get across, but I was surprised there were 27 votes um that were, you know, voters came in and they just didn't cast. They didn't hit yes. They didn't hit no. Um, actually, and I had I was wondering how many of those we were going to get because I did talk to several people that really didn't want to even vote in this election because of several of the um items, the project items. They didn't want to vote. Um, but they they don't want to not show up as not voting, right? So, who knows if it was those people that went in there and attempted to vote, made it appear as if they were voting, but then they didn't want to cast an actual yes or no vote. I don't know what the reason is, but I do know that our poll workers, every place that we went, they asked were asked to review their ballot. So, but you know, Shannon, all of us visited uh precincts and all of us saw those questions being asked of the voters. We can't

number. Um it we did get most of them back. One we couldn't receive back. Unfortunately, the gentleman passed away once we had mailed out the ballot. And the other person after numerous attempts to reach out and ensure that they returned their ballot, we weren't able to make contact with that individual. So, I'm happy to say we got 95% turnout for our absentee ballots. um almost a 7% turnout overall for the this election and we have no provisionals that were issued on election day or during early voting and we had no uh uava ballots that went out for this election. So these results that are posted up there are um final results. And did you have anything? Did I miss anything? No, that's it. [Music] Um trying to think I mean we have already done our reconciliation report for this election and we were um we were spot on. So I'm I'm not sure what Mr. Rap alluded to earlier. I will have to do some research on that with the Secretary of State, but we've reconciled and we were a perfect match. So I think these these documents are ready to be certified. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Does the board have any questions regarding the outcome? We just need a a vote to certify this when you all can make that motion. by the 2025's false election. All in favor? I. Any opposes? No opposes. Thank you. Thank you, board members. to H. I'm sorry. We're going on to H is

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rap. Anyone else? Any more public comments? Okay. All righty. I wanted to thank Miss Kelly Staflet. She's here at her last meeting for us. She's been a tremendous asset to the board and we thank you for your time, your dedication, your participation um with the board of elections. So, thank you for serving. I hope maybe we can get you back as a pole worker or or or some additional help so that we um don't have you gone from from doing what we're doing um and helping us out. So, but I do appreciate I think that's the same for staff. So, thank you. I've enjoyed it and I'd like to say thank you as well, Miss Kelly. I didn't get a chance unfortunately to work with you. Um we did for a short amount of time. Yes, we did see each other like what three times this week. Yes. But I do want to thank you for your service and everything that you've contributed. Thank you. To the board of election. We want to miss you. Thank you so much. All righty. So, I'd like to make a motion. I have someone to make a motion. Can I get a motion to adjourn the meeting? Sorry. So moved. Second. All right. It's been motioned and second that our March call special call board meeting be adjourned. All in favor? I. Any opposes? Meeting adjourned. Thank you.

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