I want to welcome you guys to the Federation of Neighborhoods exercising your right to vote in Athens. Tonight's forum focuses on how elections are managed in Athens-Clarke County, the challenges in providing voting services, and the opportunities we have as a community to ensure people can exercise their right to vote. We're going to begin tonight's forum with a few moderator questions, and then we'll open the floor to question and answers from the audience. So tonight I'm going to introduce our panelists. I'm going to start with Lisa McGlomb. She is our elections assistant. And if you would tell us who you are, what you do, and a little bit about your role. Okay. All right. So, as Buck said, my name's Lisa. I'm one of two elections assistants in the office. Pamela Long is my counterpart. She's sitting there on the front row. So we have dual roles. We kind of share the election assistant duties. Mine are at the warehouse where the voting machines are stored. And it's my job to make sure that they're secure, that they're well taken care of, that they're tested properly before the elections occur so that we deploy the best equipment that we can to you. I also manage the poll workers and make sure that all of our polling locations are staffed. And I'm beginning to get used to the duty, which I haven't done much yet, of helping to manage absentee voting. Our absentee voting clerk, Paula, is right here. She's the one who handles 99% of that with some other help with the crew of people that she has during election time. And that's what I do. All right. Charlotte? Good evening, everybody. My name is Charlotte Sozvi, and I'm the director of elections for Athens-Clarke County. Came to Clark County in 2016 with 27 and a half years, so I have 30 years in elections now. I am familiar with four different types of ballot exercising our rights. And I'm just glad to be here. I come with a team that I'm very, very proud of, and I enjoy working along with Lisa. And so I'm here for any questions that you might have. And even after tonight, if you feel you have any questions, I will gladly take them via email or just call in the office and drop them by. Good evening. I'm Jesse Evans. I teach government and civics at a local high school here in town, Cedarsville High School, and my seventh year there. Also in my third year, actually my fourth year now, as a member of the board of elections, was appointed in late 2016 by the Mayor and Commission as a nonpartisan member, not a member of any political party. And I was recently selected by my peers to be the chair of the Board of Elections. So that's a little bit about me. Good afternoon. I'm Charles Napper, the vice chair of the Board of Elections. I've been on the board for approximately 16 years, I guess on the most experienced one on the board. I'm a former educator, principal here in Clark County. Our job is to make sure that the election process goes correctly in Clark County and to represent you. Thank you. Thank you, guys. So we're going to... Yeah, Jesse. There's going to be a question about what the Board of Elections is. Is that accurate? There is. Okay. I just want to make sure that I didn't miss that. Absolutely. Yeah, that's actually the first question. Yeah. So first question, and this is going to be for Jesse and Charles, is what is the Board of Elections? Who appoints its members? How are they selected or elected? And are they volunteers or paid and by whom? So there are five members of us on the Board of Elections. Three of us are nonpartisan, and we're selected by the Mayor and Commission. Two are selected, well, one selected by the Democratic Party here locally, and also the local... Another person is selected by the local Republican Party, and that just... Because those two parties are the ones that have the most registered voters, most turnout. In elections, that's where we are now. Like if another party were to come along and have more turnout, more voters, more membership here locally, then they would be the ones selecting one of those two partisan members. We actually have another member in the audience, a nonpartisan member I just spotted. She's down to duck down, but it's Ms. Will of Ambro back there. So would you all give her a round of applause, please? She's our newest member on the Board, and she's actually the Secretary. She was appointed Secretary recently by the Board. So yeah, we actually swore an oath, and I wanted to share with you the oath, just so you could provide a little bit of clarity of what we should be doing. So when we were sworn in, we were affirmed that it said that we will, as a member of the Board of Elections, do we attend all insuring primaries and elections during the Continuance thereof, that I will, to the best of my ability, prevent any fraud, deceit, or abuse in carrying on the same, that I will make a true and perfect return of such primaries and elections, and that I will at all times truly and partially and faithfully perform my duties in accordance with Georgia laws to the best of my judgment and ability. So that's kind of like a, you know, the baseline of what we do. We also created as a group a mission statement. This past year, the ACC Board of Elections will serve all members of our community, as well as our local, state, and federal governments. We'll be sure to consider and meet the needs of groups of people who have historically been marginalized and impressed in our community. The ACC Board of Elections shall maximize voter and community participation as we ensure access to free and fair elections and protect the integrity of the election process. To accomplish this, the ACC Board of Elections shall provide a high-quality voter education and accurate information, uphold the oaths that we've sworn or affirmed, support Athens-Cart County Board of Elections staff, and anything else required to accomplish our mission. So that's a snapshot of us. All right, yeah. Great job, Jesse. So, I think you kind of answered our second question, which was kind of how you guys go about protecting voters' rights. And I think you did a good job of that. We wanted to give Lisa an opportunity. You've got a video, a short video. So we're going to let Lisa show us a video really quick about the new voting machines. So this is a video that was produced by the Secretary of State's office. It's from their website called Secure the Vote. And we also have Sarah Cornett here, who's from the Secretary of State's office. She's a voting educator.  So this is a video that the state produced. It's really nice. So I'm just going to go hit the button and you guys can watch that. It shows the voting process. So you'll see what happens when you go into the polls and what you're going to do when you go there. So hold on. Welcome to Secure the Vote. Let's begin the new voting procedure, which is simple and secure. When you enter your designated precinct, you will be greeted by a poll worker. You will hand your government issue photo ID to the poll worker, who will scan it into the poll pad. You will review your information on the poll pad and sign your name with the stylus pen, approving your information. The poll worker will return your ID. After the poll worker confirms your information, you will receive a voter card. Now you are ready to vote. A poll worker will then direct you to a touchscreen and printer in your private voting station. To begin voting, you will insert your voting card arrow side up into the bottom area of the touchscreen. The touchscreen will prompt you in the lower right through the ballot.  At the end of your ballot, review your selections. Press Print on the touchscreen and your ballot will print within your voter station. Take time to review the printed ballot. Remove your voting card and walk to the polling place scanner. A poll worker official will be standing near the sealed scanner to assist if needed. A screen on the scanner will show you how to insert your ballot. You have cast your ballot. Turn in your voter card and receive your voter sticker. You can proudly wear that sticker knowing that your vote was cast securely. If you need assistance with any steps, poll workers will gladly guide you through the voting process. Okay, so I would want to encourage everybody to go to the Secure the Vote website. There's a lot of information there.  There's documentation about why these particular machines were chosen. And just you can go really in depth and find out a lot of answers there that you have questions to. Awesome. So thank you, Lisa. I'm going to ask a couple of questions. Why the new voting machines? What was wrong with the old ones? How much do they cost? And who's paying for them? Okay, so it was ordered by the federal judge, Judge Totenberg, that the state of Georgia no longer use the DRE system. And the DRE system was used from 2002 until the end of 2019. ACC government received over a million dollars worth of equipment just recently. The BMD and the printer cost approximately $2,000 apiece. We received 298 BMDs and printers. So that was the bulk of it. But we received a ballot printer, mobile ballot printer, that will be printing ballots on demand beginning with the next election, which is in May. We did order printed ballots this time from a printing company to ensure that we had our ballots in time. But basically, that's what it is. But because of the court order that the DREs would no longer be used. And the DREs was just, as most of you know, just a touchscreen system. It did not produce a paper ballot. So one of the good things about the paper ballot, it's going to be a benefit for the voter. And it's going to be a benefit for us as election directors. So one of the benefits for the voter is to just have the verification system again put in place so that you can review your ballot prior to it being cast. And for us elections directors, it gives us an opportunity to kind of verify the validity of the ballot and how it was counted. So the audit process that will be put in place after the 2020 elections, we'll be able to audit to make sure that the ballots are counted appropriately as it is marked on the QR code. OK. Thank you, Charlotte. Well, we want to open the floor. I'm going to ask Ms. Sosby. I thought she said that she had the ability to check the QR codes against the name. Is that true? It's not the names. The QR code actually identifies what was actually cast. So when you insert your card into the ballot marking device, it will print what was actually opted on your ballot. And it will print this QR code. The QR code will be read by the scanner. And once this is read, it prints down at the bottom of the ballot what this QR code read. You can't read the QR code, but you can read what you actually marked on your ballot because it lists those things there. But for the auditor, when we get ready to audit the ballot, this QR code is what's printed on the side of this ballot has to match what was printed that you saw when you cast your ballot. That's the purpose of the. Yes, they will be audited. It's just not something that's mandated yet. But in, I think, 2022, we will begin the audit process. OK, and Jesse, you had something to add? Right. I believe, and let me know if I'm off on this, but there's a rule before the SEB right now that says that if there's a recambus or a recount or an audit, it's going to be the QR code that's actually utilized to recambus or recount or to audit, and not what's printed, which I found interesting because we're supposed to feel comfort in being able to see what's printed on the ballot that we're submitting to the system, that it matches us. I don't know about you guys, but I can't read QR code personally, so I don't know what's going into the machine. So I understand that the intent described is that what's printed on the right of the ballot from the QR read should be matching what's on the left. But what people have expressed concerns about across the state is what's happening internally with the machine in response to the QR code. That's a concern that I'm not sure if we have a plan for or not. I don't know how to really address that, honestly. So QR codes be... So people have expressed concern to me, community members, that when they submit their ballot, the physical part, and it's scanned in, that what's being read is the QR code, and then if there's ever a recount or recambus or audit, then the QR code will be what is scanned and checked again, not what's written on the ballot, and there's concern that that wouldn't be enough of a check on the system to verify that what the voter selected is what's actually being counted in the system. So essentially, just to make sure that I'm understanding you, the question boils down to trusting that the QR code actually reflects what's written below it. So the state election board is finalizing audit recommendations, which is why those procedures are kind of, that's actually out right now. But again, to reiterate that there are opportunities for an audit that looks at all three pieces of the ballot. So that is the physical ballot that includes the QR code and your completed ballot. Of course, it's not tied to any individual. So it's just the sum of the ballots cast in a precinct, and it lists those options, as well as the physical images that are taken of the ballot, and that includes the watermark that reflects what the QR code is storing. So to some extent, you just have to trust that the watermark that is created by the scanner of the QR code is, yes. So, hold on, let's let her finish first. No, I mean. Yeah, let's, I'm sorry, sir. My question is, why would you deliberately, but something so obfuscating on a ballot as a QR code, which can store hundreds of minutes of data, we have no idea what's in that QR code. And if you're only going to recan this, if you are code until, or now until 2022, that's not really inspiring any confidence in this system.  You know, it would be so easy to have the names and who you voted for in separate pieces of, separate places on the ballot, and that could be read by an optical scanner, a very primitive optical scanner. If you don't need a QR code, you can, all you need is plain English. This is just really a ludicrous, I mean, it's absolutely good. Thank you very much. A couple, the main reason for having the QR code as well as the plain English accounting of the ballot is for the one, the speed of reading the ballot. So that enables the scanner to have a running tally of the ballots that have been cast. So that poll workers can at any moment go over to the scanner and do a total for the ballot, as well as reporting the results, that QR code allows those to be scanned quicker, as well as it enables down the road, the recount, scan those through faster, that'll scan faster with a QR code. But because of those concerns that you've brought up about being able to read the ballot, that's why your results are also printed below it, as well as stored in the image that the scanner is taking. And those concerns are being heard, and that's part of why the state elections board is still finalizing best practice in audit recommendations. There were two special elections that were held in the state for, and they used these machines, this procedure, and there were audits that were conducted, and where the results that were tabulated from the QR codes were matched with the results from the actual printout on the plain English below the QR code, and those results didn't match. And I can send you more details on those specific audits and good questions. My cards are over here. There's plenty for everyone, you can take them, and then I can send you the specific results of that audit, if you have questions on that. Okay, thank you. And you had a question, yes, sir? Yeah, I think you gave all of my QR cards, and you still haven't been calling. The final vote tally is recorded on a thumb drive. It's been stated that you're gonna have to run a thumb drive per site. Is that correct? It's not, it's a thumb drive? Well, I mean, it's a... It's an SD card. Right, it's a basic same card. Well, it's a memory card. Yes, correct. Meaning that you'll have one single point of failure per site. So if there's a malfunction of the SD card, or if there's a malfunction of one of the scanners, what are you going to do for that site, being that you do not have a backup? So there's actually two cards per machine, so you can actually... What are the machine cards? What can you maybe clarify what you mean by if the machine fails? Well, if the machine suffers a failure that would render incapable of either writing correctly to memory cards or corrupting the memory cards, some sort of systemic failure. Sure. What would you do in the case of that happening? What if that was an error that actually happened in the middle of the vote? Yeah, so that kind of what we would do in that situation obviously is up to... Each county is able to determine their specific practices, but the specific ballot box, the secure box that was shown in the film that the scanner is attached to, that enables polling workers, poll managers to secure the ballots within the box that so your ballot has been cast and they are then able to scan them into a functioning scanner that then tabulates those machines, whereas the ballots are still secured in the locked portion of the box. The large box itself has three separate sections within it. So there's a section where, for instance, if there was catastrophic failure, if the polling location lost power for an extended period of time, where the internal power battery backups after four or five hours, they're no longer functioning. And to continue polling if the scanner, the physical machine is not working, polling workers can insert the ballots into a section of the box that's not the main compartment that scanned ballots go into, but those are able then to be pulled out and scanned at a later time. So that there are paper ballots as a backup in this instance of a catastrophic failure or a catastrophic power average. So let me just make sure I understand how many scanners do we have in sight? There should be one at each precinct. So what happens if your scanner is faced with stops taking later? Can I? So our double precincts will have two scanners there to handle the capacity, but some of our precincts have 6,000 voters. Right, so let's say the scanners go down. They'll go into the emergency ballot box on the, there's this section that Sarah's talking about. They would be then secured at the end of the day and come back to our warehouse where we do all the tabulation and they would be run through the central scanner. Are you concerned that any of that might actually cause a little bit of distrust in the voting process itself being that it's outside of the system being certified? It's the same way we run absentee ballots. The absentee ballots are run on the same central scanner. So, and I've got another gentleman who has a question in the back there. I think you raised your hand. Yes, sir. I heard that in the state of Georgia there were about 700,000 voter, new voters of the registry. And through our organization, they would like to reach out to those people as they're, can they be provided information about those voters? Is there a cost to that or a procedure some group wanted to push on those people? One of the things that came in and what I was listening to was about motivating those people not just to be registered but actually physically go do the voting. Yes, you can get a list of voters through the Secretary of State's office and there is a cost ranging anywhere from 50 to $250. And you can get that in an Excel format and you can sort it in different ways. You can sort it by street, age groups, ethnicity, I have to say that word, slow. And, anyway, yeah, but you have to, you can get an Excel format to receive it. Show the voters. Yes. There's a gentleman here in half. Yes, sir. If we are able to vote from any precinct at any early voting location, why are we not able to vote at any precinct during day of voting since the technology seems to exist to provide that opportunity? Yes, that's always my question. So that's called vote centers and vote centers do not exist in the state of Georgia. One of the differences between advanced voting and election day, when advanced voting is going on, there has to be a secure Wi-Fi connection so that voters will get credit for voting. They're updated live and you have to be able to access the entire database of the voter system. So that's one of the things we have to be real careful about selecting our advanced voting locations. We have to have a secure Wi-Fi because when we do advanced voting, we have to use the election net system, which is the Georgia voter registration system to identify the voters. On election day, there is just a specific poll pad that we use and it's specifically for that location. So in order for us to do this statewide and to have it available for everybody to vote anywhere, we would have to have a secure Wi-Fi connection at every location and imagine that in some places that are rural and don't have Wi-Fi connection, of course. So it kind of like ties the hands of some counties, not for us, but we would have to get a secure Wi-Fi connection at our locations for sure. And you had a question? I do. Article two, section one, paragraph one of the Georgia Constitution starts out with these words. Elections by the people shall be made by secret ballot. But you can see how large the screen is and I went down to the board of elections to look at the machine when it was first offered to the public. And a friend of mine was voting at the machine and I could see what he was voting for at the door, the equivalent of he was down at the board of elections office. So I'm wondering what the ramifications would be for basically breaking the provisions of the Constitution like for the Secretary of State's office for each, for Athens-Clarke County. Like if we're not voting according, you know, because that is anything but secret. I'd like to hear from Charlotte and Jesse. We are studying options for Athens-Clarke County, turning the ballot around the other side, turning it to the side. That won't work, that won't work. We're going to make it work. We're going to put provisions in place at all of our polling locations to make sure that our voters will have privacy. We have screens that's been provided to us by the Secretary of State's office for one. If that doesn't work, we're going to do what we can. Okay, but that's a secret ballot. It is a secret ballot. It's still a secret ballot. Jesse, did you have anything to add? Sure, yeah. So the board of elections, members of the board have expressed similar concerns. Obviously we do not want to violate ballot secrecy. We voted in late January for plan B option in case. So the statute, Georgia statute allows us, the board, to determine whether or not proceeding with the electronic system is possible or practicable. And if we determine for whatever reasons, like if we determine that it's impossible or impracticable, and that's either wholly or partially, then we are able to put into place this backup plan that we have adopted and is based upon the pilot that was done in Cobb County as a result of Judge Totenberg's order. So it's paper ballots, and it would be handmark paper ballots and scan through optical scanner. So, and actually Charlotte has assured us, the board that we will have floor plans for election day precincts provided prior to the next regular session for the board of elections so that we can make a determination there because we share similar concerns about that. There's also been issues with, and let me just say this, none of this is a local staff, like mess up. This is a state level issue that was pushed down upon us from the state, and our staff is doing the best that they can, okay? So, and I also wanna say it may seem like at times, if anybody who attends our board meetings, it may seem like at times that we are, there is some tension or opposition, but I just wanna say for the record, we're on the same team, and with new direction and new ideas and innovation and new membership on the board and new perspectives can come growing pains, and that's just normal, that's part of it. So, like I said, this is not a default of our staff. This is an issue statewide, and we, the board, it is our job to make sure that your ballot secrecy is not violated, and we have asked for, so at our last regular session, director shows we assured us that there is no concern with that for early voting. She said that because the space will allow for orientation, orienting the machines to face the way from, like basically orienting the machines to face the walls, like in a perimeter, and setting it up that way. We haven't seen the plans for that for advanced voting yet, but we will be making, the board will be revisiting ballot secrecy and electrical issues, if there are electrical issues still, but I'm told by staff that that's no longer an issue, is that correct? Yeah, so, but ballot secrecy is a priority, and I'm not just concerned about legal ramifications, I'm concerned about your vote and your ballot secrecy, and like, you know, that's whether or not we would be on the hook illegally, as one of our, or the county attorney just pointed out in our last meeting, to me that's part of an issue, but that's also not the entire issue, it's our job to protect your vote, and make sure that it's done in secretly, as you're entitled to, that it's counted, the way that you say it, like that you've decided your vote will be counted, and that the results we send up to Secretary of State's office are true, reflective of our community, so that's, I share your concerns. Ballot secrecy has been not just this problem now, it's been a problem for a long time, and we have adjusted and made sure that that was, your vote was secret, and we will do that this time also. Thank y'all, we have a couple of questions, I'm gonna take, I think you were first. Who decides when, what the tipping point is, and when do we decide if this is gonna work or not? We have two weeks before early voting begins, what's, are you, are you in charge, are you in charge, and how does it work? Does the state pull the blood on these machines, or do you get to pick them out at any house? So the system was not just first purchased in Georgia, of course, other states have used it over a years, probably four years, and the system has been used in several elections since 2019, November 2019, it started off as pilots in some of our counties, and then this recently, just recently some special elections that was just mentioned earlier. So the system works, yes, it works, but we as all of us, 159 counties, we will all have different ways that we're going to, what we're going to do to ensure the privacy of your, of your ballots, if that's what you're referring to. If you're referring to the privacy or if it works, yes, it works. What does y'all have to pull the workers, what do y'all have to pull, and when we go to pay the ballots, is there not a power, I mean, how does it work? At the Clark County, it's fine, we're fine, we will pro-act it differently, so the counties can get you to pay the ballots. No, no, no, everybody, it's mandated by the state that we have to use the system that was chosen, the ballot marking devices. We have to use. No, we cannot go to paper. The law says that if we find it is impracticable or that it's inoperable, and if the power goes off, there are battery backups on all of the systems that we have. So we absolutely cannot go to paper ballots? No. So if the size of that can generally keep our code, if the size of that, there's no ballot signature to the map, we cannot go to paper ballots. No, ma'am. Jesse said we couldn't. Let me explain this. The county that used all paper still had this process. You have to have something for the voter who is, has, that is visually impaired. So Cobb County, so Cobb County, Cobb County, when they did the pilot, they had all paper and they had a ballot marking device in there that was mandated by the federal law, the court order that was handed down. No, Plan B is in place, but that's not our Plan A. What are these questions? When do we decide to go to Plan B? Like, when does Plan A... If the power goes off and we're not able to process the system, we use Plan B. Or if the board determines that proceeding with the system as planned is impossible or impracticable, either wholly or partially, then the board can make that decision at any time. It's a vote. I mean, it just comes down to a vote. Yep, it's the board. It's a board decision. It's in the statute. It is the board's decision. And I have yet to be told otherwise by any legal authority. So, no, she was saying that our Plan A, correct, is this, is the electronic device, is the ballot marking device. If, for some reason, that does not work out, if your ballot secrecy is not protected, then we will, as a board, vote on that as an issue. And if we, the board, determined that's an issue, then we'll direct our local staff to pursue Plan B. So we're meeting March 3rd, and we're gonna have the plans for all of 20 locations for election day, the floor plans for that prior to that date. And that is, we'll be on the agenda for March 3rd to make a decision about that. Okay, so we have several questions. I believe in the glasses, no, you're okay. Now you, she said no. Hi, so recently I attended a summit on voting, the new voting system in Macon, Georgia, it was a few weeks ago. One of the things they mentioned was that with this new voting system, there was a law that used to be they had one machine per 250 voters, but now that has gone down one machine per 200 voters because they feel like this is a more efficient system. Do you guys have any concerns because now it's a three-step process, it looks like there's a lot of steps and people might be confused because it's a new system? What are your feelings about that because it seemed pretty concerning when I heard it? Yes, so when the House bill came down, talking about the system, it did say that we would have one ballot market, no excuse me, one voting compartment per every 250 voters. So there's a SCB rule, a state election board rule that's coming down that allows us as elections officials to reduce that number based on advanced voters. What we're going to do is take a look at how many people have voted already in each precinct and not shave it to the point where we're just gonna do that number because what I've figured is this particular election, it's a small ballot where a bottleneck is gonna be is at the check-in system and at the scanner because people are gonna vote fast, they're not gonna check-in fast and they're not gonna insert the ballot fast because they're gonna be reviewing the ballot, correct? And it is gonna be a slower process because it's new. As I told the poll workers, we're gonna learn this process together. The election staff, the poll workers, the voters, the media, we're gonna learn this together. We're gonna figure out what's gonna work best for us. So this election's gonna be different than the next election. Next election, we're gonna have our local candidates on there and our state and federal candidates on there. Then in November, we're gonna have referendums. You're gonna have voters who are gonna go in there and they're gonna expect to read that question, every single question, word for word, and we have to prepare for that. So we're gonna put in more ballot poll pads because we know that we're gonna have a lot of ballot market devices in there because we're gonna go by that 250 rule to start off. And then so that we're not gonna have these long lines and have people waiting to check in and then they come in and they see 15 ballot market devices empty. So we want to try to beef it up and try to prepare for what we have coming. Okay, so we have time for two more questions and there's four hands.  Switching gears and I promise about this is a question but that it, like I think technology is a blessing and a curse and it changes hard. And I have concerns about voting but my concerns are not the day of voting. My concerns are about the votes, like the people that aren't voting and the people that are voting and like getting out there before, like what happens that's bad and the vote happens before the day of the election. And I've worked for the election, board election for 10 years now and if you come to my poll on the day of, I'm gonna make that work, I'm gonna make it secure, I'm gonna make it accurate, I'm gonna turn it in and sign that paperwork. But my question is, I'm concerned that like in my poll, I'll be lucky if 50% of my registered voters come and vote for a presidential. You know, so why, what do you think about our voting percentages? Who votes who doesn't vote? How can that be better in our community? I want lines. I want people to have to wait. I want people to come and vote. And we don't have enough voters. Yeah, so actually since beginning my term on the board in January of 2017, shortly after the beginning of that term, this term, I've been asking, requesting, bringing up the idea that our ACC board of elections staff have a demographic and geospatial analysis done to on the types of people in our community who are registered on who turns out to vote, on who's not registered to vote, but could be on who's not turning out to vote, but could be, right? So, and this would be like based on race, ethnicity, age, sex, socioeconomic status, physical location, like within our community as well. And also that would include like overlay of like public transportation routes too, looking at that as well. And we have a GIS department actually, like really solid GIS department. And I'm hoping still, and I'm still asking, and we're gonna continue to revisit this, but I'm hoping that we can have our GIS partner with our staff, with the board of elections office, and look at the data available through to census data, their census tracks and everything they can utilize to and with voter registration data, and there's a way, we can remove any information that can't be shared, right? Private information that shouldn't be shared, obviously. And then they can create tools, intelligence tools that can inform us as a board and inform staff like us, like what is, right? In order to figure out what we need to do, we need to know what's happening right now, and then we can more effectively focus our efforts to provide the best voter information, voter education, voter registration efforts, voter access and get out the vote efforts, like all of these things, but in order to do that, we have to actually have the analysis done, and it's been said that there's data available at the Secretary of State's office, but that's not, we have yet to sit down as a board and look at data, we have yet to sit down and have intelligence tools that were created by a GIS specialist to inform us, so we can say, okay, see over here, this is high turnout, high registration, that's great, but over here in this area, this is like lower registration, lower turnout, and what can we do to focus on this area and help bring everybody in our community into the fold and into the franchise? That's an idea that I had about that. So, yeah. Thank you, Jesse. I'm gonna really try to get to all four of you. This gentleman in the gray shirt was next. So, first of all, full disclosure, police in the lawn is my better half. But with that said, she has no warning that I was gonna actually say anything. Plan B, the hand-marked paper ballots, I keep hearing that she doesn't tell me anything and I don't ask her when she's home from work, she's working way too hard to have to tell me about it, but the idea of hand-marked paper ballots, I'm curious, you know, I'm just looking around and I know at least there's a couple of people in here who are like me old enough to remember Bush Gore and the marvelous Hanging Chad and that mechanical voting systems are not necessarily accurate or secure anymore than digital systems, but 20 years ago or so, the whole reason we all went to digital was because the Hanging Chad was inaccurate. So, I would like to understand what this hand-marked paper ballot looks like, how it's gonna work, how it's gonna be read, you know, are we going back to number two pencils and scribbling in the bubble? And if we don't scribble the bubble in our way, does it not count? Is it read electronically? Is the electronic reader connected to a computer which brings up all of the security questions that come up with digital machines? What makes the idea of a hand-marked paper ballot and ignoring the QR code, which is interesting, but what makes the idea of a hand-marked paper ballot any more safe or accurate as, you know, another way of going about this than the digital systems and how is that hand-marked paper ballot system going to work if that's the direction that it goes? It's my understanding that Cobb County utilized optical scanners from this system, but it was just similar to like an absentee ballot, for example, when people mark their votes on an absentee ballot, right, they do it by hand, right? That's a commonly used thing. We make that, and that works well, it functions well. The benefit, one benefit would be the ballot secrecy, that's concern, another benefit would be that we would have, instead of having a QR code that's generated from that, that we would have a paper trail of what the person marks, that's exactly what, like that was their vote, and that's what's put into the system with the optical scanner. There's no, like, encoding it into a QR code. And so these are what I'm hearing, also like if there's an audit, and again, this is what people are telling me from the community, this is not coming off originating in here, this is what I've learned about through awesome people in our community, helped me to understand more about this, right? Is it's better to have, in the opinion of many, it's better to have that trail, that stack of paper ballots that you can go in and actually check and see what people that we marked on there, than to just scan the QR code back into the machine as an audit, as a scan, as a check, because people as an express have been concerned with what is actually being encoded and read on the QR code. So that's, those are just the main things that I can think of that people have communicated to me would be reasons to, if the system doesn't seem possible or practicable to the board, that that's why a paper ballot option would be better and that's how it would work. And also we're lucky in that we have a primary right now. So if for some reason the board did decide, right, that this is impossible and practicable as it is, the system as it is, this new system, for this time around, we wouldn't, we'd have, there's only one person on the ballot for the Republican ballot and there's a, some people on the ballot for the Democratic ballot, and it's like one race, so it would be a lot easier to go ahead and do the counting and the hand marked and send it through that way as well, rather than like a more extensive, like several elections in a more complicated ballot later down the line. So these are things that people have expressed to me. Just to be clear, both systems have a visual, you can see what vote was cast on a piece of paper and this one prints it out on a piece of paper because I didn't see it, but that's not what's going on. So if for some reason, if you didn't want to trust the QR code, you could sit people down with ballots and by hand do an audit and count the votes by what's printed on that piece of paper, is that correct? But not at those points. So that's what, that's the understanding that we were given when the machines were being ordered and the decisions we made to have this system, but as we were mentioned earlier, there's a rule in front of the SCB right now, a proposed rule that says that when it comes to counting votes, what's actually gonna count, like we're gonna be given the directive, what's actually gonna count is the QR code, not what's written on the ballot. I want to get into the rules, but just the reality is there's a paper trail for both. Now the government may decide to ignore the paper trail on either one of them by whatever rules they come up with, but the reality is you can look at that piece of paper and see what vote was cast on the piece of paper the same way as what vote was cast on landmark ballot. The question comes into, once you start feeding things to scanners, if it reads the QR code instead of the English written part, then we have to trust. If you read a paper ballot with an optical scanner, we have to trust that the optical scanner reports correctly, the same way we have to trust the QR code reports correctly. I mean at some point there's, unless you have people sit in a room with tick marks on a piece of paper reading it off the sheet of paper that the voter handed in, at some point you gotta trust the system regardless of the situation. And some people actually are proposing that we don't use scanners, that they're proposing that we do the hand count manually rather than using the scanners as well. So that's something that's being proposed to. And history has shown that there was errors in elections doing that as well. Absolutely. So we've got two other questions I would love to get to. There's this woman here in the black shirt. I've been wondering what was this gonna cost our citizens in this county? The state has my taxes and it's paying for a whole bunch of cool stuff. But then there are additional things like the paper that goes through that thing. Who's paying for that? There's a whole list of things I'll just leave it short. But for the paper ballots, the provisional ballots, the absentee ballots, if that is used as a backup, how many of those are you gonna print? What's that gonna cost you? Who's paying for it? Who's paying for the new precinct cards that are going out? The state gives you the precinct cards or are they paying the postage when you mail it to me? And that's just a little bit of how much is this gonna cost question? So elections cost, they cost. So, yes, yes, yes it most certainly is. So what we're responsible for for this election and since the new system was purchased are consumables. So we have to purchase, we will purchase additional cartridges for the printers. We purchase paper for the ballot marking devices. We are purchasing 100% of paper ballots, which cost almost $30,000. And we did that because if the board makes a decision to do paper ballots, we wanna have it in hand. So that would be plus, plus. So we ordered 105% of our voting population, yes. And by law, when there were paper ballots, when that was a law, we had to have 100% of our voting population. And so, let's say 70% of our voters show up and half of them make a mistake on their ballot and they wanna mark another ballot. So you have to have that paper on hand. Well, the budget back when it was planned didn't even know about some of this stuff. So there was a budget for so much money. This is gonna exceed whatever that was. Where's that money coming from? Yes, ma'am, so just recently the board of commission and the mayor approved us an additional $130,000 that we were not aware of that we would need. Additional poll workers, printer cartridges, carts, moving company, if we need to have a moving company to deliver our equipment, a number of things. Tech support, right? Eventually, right? Tech support, eventually. I mean, right now it's paid for by the state, right? But eventually tech support, that funding from the state's gonna expire? Well, it'll be for our warranties and our insurance for our equipment, which will not be affected by the budget that we're currently operating in or the next budget. So 2022 is when we will assume a cost for the warranty and insurance for our equipment. Yeah, one more question, yes ma'am? Thank you. My question's about the data of the board. So you're gonna have these pads where the board is signing with their scan ID card. So that pad has data in it. It's gonna scan a card and then the election worker is gonna have a little white card, okay? That's gonna be given to the voters. So that white card gets stuff that came out of the iPad. Then the white card goes over and it goes into one of these, which you call the BMD, the ballot marking device. And the white card talks to the ballot marking device and says, this is who I am and I'm precinct on end. And then I make my selections. No, it doesn't. Okay, please. Please, go ahead and finish it. Okay, so the white card has my data as a vote. Well, finish your thought and then I'll tell you. Is that, do you want to? That's not my thought. It is more. Okay, go ahead and finish. Okay, so there's several machines. There's the little iPad thing. You call it the pole pad. The pole pad. It has data in it that is going to match my ID and as a result, that pole pad is going to talk to a little white card. Yes, with an arrow on it. And it's going to record something on that little white card that I'm going to carry over to that thing, which is the BMD, the ballot marking device. And then I'm going to put the little white card with arrow in it and that little screen is going to read the white card with some data and then it's going to generate a ballot unique to my precinct so that I can make my selections and then it's going to communicate with the printer, which is no. So that's a BMD. How does the BMD make the printer print a ballot? Yes, it will tell it to print. Okay, so here's another device. The BMD is going to talk to the printer, which is going to print out a ballot that has a QR code and also a little print out, right? So that's a third device. And now I'm going to take the ballot. I'm going to look at it, see what's on it. Of course, it's got the QR code that has all my voting data. I don't know what's in the QR code. No one can read it except this proprietary system. I'm going to then take it and put it in a fourth device, which is the scanner for this proprietary system, which is company that makes these things. It's the only people in the world that can read that QR code. It's going to go into the scanner and then it's going to create a database with, it's going to add my vote into the talent, right? Which then by the end of the evening is going to go on to a SIM card, right? Okay, so my concern is about the data that there are so many opportunities for this data to become corrupted and for the final information that is going to be on that SIM card to be corrupted or leaked because as we all know, data breaches occur. And is there any way you can tell me for sure that what gets onto that SIM card is accurate and that it doesn't end up with some hacker in China? That's not exactly what I thought you were going to ask. Okay, so are you concerned about personal data from the poll pad going into the BND and going into another device? Was that the beginning of your concern? Though that may not be that maybe a Charlotte question. I thought you were going to ask something else. Okay, so let's back up. The card that you'll be given from the poll pad has your ballot on it. That poll, that card is to make sure that you get every district that's assigned to you and not her ballot, and not her ballot, but your specific ballot. Now this is what, I'm getting there. And I'm getting there, right, right. So I'm getting there, so your ballot is printed right there. We have removed all of the electronic part of it because you have a memory card that has a ballot on it that no longer has anything on it because you've already inserted it into the ballot marking device. None of this is connected in any way to WiFi for somebody to hack into. None of this is connected there. So you're going to take that memory card, you're going to go over to the ballot marking device, and it's going to pull up your specific ballot, your precinct, and all of your districts. It's going to print your ballot. Now that card is put somewhere else. Then your paper ballot is going to come out of a different device. And then that paper is paper, it's a corded connection. Yes, right. So then your paper ballot comes out, you take it not with no electronics connected, whatsoever, it's a piece of paper. Has a QR code on it, and then you insert it into the scanner as if I took a piece of paper from my printer and took it to the copy machine and made a copy. There's no hacking going on there. I print. Yes, and the scanner is going to take a picture. If I'm not mistaken. So. The integrity lasts from my hand to the SIM card, and that my vote is secret and accurately recorded, and it doesn't end up in China. Yeah, okay, so obviously, especially quickly. If you have more specific questions or want a lot more details, I'm going to read off of an email so I can get this name correct. But the State of Georgia, Secretary of State's office has partnered with the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing Analysis Center, which is part of the Center for Internet Security. So 100% of Georgia counties have joined this partnership that is sponsored by Secretary Raffensperger's office. And that independent office is a nationwide center that provides internet security, and specifically within that, there's this division that provides secure election. So this is a kind of fairly long press release that talks about that, that there's additional information online. I'm glad I can give you my card. I'm glad to kind of provide a lot of the details. I know we're running long on time, but essentially that is a major concern. And part of what we have worked to do with this specific system is limit the opportunities that any of the voting processes are connected to the internet. And that you would require a physical, actually physically touching the device to interfere with the election, or when the results are sent from the county's main county office where they're, what's the name of the, yes, the elections, once basically the SIM cards, the SD cards are back to the county's office. And those results are sent to the state. That secure connection is provided and assured by that organization that I mentioned often. I'm glad to send anybody additional information on if you have questions on that. So we're gonna come to a close, but I wanna thank Lisa, Charlotte, Jessie, and Charles for taking time out of your evening to come speak with these folks. And thank you for the work that you do and how you serve our community. Lisa is going to have a short presentation or an opportunity. Yeah, with you minutes or so, you can use the machine if you would like to see how it works for you. Okay, all right, thank you. You might have to say, so one thing that everybody in the room can do is start attending, if you haven't already, start attending Board of Elections meetings. We have two special called meetings coming up. One is tomorrow at four o'clock and the location is, what's the address? The address for the name of the building. Bobby Snipes. Resource Center. We have one resource. Water Resource Center. So these two special called elections are about unmerging, like changing and polling locations for May. And this is your opportunity to come and give your input on that. So there's public comments tomorrow at four o'clock at Bobby Snipes Water Resource Center and also on the 25th as well, same time, same place. But also our regular sessions, our regular meetings are the first Tuesday of the month. And where your Board of Elections, we serve the public, the more the public is involved, aware and participating, the better we can serve you. So public attendance and input are welcome and encouraged. So first Tuesday of the month, three o'clock, City Hall, room 103. Three? Cool, yeah, so thanks. All right, thank you.


Alright, thanks for staying with us now. If you just tuned in, today's an international day. Let's find out. Read an e-book day. Yeah, remember saying that. Read an e-book day is celebrated annually on September 18th. It is a day to celebrate the convenience and accessibility of e-books and to encourage people to read more e-books. E-books offer a number of advantages over traditional print books. They are portable so you can easily take them with you wherever you go and they are also environmentally friendly as they do not require any paper or ink to produce. Additionally, e-books are often less expensive than print books. So, happy e-book day. I remember the time that Kindle was draining. Like, you don't get Kindle, you know, if not arrived. It keeps doing. The sad thing is that, somebody was telling me today when I was just complaining about traffic and I said, the person said, get a driver. I said, it's not the issue of getting a driver, that's my problem. I actually have very bad nausea. When I'm being driven, I literally cannot do anything.  That's the only way I can survive a journey that I am not the one driving. That's how bad my own nausea is. So, if I stay on my phone for too long, staying on up to like two, three minutes, my eyes begin to spin a lot. I have very bad nausea. So, it's difficult for me to read e-books. That's my thing. I remember, I think I was listening to Jennifer and Uti. Uti said she liked the smell of the book. I mean, it's something about holding the book. And the fact that, you know, I can just flip it. Yeah, exactly. I love them coming. And then just get back to it and then I can use it. The musical library out of it. I love my covers. I've tried e-books too and it's just, I read a page and I get tired. But hard covers, I can read as much as 10 pages in 20 minutes. And I'm still flipping. But you know what I've started learning though? Because I used to be like a physical learner. I must learn inside classroom and everything. But because I don't have a choice. I'm paying money. All these online courses I'm doing. I must finish that. I must get my certificate. I noticed something. If I'm listening to the video, just listening. I don't get it. But if I'm listening and I'm reading it myself. So there's the transcript. So as she's talking and following it with my eyes on the words, it's gotten better for me, my e-learning. Because e-learning was really, really a no-no for me. I struggled. That's why two courses that I started, I dumped them. Which I'm resuming next quarter in December. But I had dumped it because I just couldn't cope with e-learning. It was a struggle for me. But I think I'm beginning to cope. So I think maybe I should just find a way. Because the truth is, you really cannot. Like me now, I've not been able to read books in a while. What I've done over the years is I've tried to use audio books. So when I'm driving. Because sometimes you spend hours in traffic. And because you don't want to drive. So I listen to those e-books and I think it's helping. Because really you must find a way. Because if not, you can just go by a year without reading. There's no time. It's really where you live in Lagos. For me, it's e-learning. I think, because I like to read for pleasure. It's how I decompress. Music and movies and then reading. I actually collect books. So of course, when I know that it's not for pleasure. I'm taking a program or I'm doing a training. I can absolutely read. It just flows. If I had a choice. If I'm reading for pleasure, it has to be a hardcover book. Absolutely. Here with my own dilemma. If I'm reading for pleasure, I enjoy it. But the moment I'm reading for a schoolwork or an assignment or anything. It becomes the most difficult task. I hate reading for academic purposes. But then I enjoy reading for pleasure. So what I do is anything that I feel I'm a little interested in. And I need to research on it. Maybe for academic purposes. I go to maybe Google WikiHow. Yeah, the same. True. What did you find for us? Are you speaking? I was going through ABC Africa. And they had this short documentary on Operation Dujula. I don't think they can play the video right now. Just talk us through it while the video is coming up. We know about xenophobia that has been a thing for a couple of years now. So in Operation Dujula, it's like the updated version of xenophobia. So in the video, you would see some South Africans. It's an official group.  The foreigners are the reason why they're having increased poverty, drugs, morality. And so they just want to kick people out. And what they said is they're focused on illegal immigrants. But then there was someone that was interviewed. And he's obviously a Nigerian. And he was crying out that he is a citizen. But he's been experiencing, like he's now a South African citizen. But he's experiencing the same thing. Like they throw him out through his clothes in the gutter. He's insecure and whatnot. I wish they would play that. Yeah, that's it. This is my country, South Africa.  And the government is doing nothing. And this is our leading anti-migrant group, Operation Dujula. We cannot be undertaken by foreign nationals and do nothing about it. Something needs to happen. We are coming for you. Yeah, their focus is to kick all the foreigners away. And they're even taking it a step further to turn Operation Dujula into a political party such that they can contest for South African elections next year. And here is the balance. I do not support what they are doing. I think it is wrong and very myopic. But here is just supposing it. We are facing a similar issue in Nigeria, although not as violent as the one in South Africa. I was reading a report recently on how there is an increase in influx of Chinese and Lebanese people into Nigeria. And I was reading comments on InstaBlock. And I was seeing something that looked a bit like xenophobia, but verbal version of it. People were writing and saying, what are they coming to look for here? They should go back to their country. We don't need them and stop. No, I will add. No, but I'm just...  I will help you. Go and name all the top restaurants. Especially the hospitality industry. One name all the top ones that you know. Filipinos, Lebanese, Chinese people. Even real estate, prime choice properties. They are all Lebanese people. So the only way, maybe, if the government begins to give Nigerians equal opportunities that they give these foreigners and back it up, you understand? Because these foreigners are coming with the backing, sometimes the backing of their own government, their own money, you know, and all of that. If Nigerians start to give Nigerians opportunities, because the problem with foreigners taking over in Nigeria is not the foreigner that is the problem. It's your government that has not given you as a Nigerian better opportunities. You go now and apply for a farmland. A Chinese person will apply for a farmland. Is every likelihood that the Chinese person will get it quicker and faster? Why also the same thing in South Africa? You know, because just like we already quoted by Nelson Mandela that poverty has been so weaponized. Right now these people are blinded to the fact that it is your government's responsibility to better the economy. It is not the migrants that are stopping your country from expiring. You know, people have the right to migrate anywhere they want to because there are some South Africans that are also illegal immigrants in the US. But you don't see Americans throwing them out or setting them up. Because it's not here. It's because they are busy. If the government is seen to be taking care of Americans, they don't have a problem. If you let me call your numbers, it doesn't count. Do you understand what I'm saying? It is when the government is not doing what they're supposed to do for their citizens that it now becomes a problem. So it now looks like this foreigner is coming to take away. No, if the government does what it is supposed to do, it's not supposed to be a problem. We can actually coexist. Let me quickly take my story. First, I just wanted to quickly point out, and I think we should have this conversation tomorrow. It says the police force, the police force public relations officer, almost every young person in Shagam is a cultist. I'll just leave it there because there was a clash today. It was a gory site. Then the investigations for Mobad is ongoing. They've opened, I think, a 13-man panel that would investigate the, what is it called, that this was done today. And I said to, you know, I listened to Yabba Oju's video and she had talked about how they were going to write officially. So it's not just living it on social media, taking it to authorities. And I'm happy that the police has, that's the father of the young man there. The police have actually also set up a 13-man panel to unravel. So they also, a lawyer, I saw a letter from a lawyer that's written to them. They need a corona inquest, you know, and all of that. So I think if there was every time our security personnel really showed that they care about every Nigerian citizen. I'm not in these guys, what's it called? I'm not in this reader. I don't listen to his music. I don't listen to anything. What's far as a human being is my concern.  I have sons too.  They will grow up to be 27 one day and even older. Do you hear what I'm saying? Like I'm just looking at it. I'm trying to picture in my head what would, what would this boy have done? Like literally what would he have done to have warranted his life in snuffed out.  Do you remember, you said something about an issue in the entertainment and I'm looking back and I'm realizing that part of the problem is because you don't have entertainment or like the corporate world where there's a structure, there's HR, we do something weird, there's someone to report to and what not. Entertainment doesn't really have that proper structure set up. That's what they claim to have all those bodies for, but do they really work? We'll talk about it tomorrow. We'll talk about that, especially the cultism thing because I saw the videos. We'll really call you guys. Dead bodies everywhere in Instagram because there was a clash this afternoon. Because it has gone beyond uni now. It's no more schools. When I used to hear about cultism because university, so I don't believe that when I finish university I'll be out of. It's in primary schools now. Now it's even on the streets. So you're home, you're not even safe anymore. Stay with us, we'll be right back.