Name: Work Session - Board of Elections
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T00:00:00Z
Duration: 2 h 3 min 46 s
Description: And I think there were four or five challengers running in that election. We had a 65 percent voter turnout, 65 percent. And I think lately we're down, we're having like 20-some percent.

[0:05] Recording in progress.

[0:14] Hey, good evening, everybody. This is a Greenbelt City Council work session. My name is Emmett Jordan. I serve as mayor council. Could you introduce yourselves, please? Kristen Weaver mayor, pertain.

[0:29] Jenny Pompey council member. Amy, council member.

[0:36] Okay. I've got an information item. Any other information items from council? We do have a closed session coming up after this work session with the board of elections.

[0:47] It's going to be an exciting evening. It's very rainy outside. I'm a little wet. It's hot and humid here in Council chambers, but I'm looking forward to an exciting discussion tonight.

[1:00] But before we begin, I just want to mention that we do hold our work sessions on Mondays and Wednesday several times a month to change information with community stakeholder groups.

[1:09] so that residents and others can observe our deliberations.

[1:13] We do strive by reasonable opportunities for the public to enforce opinions on matters being considered.

[1:17] So we'll pause periodically tonight for public comment.

[1:20] During these times, if you are in the room, if you raise your hand after being recognized and go over to podium,

[1:25] you need to state your name and where you live and the green belt or in the area,

[1:28] more or less, we need that for the minutes.

[1:30] If you are watching on Zoom, you can submit a question using the Q&A tab on the bottom of your screen,

[1:35] or you can raise your virtual hand, and once again after being recognized and promoted,

[1:40] you'll be able to speak, but you'll need to provide us with a name, we don't take anonymous comments.

[1:44] And finally, if you are watching on good old cable TV

[1:47] or live streaming on Facebook or YouTube, you can submit an e-mail to us.

[1:53] The e-mail address is questions of GreenbeltIndeed.gov

[1:58] And so with the public comment, about three minutes, three minutes or less,

[2:02] And we asked to speak on one topic related to the question of consideration, and we asked

[2:07] that you avoid questioning the motives of others.

[2:10] And in general, let's all be civil and moral marks.

[2:14] So let me say hello to Mr. Somerone, Mr. Somerone, how are you?

[2:18] And well, Mr. President, good evening, Councilor.

[2:20] Good evening, residents.

[2:22] Okay.

[2:22] I, I, I still am relieved, so we had some, uh, made some, uh, strides on the youth center and

[2:28] being able to open on Monday with, uh, camps.

[2:31] Yeah, that's so important. Such heavy rain. It's almost something is wrong with the environment.

[2:41] 100-year storms are more common now than they have been.

[2:44] We might get five inches of rain today, but I know there's flooding over the city.

[2:49] We'll talk about that a little bit behind.

[2:52] But tonight, the topic for the work session is the Board of Elections.

[2:56] This is an election year coming up and the Board of Elections has been very, very busy throughout the year just working on the new initiative for all resident voting and also looking at ballot questions and just basically getting ready for the election season which is starting now pretty much just in terms of your preparations.

[3:17] So I want to welcome you both. Could you state your names for the record?

[3:22] Okay. Steve Gilbert on the press the button if it's green, it should be on.

[3:30] But I think those microphones, you have to get really close to the mic. So I think that's

[3:34] the issue with those is that it has to be closer than you think you need to be really close

[3:39] to. Okay. Steve Gilbert board chair. Nicole Shang board member. Yeah. Beth Terry couldn't

[3:47] be with us because she's not feeling well and Alice and Gary, I think we'll join us

[3:52] later. She should be joining online. Oh, she'll be online. Okay. Okay. So, as I was saying,

[4:02] there's just a lot of things going on. So, do you want to give us just before we get into

[4:07] the questions and the documentation that you provided? Can you just bring us up to speed a little

[4:22] We're looking forward to the elections in November and this will be the first year that

[4:29] non-citizens will be able to vote. We don't know how many will will be doing that. They have to

[4:34] register with the city and today I don't think we have too many registrations but they will they'll

[4:42] be able to do that through the end of September to early October and tonight I think we're

[4:52] going to be talking about the possible referendum questions.

[4:55] We have the question of under

[5:00] Number 18 poll workers, assisting with the elections. We also have the question of whether to change council terms from two years to four years. That will require a charter amendment, of course. And then the general question of whether the city should be divided into election districts.

[5:27] And the last two questions will just be general questions for the voters and the council

[5:35] will then have to take that, the advice of the voters and decide how to follow

[5:48] what

[5:48] the voters have suggested.

[5:50] The 16 and 17-year-old Poehl-Way quarter question, we're not sure that that needs to be on

[5:57] the ballot into the fairly simple question. The board is in favor of that. And we have a memo

[6:09] in the file on that, the minority that has under 18 poll workers would have to get a permit

[6:23] to do to to work for the city they would I think it's we think it's advisable

[6:30] that they have permission from their parents and from a from a teacher in their

[6:38] high school and since they'll be high school students and it will be a school

[6:45] day they will only be able to work after three.

[6:50] Hey well thank you thank you so I

[6:53] I brought this up. I was at a conference and folks from other jurisdictions were saying that they had 16-17 year old poll workers.

[7:02] It just seemed like a really natural thing for us to do.

[7:05] And looking around a little bit, they're already doing that in Prince George's County.

[7:10] So you have to be at least 16 years old. You've got to be a resident of Prince George's County.

[7:16] The citizenship is required in Prince George's County, and the 16 and 17-year-olds don't necessarily need to be registered voters, but they have to demonstrate to the local board of elections that they meet the qualifications for registering in the county.

[7:33] And parental consent, because there are laws about if you're a minor, you can only work so many hours.

[7:39] 12 hours. Right. You can't work more than 8 hours a day. Yeah. So they will have to work

[7:50] both election day and the training session the night before. Right. Now one thing that

[7:57] I was curious about with our early voting on weekends, on Sundays, Saturdays and Sundays

[8:04] It seems like that would be a really easy time to have youthful poll workers working

[8:11] because they'd be out of school and they'd be able to easily do the happy day without

[8:15] taking the time off.

[8:17] Now, of course, when working as a poll worker in Crunchy George's County, you do need to

[8:25] either get service learning hours, which students need to have any out, or you can get paid

[8:32] like one or the other, but as far as our current regulations on poll workers, how would

[8:40] that play out during the early voting? Because I also know it's a challenge early voting

[8:44] getting, you know, having the clerk and everybody come in. It's a little bit of a stretch

[8:49] and having a couple of youth workers who will be helpful probably.

[8:53] But yeah, as we understand the charter and code poll workers quote unquote only work on

[9:03] elections.

[9:04] And so we read the board cover, the board in the clerk's office, the administration

[9:10] cover that of the Saturday and Sunday of early voting.

[9:15] Okay.

[9:17] So, if we were to change the code, is that something that could go in effect on the ship?

[9:25] I would have to look at the charter to make sure.

[9:33] I know both the charter and the code address that's up here to the whole world.

[9:38] Right.

[9:40] So, I think this is a low-hanging fruit, and I'd like to go ahead and move ahead with this.

[9:48] Of course, we'd have to, what we'd have to do, we wouldn't have to do an ordinance or resolution.

[9:53] We're already, since it's already in Prince George's County, we just have to adopt the practice.

[9:57] That's right. You don't have to change the law.

[10:00] Right. But if we wanted to change the qualifications somehow, so it's not either war, payment or learning service hours, let's say we vote for people who are resident citizenship.

[10:19] We have to draft an ordinance or resolution. I guess our legal counsel on

[10:28] the subject of pay, changing the requirements, but their citizens are not. Is that your correct? Yeah, the two things, yes.

[10:35] On the, I don't, I do in both things offering community service hours and aiming, I think it's

[10:44] more of a policy issue that, are we sending, are we incentivizing the right things, right?

[10:50] If you're, if you're, I think typically you don't have, if you're paying someone, you're

[10:54] not offering community service hours because the nature of community service hours are that

[10:58] they foster a tier that's volunteer service.

[11:01] So I do involve, I think, will be made in contradiction of the spirit of what community

[11:08] hours are.

[11:09] That's a good point.

[11:10] And also, I suppose you could say that that's more lenient than what's in place with

[11:15] the county.

[11:16] So we would have to actually do something about that.

[11:19] I suppose it's the same thing with residency versus citizenship, right, on the issue of

[11:26] Haying, someone I think as long as they are allowed to work in the United States, we could

[11:34] employ them, I think, that's separate from citizenship or non-s citizenship because you

[11:39] can have someone that's not a U.S. citizen but eligible to work in the United States.

[11:44] Right.

[11:45] That would be more lenient in a way of different than what the counties do, so we have to get

[11:50] legal counsels to pay me in there.

[11:52] Yeah, by the way, poll workers don't have to be residents of the city.

[11:59] Okay.

[11:59] All right.

[12:02] This seems really easy to do.

[12:04] Council, what do you think?

[12:06] Mr. Roberts?

[12:07] Oh, nice.

[12:08] Counting before marms go on.

[12:13] I think if we want to bring...

[12:16] I think the pollard hasn't, right?

[12:17] We've got to bring on 16, 17 year olds.

[12:20] And whenever capacity, whatever it is,

[12:23] they need to be treated the same as every other employee, the same pay and whatnot. I don't think you can't make it. I don't think you can mix the school hours when your

[12:37] microphone might

[12:41] die. Yeah, they need to be treated the same as everyone else. And I think that's the way the board has

[12:46] Yes.

[12:48] Point is.

[12:49] Thank you.

[12:51] It's a good point.

[12:52] You know, I think it's their option.

[12:54] Do we have any poll workers that you know work out of the

[12:57] goodness of your heart?

[12:58] It's a long day.

[12:58] It's a little bit harder than some people might imagine.

[13:04] Yeah, I think we've had poll workers in the past.

[13:06] You didn't live in Green Bell.

[13:17] The counselor.

[13:18] They want to get the payment or they want the car in the car because if they are wanting to graduate

[13:22] they may actually need those volunteer hours to graduate.

[13:26] So that might be more beneficial to them than the pay at that time.

[13:31] I think offering them the choice makes sense.

[13:34] They should have that choice.

[13:34] It's like anybody else would.

[13:36] But I think that might be the decision.

[13:39] Yeah, that's what I was driving.

[13:41] I'll leave it to choice.

[13:43] I don't want to do something.

[13:47] Any of the thoughts from Council can open it up to the floor if there are any comments or questions.

[13:52] Mr. Hartman, you had a comment, please go to the microphone.

[14:05] Michael Hartman to confirm what actually my comment is I don't have a comment because I couldn't

[14:11] hear what people were saying so I would ask that all of you speak louder or at least use

[14:16] a microphone that actually raises the volume of your speaking because I couldn't hear the

[14:25] Does Cindy manager or Rodney or anyone actually, can you all speak louder or use the microphone

[14:32] that actually amplifies your voice?

[14:36] Yeah, we'll actually do that.

[14:38] What do we do before we have microphones?

[14:41] Loudly, louder, louder.

[14:46] Let's see.

[14:47] Anybody online?

[14:48] I'm looking around for the Zoom link.

[14:52] There are no hands raised online.

[14:57] Okay.

[14:57] Well, is there any...

[15:00] Any further discussion? If not, I'd go ahead and put this in motion. And based on the discussion tonight, if we have Mr. Deloge review the proposal, the advice and the recommendation from the Board of Elections was you thought that this was a good idea. Yes, it was. Okay. Nicole? Oh, I just wanted to say that there were board members who voiced support for offering the

[15:29] community service hours for students.

[15:33] So I think it makes sense to do either or like,

[15:37] to offer both, you know, choose one.

[15:40] Right.

[15:41] And of course, we would need an application,

[15:43] a parental permission from parents,

[15:48] and also some minors that have to be thankful creditors

[15:53] in a way that we would want perhaps not.

[16:01] We could.

[16:02] I don't know that they would yield any need.

[16:05] It's unlikely that we'll get a background check from minors, but they can certainly be

[16:10] familiar.

[16:14] Many of our we hire minors for summer camps, they're not any work that they do for the

[16:22] city.

[16:22] They're always under supervision, so we would treat these employees like we do any other

[16:28] my employees that are minors and any other function of the city.

[16:32] Yeah, I think you still need to speak up, post-leg.

[16:36] Okay.

[16:36] I stated that we could, we could fingerprint our minors, however, we don't, I don't think

[16:43] that we would get a background check on the minors.

[16:47] I would prefer that we treat the poll workers that are minors like we do, all the other employees

[16:52] that are minors in the organization, and we hire plenty for, for the summer camps.

[16:57] So we would just treat them the same way we treat our other minors.

[16:59] And a point that I've made is that we do not have minors working in the city without supervision, so they're all supervised

[17:09] Thank you. Thank we got to find a way to bring you out of your shell

[17:12] Speak out you're free

[17:14] Work on it. Yeah

[17:18] But for them well, I think the bigger issue may not be the minors themselves

[17:22] But the poll workers working with the minors because that's something that we ask I know of of

[17:26] of recognition groups that if they're working with minors,

[17:30] they have to, those who are working with minors

[17:32] have to go through the process.

[17:34] So that actually might be the bigger issue,

[17:36] not the minors themselves, but whoever's supervising them.

[17:40] So that I think that's something to look into

[17:42] how we do that with the recognition groups

[17:46] and the contribution groups.

[17:49] That's an excellent point.

[17:50] We would have to run background checks on every employee

[17:54] that would be in contact with that minor.

[18:01] Well, let's not over complicate this,

[18:04] but let's have our legal counsel take a look,

[18:06] have him a pie and see what we can do there.

[18:09] It just seems like a good idea.

[18:10] Already doing, I don't know what they do

[18:12] in Prince George's County,

[18:13] if they go through that same procedure,

[18:15] it seems like we should,

[18:16] if we follow the procedures in Prince George's County,

[18:19] we should be fine.

[18:22] The county does a few, many things well.

[18:25] There's other things that their standards are below our own.

[18:29] speak the truth okay hey let's uh yeah please um since the poll workers currently

[18:40] do work with 16-year-olds when they're voting do they not need to be background

[18:47] checked I mean I know they're not I know that the 16-year-olds aren't working for

[18:52] the city but they are interacting with minors I'm just I'm just curious if that

[18:56] We don't background check the poll workers, but I think in that context they're not serving

[19:04] that minor in a one-on-one setting, they typically come in and grow out the same, they're

[19:11] not hanging out, there's no opportunity to leave the space, so I think it's a different

[19:18] context than when we have other employees working with minors or serving minors.

[19:25] Yeah, and no individual poll worker is by himself or herself with a voter.

[19:34] There's always two others.

[19:39] Thank you so much.

[19:41] So at this time, if there's no further comment, let's go ahead and move on to the next question

[19:45] and that had to do with four-year terms.

[19:49] So this issue, I think, has come up from time to time.

[19:51] Last time it came up was maybe 20 years ago.

[19:55] So what can you summarize?

[20:00] Is the Board of Elections deliberations on this topic? Yeah, we don't have a position on whether councilmembers should serve for two years or four years. If the council wants to put the question to the voters in referendum, then do that. And if, if it's decided that that should be done,

[20:29] and then it was suggested and we think it's a good idea

[20:33] to have another question whether council members

[20:36] should be subject to recall after being elected.

[20:45] Let's see, if we were to that way,

[20:48] would that imply that council member,

[20:52] if we kept it at two years, it could be recalled?

[20:56] And what does the charter say about?

[20:58] No, the charter doesn't say anything about recalls now.

[21:00] The idea, I guess, being that within two years they can decide, a recall election would

[21:14] take time anyway.

[21:15] I mean, it would also be an expense for the city.

[21:20] And if the terms are only two years as they are now, then there's no crying need, I think,

[21:27] to have a recall procedure.

[21:33] Okay.

[21:34] Mayor Proteman, I thought I saw you move over there to show you.

[21:37] No, I was just going to be moving to pull it up.

[21:40] But this was the text from the memo from the Board of Elections.

[21:44] Right, right.

[21:47] Okay.

[21:48] Mr. Roberts.

[21:52] Yeah, I don't know about the recall, actually,

[21:54] but I think there is a need for a mobility of the citizens

[21:59] to petition any particular issues to referendum,

[22:07] because we don't have that ability right now.

[22:10] And we also need to recalibrate the number of signatures you need

[22:16] on a petition in order to go to referendum on a charter change.

[22:22] Because that has been badly skewed, and right now it's almost impossible for citizens to get the required number of signatures to do that.

[22:34] Right, you need about 3000.

[22:36] So we need to recalibrate that so it matches what was originally intended, I think, by the founders of the city.

[22:44] The people who set up the charter, that it was fair and people would have a reasonable chance of being able to do that.

[22:52] That is right now it can't do.

[22:56] So I think that, to me, that's the most important thing we need to worry about when we look

[23:03] at having a charter change or something on the ballot that people are concerned about.

[23:11] Anyway, thank you.

[23:13] Okay.

[23:14] Mayor Pro Tem?

[23:15] Well, I think related to that, I believe that state law, that the state law sets the number

[23:21] of signatures required for a ballot petition.

[23:26] We can have our own voting system.

[23:28] We don't have to do that.

[23:30] Well, I think sometimes we actually do have to do

[23:32] what this takes as a long time.

[23:35] If you look in the past, before we adopted the county

[23:38] registration list, it was a fair system of citizens could.

[23:44] If the council wanted to make a charter change

[23:46] and the citizens didn't like it,

[23:48] They had a fair chance of taking that to referendum.

[23:52] And that's if you want to have citizens that are going to participate in their community,

[23:58] you have to have that.

[23:59] People have to have a realistic opportunity to participate in the community.

[24:07] And so I'm not sure we can disregard state law that easily, but my other question was actually

[24:12] related.

[24:13] I think you've got to make stuff.

[24:15] I believe I have the floor, Mr. Roberts.

[24:18] But the question I was actually raising my hand to ask,

[24:21] did the Board of Elections discuss the idea of staggered four-year terms

[24:25] at all, or including that as one of the ballot questions?

[24:28] We didn't talk about, but that is one of the things you could do, obviously,

[24:33] is stagger the terms so that you don't have everybody being elected

[24:39] for four-year terms.

[24:41] So yeah, so yeah, four year terms, but you still have elections every two years.

[24:45] So half were, or so in a seven-member council, you might have three elected one year.

[24:50] And the four elected in two years or something like that.

[24:53] But you didn't discuss that at all.

[24:55] No, it would be three and four.

[24:59] Yeah.

[24:59] Three would...

[25:00] We elected one time and four the next time and three and four. Council member Poppy. But that would really only work if we had a ward system, right? Because I don't know how else we would decide that because we're all at large. So how would we say, okay, you're the three that are up for election this time and you for, you know what I mean? I think we don't have seats. So if we didn't have wards, I just don't know how we would do that. No, you don't need to have wards.

[25:29] Awards, everybody would be elected at large.

[25:33] There would be three candidates.

[25:36] Three offices open, one election.

[25:41] And then the following election, there

[25:42] would be four offices open.

[25:44] So there would be any number of people

[25:46] running for those three offices or those four offices.

[25:49] That's how it would work.

[25:51] Right.

[25:52] And then how would we choose mayor?

[25:56] Because we choose mayor from within the council.

[25:58] So we have to choose the mayor every year, so we'll be doing that every year.

[26:02] Yeah, that would have to be part of what the council would decide.

[26:07] Okay, we don't have to figure all that out right now.

[26:09] Anyway, some of the thoughts are going to be too bright.

[26:11] Right, right.

[26:12] Thank you.

[26:12] And typically, from my knowledge of other municipalities and print shortages around the state,

[26:18] a lot of them do have staggered four-year terms, and the mayor is appointed by council still.

[26:24] but only for a two-year term.

[26:29] Let's see. Any other council members want to speak?

[26:32] I know we've got some hands up over here before we go back to Mr. Roberts.

[26:36] But Mr. Roberts is a council person, so Mr. Roberts, please.

[26:39] Thank you. Well you know,

[26:43] I think that

[26:45] you know, having

[26:48] you know, splitting, having the

[26:49] the action every two years and whatever you want to call it is just a guys for trying

[26:57] to make four-year terms look good.

[27:00] I don't think they look good at all for the public personally, I mean, I hope in a little

[27:07] past it will fail, like it failed before.

[27:10] In fact, I think because the mayor was actually a little bit off on his date, the last time

[27:17] this came up was in 1991. That was first election that I got elected. I think this issue really helped

[27:25] me get elected because I was the only one out there against that four-year term. The rest of

[27:31] the incumbents and the other person that was running against me were all in favor of that.

[27:39] And I think that different that gave me an edge because I don't think the public wants four-year

[27:45] terms. I think that's, you know, especially you have no recall, you have nothing so you

[27:51] get somebody elected and you got them for four years. That's too long for municipal.

[27:56] I don't care what the county or anybody else does. We're in a small town and people need

[28:01] to meet. If you want, it's like I said, if you want people to be active in the community,

[28:06] it has to be fair and four year terms not fair for anybody in my opinion.

[28:10] Well, thank you, Council Member McKinney.

[28:15] Well, if I heard you correctly, Mr. Roberts, it's the last time that this was came up, it was 91, that's been almost 30, 20, 30 years.

[28:26] So there may be some changes to how people may vote this time.

[28:32] Thank you.

[28:34] And then I guess what I'm wondering is, do we know the percentage of...

[28:41] Please continue to drop the floor.

[28:43] Do we know the percentage of cities or municipalities within the state of Maryland that do have four year terms, especially if they're relevant in size to ours?

[28:55] Because I would beg to say that if there are other municipalities that are in the same size, have similar issues, they are running equally as effectively.

[29:05] So I don't see how the argument of four years versus two years will not be, will be in detriment to the residents.

[29:16] Yeah, we can certainly get that information before a meeting where we might have to vote on whether or not to put this kind of question forward.

[29:24] My informal knowledge of other municipalities in Prince George's County, most of them do have four years coming.

[29:33] Same statewide. Let's take some questions from folks who are in the room or online, anybody

[29:38] online?

[29:41] I think we have a question here in the room. Ma'am, would you like to come to

[29:45] the microphone?

[29:54] Don't be nervous, go ahead and speak up.

[29:57] Jay Davis, Greenbelt East.

[30:00] I will use my teachers' voice because to be perfectly honest with you, I agree with Mr. Hartman. I'm most of you, I cannot hear. And Mr. McKinney and Mr. Roberts, the city manager, are so soft spoken. It's very nice that there's so soft spoken, but you can't be heard. So anyway, this issue has come up before, and it has been discussed. Every time we have an election council members say,

[30:30] why can't we have four-year terms. And that's because, you know, when you run an election,

[30:37] it's very hard. You really spend a lot of time. It takes a lot of energy, takes money,

[30:43] takes a campaign. But the thing is, you do go out and you talk to the people. And what will happen

[30:50] with four-year terms, you will only go out and talk with the people every four years. Now, granted,

[30:56] Most of you are very active right now in the community, but with four year terms maybe you would be less likely to be as active.

[31:06] The House of Representatives is every two years, somehow they manage to do it and they have a larger district, larger constituency and it probably has, obviously requires a lot more money.

[31:21] However, I'm not opposed to having it as a referendum question.

[31:26] And I appreciate the fact that the Board of Elections added the other question because

[31:31] the recall part of it is very, very important.

[31:35] A lot of people, as you said, might be in favor of a four year, but they want the chance

[31:41] to be able to recall somebody who is doing a bad job.

[31:45] and it shouldn't be just after two years.

[31:49] The recall process should be at any time,

[31:52] we have had that issue,

[31:55] where all we could do was censure,

[31:58] when obviously the problem was extremely,

[32:02] extremely bad, and that was several years ago.

[32:04] I am not referring to the most recent time.

[32:08] So I think putting it on the referendum is fine,

[32:12] as long as you also include the recall,

[32:14] and then we will all discuss the pros and cons

[32:18] and the people will decide.

[32:20] But I already will tell you that I am opposed to a four-year term.

[32:25] Thank you, thank you for that perspective,

[32:28] that thoughtful perspective.

[32:30] And this question about the four-year terms I agree that

[32:34] I like the questions, the two of them, the way that they're phrased

[32:38] and I think that depending on those results

[32:41] you might have deeper discussions, but I think the question sort of works in

[32:46] hand them with this idea of voting districts and kind of thinking through

[32:51] different ways of electing the mayor if that's the intention of some of this

[32:56] discussion. So I think they're all sort of interconnected. Anybody else have

[33:02] comments on this initiative?

[33:06] And is there anyone online?

[33:13] Okay, let's go ahead and move on to the next question, and that is election districts.

[33:20] Yes, and this question is a little more difficult to put to the voters because there are so many ways you can know it one.

[33:30] So many ways you can divide the city.

[33:33] you can have two districts, three districts, four districts, five districts.

[33:38] And then when you've decided that, you have to decide whether some of the district representatives

[33:50] will be voted on only by those residents in that district, or whether everybody will

[33:57] still be elected at large.

[33:58] large. The way you can do it with everybody being elected at large, some will be required

[34:05] to live in a district, but they'll all be elected by all the voters. That's one way

[34:14] of doing it. The other way of doing it would be with two, three, four districts having

[34:21] the residents only of that district vote for that representative.

[34:29] Councillor Member of Palmy.

[34:30] I just wanted to say I thank you for the way you phrased this because I do.

[34:35] I do think this is a question to go to the residents, but like you, when I think about,

[34:41] if we split into districts, I'm like, there's so many ways to do that.

[34:45] So it's like, we could put a question to the voters so you want to do it.

[34:48] But that doesn't mean that they're like, do it because there's just so much more,

[34:52] like thought and time and preparation and that has to go into it. So I think that the way you have it phrased here is really good because it's

[35:00] It's like, is this something you want? And then if it is something people want, it's like the city can invest the time and resources and figuring out, like, how do we do this? In a way that benefits the city the most, and that is, you know, the most democratic. So I just, I just wanted to, you know, say, I appreciate the way you guys voted that. I mean, I would add that I think the way I had been thinking about districts is the way I believe most other places do it where only the people in that district vote for that seat.

[35:29] But I think it's an interesting, this is an interesting variation that you still have to have people who live in that district, but you're still running at large, so that sort of, that does create a little bit more of a balance that you still try to have representation of people living in all parts of the city, but you still, you still in a sense have to run in the entire city because you have to be known if everybody's voting for you, I think that that has some of the advantages of representing a district without losing the, you still have

[35:59] have to campaign everywhere a little bit.

[36:06] So kind of complicated, as you said,

[36:10] how something like this could be implemented.

[36:14] So I have to think the underlying issue here

[36:20] perhaps is the thought that some of our neighborhoods

[36:25] are not adequately represented on council.

[36:29] And a lot of people say that.

[36:31] So, when you look at the composition of council over the last five elections, maybe six,

[36:43] this term for the passing of council member, you know, we had three representatives with

[36:53] Greenbelt West.

[36:54] And before that, we had two,

[36:59] I guess, for the two terms before that.

[37:02] And before that, we had a majority of residents on Council from Greenbelt East going back to 2009.

[37:10] So this question about, are the different neighborhoods of Greenbelt well represented?

[37:18] If you look at the actual results of the elections, I think you could make the argument that they

[37:24] We are. It's varied over time. I know historically if you go way back, we had a number of

[37:30] mayors and whatnot who came out of Sprinkle Lake. So it's kind of an open question. In my

[37:39] mind, the equity aspect, the other question is with districts, if it takes close to 1,000

[37:46] votes in one precinct, if we were to buy the city by precincts, right?

[37:51] close to a thousand in two precincts but it only takes two hundred and another

[37:57] precinct. Is that really equitable? So the real questions about equity, how

[38:06] that plays out in the city, how it's played out historically. Mr. Roberts?

[38:19] I've got to admit I never thought of the districts being described the way you

[38:25] thought about it but still I don't see really the benefit in having a

[38:29] district where you know one person is going to be elected by a small number of

[38:34] people. That's what I see and you look in other communities college park and

[38:39] some of the other nearby communities people are getting elected by you know

[38:44] 50 votes or something and I don't think that's really giving the people more

[38:49] representation you know and I think that if someone does get elected with 50 votes

[38:54] or two hundred votes. It doesn't give them a lot of sway on the council to get

[39:00] anything done in their neighborhood. So I think it's best the way it is

[39:06] personally because everybody has to get out there and work at it. You know

[39:12] that's what life is about. It's about work and you get you get returned from work

[39:17] and but at the same time you have to make it fair so that everyone does have a

[39:22] chance to be able to work at. To me, that's the secret. You know, it shouldn't be like

[39:30] you have to have, you know, $50,000 to run for safe counsel. You should be able to run

[39:36] a good campaign on a few thousand dollars and get elected. You know, that way, that way

[39:44] you have a fair system. You know, we talk a lot about, you know, the number of people

[39:49] that vote and all that stuff, but I was looking at an old news of you and from the 1989 election,

[39:58] which is the first one I've read.

[40:00] And I think there were four or five challengers running in that election. We had a 65 percent voter turnout, 65 percent. And I think lately we're down, we're having like 20-some percent. But that good, what that really goes to is the fact that that's, that election was before we took on the county system. So we have so many people in the county

[40:30] voting roles that are not even there anymore because anybody that has

[40:36] run out of campaign has gone out and knocked on doors and you have your voter

[40:41] list and you see there's like four or five names registered at this one

[40:48] address you knock on the door and none of them live there anymore so I think the

[40:54] the county roll is so bloated with people who have moved or whatever, that it just messes

[41:02] up the whole system. So it makes it look like we have a very low turnout when we actually

[41:08] don't, we actually have, probably have a very good turnout, but because there's so many

[41:13] people on the rolls that are not there anymore, and it's never purged, then it looks bad.

[41:21] But anyway, I think that the system we have now is a good one, personally.

[41:32] Yeah, I'm actually curious, Mr. Roberts, does the idea of having people, having districts

[41:38] where certain you have people who are elected, who live in a district, but the voting is still

[41:45] at large.

[41:45] Does that change your opinion of that also?

[41:47] So everybody is still voting for everybody.

[41:52] You just have-

[41:53] I don't know.

[41:54] I really have to think that thing over at least.

[41:59] I think it's more complicated than we think.

[42:10] I forgot the truth.

[42:12] Please, if you could go to the podium,

[42:15] welcome.

[42:16] Good to see you.

[42:17] Thank you.

[42:18] John Estensen, I live in Old Green Belt.

[42:21] I have one comment related to where

[42:24] I previously lived, which is Minneapolis, Minnesota.

[42:27] and one comment related to moving here.

[42:32] The second one, when I moved here,

[42:35] I was used to having wards and precincts.

[42:37] And I knew who to go to to talk to about city issues.

[42:41] And when I came here and found everybody was at large,

[42:44] I was confused, you know, who do I talk to?

[42:46] And I didn't know any of you at the time.

[42:49] And it was, I had been here for quite a while

[42:52] before I discovered that there are council liaisons

[42:55] to various organizations, which gave me a clue who might be interested in which issue.

[43:01] So that was helpful.

[43:03] But I think that if you're going to consider at large you need to be better at informing

[43:09] people who's interested in what.

[43:12] And that isn't to say that you can only talk to those people, but they're perhaps the better

[43:17] people to talk to first.

[43:18] First, related to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I lived, they talked at one time about

[43:25] having awards and awards.

[43:28] The council people would represent awards as they do, and having at large positions,

[43:35] and they felt that it was not helpful because the people who were politically involved in

[43:42] client to vote were already well represented and having at large elections as well would

[43:50] allow the politically active to be over represented and it wouldn't help the people who live

[43:56] in the boards that don't vote necessarily and don't get involved.

[44:01] So I'm a little confused about the idea of having both boards or whatever you want to call

[44:06] them and at large. I think that's confusing. You need to either go one way or the other.

[44:13] Thank you. Thank you. A couple of reactions. You know, many apples is quite a bit larger than

[44:21] the green belt. Like it's Baltimore, other Frederick and many other counts. So my personal feeling,

[44:28] this is my personal feeling, is that in the city, the size of green belt, it's important for anyone

[44:36] sitting on council to be aware of the issues in all parts of the city and also to be responsive.

[44:44] In our form of government council manager the city manager actually runs the day-to-day affairs

[44:49] of the city so if there's an issue with the streets or the sidewalk with the recreation department

[44:56] But really, you come to any council member.

[45:00] We would end up preferring it over to the city manager to deal with the problem. So those are just a couple of thoughts we do have as former government, which is a little different. In Minneapolis and in Baltimore, strong mirrors. I'm just not as strong. I got to work out a little bit more. Yes, Ms. Davis.

[45:35] Jay Davis, Greenbelt East.

[45:39] Again, this topic.

[45:41] has come up so many times and it's part of the discussion. And it usually happens when

[45:48] one part of the city feels that the other part of the city is getting the most goodies,

[45:55] whether it's during the budget or what have you. And it always kind of amuses me is that when

[46:03] you talk to one part of the city, the people there, they feel that they've been neglected and

[46:09] you go to another part of the city and they feel they've been neglected because the other

[46:13] part who feels neglected is getting everything and it's all perception and you know some

[46:20] years some things go to more you know some parts of the city and sometimes they don't.

[46:26] So that's when people think that there's a favorite part of the city and it used to be the

[46:31] center city and now I hear from Greenbell Dees that they think the Greenbell West is getting

[46:37] everything. And then in Greenbow West, oh no, it's Greenbelt. East is getting

[46:42] everything. And then the center city feels, now we've been neglected. Everybody else is

[46:47] getting something in the center city. So having districts sounds like what a

[46:53] wonderful idea. Except when you have districts, you get very parochial. You get

[46:59] very territorial. And it gets more difficult to have a consensus on how to move

[47:06] resources around because you want your little piece of the property to have

[47:13] everything and you don't care maybe what other people have. Now the members

[47:18] at large care about everybody but I find them even with the county members at

[47:23] large totally useless in most cases because they well you know they represent

[47:29] everybody but they don't help very much when you try to talk to them. So and

[47:34] cottage city for instance, which I don't even know how small they are, they have

[47:40] wards. So when they have elections, like Mr. Roberts says, 15 people will

[47:47] choose their representative.

[47:52] Another ward might have seven people choosing their

[47:54] representative. I get they also have a hard time finding people even to run. In our

[48:00] In our case, we're kind of bound in a certain, I mean our population may grow, it may not

[48:07] who knows, it hasn't changed much in many years.

[48:11] If we were New York City or Minneapolis, I could see because it's so immense, you kind

[48:16] of want to have an idea of who you want to talk to and who's going to stand up for you.

[48:21] But in our case, when I was in council, there was never a problem as to somebody coming

[48:29] up and talking to me, whether you were from Greenbelt East or Greenbelt West or Sennie City,

[48:33] I listened to you. What will happen if you are just Greenbelt West? Maybe someone comes up and

[48:41] you say, well, it's in one ear and out the other because you really don't care. So I don't, again,

[48:48] certainly you can put this question on as a referendum, but there'll be a lot of people and a lot of

[48:53] discussion, and I think it could be detrimental to the unity of Greenbelt as a whole.

[49:00] Thank you.

[49:01] Thank you.

[49:01] That's awful comments.

[49:03] Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[49:03] Before Jay Lees, the podium, I have a question.

[49:08] Please, ma'am, put it down.

[49:09] So we know that the four-year terms came up in 1991.

[49:12] Do you recall, has there ever been, I think it's been on the survey, but do you recall,

[49:16] has there ever been a ballot referendum about districts?

[49:19] About districts now?

[49:21] No.

[49:21] So it's gone, come up on the survey, but not on the comments about it.

[49:24] I mean, people have talked about it, mentioned it usually when they think that they're not getting a good deal.

[49:29] Okay, just curious.

[49:31] Jay Davis, I just wanted to, that isn't a tract of polo shirt you've got on.

[49:35] What is that?

[49:36] Yeah, but since I was a former member of the Women's Commission, but I still wear the polo shirt.

[49:45] But it's nice looking shirt.

[49:48] Yeah, and those are thoughtful comments.

[49:51] I wonder, it's not a small city, but I think it's just

[49:56] important for us all on council to do.

[50:00] To be accountable to the entire city and to be knowledgeable, do the best we can, even though it's the city manager that really ends up dealing with a lot of the situations. Come up. So we would be, I guess we would be voting on these questions in an actual meeting. Mr. Roberts.

[50:23] I think my real problem with this going on the ballot is it's not even coming from the people. This is coming from the city.

[50:31] city council and you know why why is that you know if we had a groundswell of

[50:39] people if we had some kind of referendum mechanism and the people out there

[50:44] said hey we want this you know here's our petitions okay but just coming from

[50:50] the city council now I it's horrible I don't know it's horrible you know I was

[51:00] I was going to say I actually have heard from some residents who are interested in

[51:03] this, so it may not be a groundswell, but it is something that I've certainly heard

[51:08] people discuss, so I think it's not just coming from Council, I think there are

[51:12] residents who are interested in this idea. Maybe not, maybe not enough, we'd have to

[51:16] see if it passed, but I think there are some who have definitely expressed interest

[51:20] in going to a district or ward system. Again, I don't know if it's a majority,

[51:24] but I have heard from residents who are interested in holding.

[51:30] So I worry that in a funny kind of a way, not explicitly, but it's sort of a leading

[51:37] question, if you ask someone, would you like to have a local representative for your

[51:41] neighborhood?

[51:42] 99% of the people in the water just going to say, well, yeah, let me have somebody who lives

[51:46] across the street on council.

[51:48] So, and I worry some of the, it's not a groundswell, but I'm just concerned that the reaction

[51:59] from a lot of people was just to say, yeah, it's not districts without really thinking

[52:03] about some of the broader implications of accountability for all council members to all parts of the

[52:09] city.

[52:10] It's just my personal opinion.

[52:11] Mr. Hart.

[52:24] I would like to just a general comment as a frequent visitor to the election board meetings

[52:34] and they are open to everybody.

[52:37] And Mr. Gilbert is very generous with his, with allowing non-board members to speak.

[52:44] Their mind, in fact, visitors can do anything except vote.

[52:49] So I appreciate that very much, but I also know about other time and effort and energy that went into these proposals and I appreciate the Council's taking them seriously and discussing them.

[53:03] And so I hope that this kind of focus on the elections will continue.

[53:14] You know, to that end, as the Board of Elections did recommend in their cover letter, I hope

[53:21] that the board and that the council will consider the question of rank choice voting, not

[53:26] tonight perhaps, but take it seriously and have work sessions on it.

[53:32] And so I don't know if you were going to address it or not, but I think I have to take a chance

[53:36] right now and let you know, but the Board of Elections is a very, very hard on these.

[53:42] and lots of questions, lots of answers, and I one thing that didn't come up, and I thought

[53:50] about it later, was I'm wondering if anyone thought about the, in order to increase voter

[53:56] turnout.

[53:57] I know the question has come up before about holding the city elections on even years

[54:02] and side by years, and I know that a lot of the arguments were that you guys would get lost

[54:07] in the shuffle of a presidential or a midterm election,

[54:12] but that might be something else to think about

[54:15] as far as turning a boost response.

[54:18] Because I know it's a disappointment

[54:20] that not that many people actually come out to vote

[54:24] and they don't, maybe because they don't realize

[54:28] how important the council is in their lives

[54:32] and all the decisions you make

[54:34] affects the residents and the businesses in the city and but still for some reason we don't get

[54:41] really good turnout and so those are just the general thoughts that I have. Thank you.

[54:48] Thank you very much. The question about changing the elections over to the presidential

[54:56] a little gubernatorial cycle is something that comes out of it.

[55:00] The provisions of frequently, the pro would be many more people, many more people do vote in the presidential elections. And in Prince George's county with the gubernatorial elections, funny thing happens in county elections, people tend to feel that the primaries are actually more important than general election. So some of the issues that are associated with presidential or gubernatorial county elections is, there's

[55:29] I suppose there's a risk that the elections could become much more partisan and candidates

[55:37] for city council might want to affiliate themselves on a ticket, particularly with the county

[55:42] folks, which many people think they would rather see, well, we are a nonpartisan city council

[55:52] and I'm adamant about that, we're nonpartisan and I want to keep it that way.

[55:58] No joke, Mr. Roberts.

[56:01] So and the other thing is with the cost of running, if we were running on the same cycle,

[56:08] the council candidates might have to spend more on printed materials to try and stand

[56:13] out from the other, unless they got on a ticket with county people, other folks, so there's

[56:20] some issues there.

[56:22] But the other point you brought up, just because you brought it up, let's talk about ranked

[56:26] choice voting. It's actually your wish is being granted so if we're ready to move on to

[56:36] rank choice voting. I think so are there any other comments? Yeah council member please.

[56:42] Okay, going back to the question that you had recommended putting as a referendum have you determined

[56:53] And that some members would be at large and some would represent a district.

[56:58] No, that's a policy choice that the legislative body would have to decide.

[57:06] Okay, just because I, just from a clarity perspective, I would rather it be the question and then yes or no.

[57:14] And then like maybe an italicized statement, if we do decide to go that way, but having the statement after the question on the referendum.

[57:22] just seems a little confusing for our voters, so that would be my feedback.

[57:29] Thank you, thank you.

[57:31] So let's move on to the right choice voting.

[57:36] Okay, so I thought it would be appropriate to do a really brief presentation about

[57:41] right choice voting because I know people who are on council might like a little

[57:46] bit of a review. This topic has come up in the past before I'm sure.

[57:52] And for anyone who's listening online or in the room to get you caught up to speed on what

[57:59] is being asked when it comes to rank-choice bidding.

[58:02] So next slide.

[58:04] So I'll be going over the question of what is rank-first meeting or RCP, a little comparison

[58:12] of the way we currently vote versus what RCP might entail.

[58:16] some real-world examples of places that use RCV, particularly in city council elections.

[58:25] And I've also done some pros and cons for us to consider maybe as discussion topics

[58:30] for things to kind of get ideas to get used and think about like what are their perspectives

[58:38] here.

[58:39] That's very helpful.

[58:40] I thought RCV, I thought you were supposed to get a vaccination.

[58:45] Right, yeah, so R-C-V, again, Rank Choice Voting, and then finally, I did.

[58:51] We didn't, as a board, decide what question to necessarily propose like the final language,

[58:58] but I have a draft advisory question for you to kind of think about how it might appear

[59:03] on a ballot.

[59:05] Thank you.

[59:06] Next slide.

[59:07] Okay, so what is Rank Choice Voting or R-C-V?

[59:10] and simply put, it's a method in which it allows voters to select candidates by order of preference.

[59:18] So here I've kind of shown an image of what that might look like if you're looking at a ballot

[59:25] and participating in a ranked choice voting situation.

[59:29] So you can see we have the different candidates on the left and then each of the column

[59:34] across the top indicates your first choice, second choice, and so on.

[59:39] You'll notice here that there's also a write-in option, so that's still allowed in Rachel's

[59:44] room.

[59:47] And I believe there should be a link in this slide, but we don't have to look at it.

[59:52] There's an additional video that, if you want to learn more about the process of

[59:57] right choice voting you can certainly go ahead and

[1:00:00] And look at the video to understand it better. Mr. Roberts, do you want to wait till she finishes?

[1:00:09] Here. What a person have to vote for each one. Or could they just mean right now we kind of have a right choice system. Because most people don't vote for seven. No vote for a couple. So on a ballot like this, would you actually have to vote for each candidate?

[1:00:30] Did it in the line or in just the ones you wanted to?

[1:00:35] Exactly.

[1:00:36] You don't have to vote up to the number of seats.

[1:00:39] You can still choose to vote less, but it would only make sense to vote, you know, the

[1:00:45] lowest number or sorry, the your top choices in that case and raise them accordingly.

[1:00:53] I need a lot of education on this because I've heard it.

[1:00:57] I've heard it described different ways.

[1:00:59] And there are different ways.

[1:01:01] So it's confusing to take it true.

[1:01:03] Right.

[1:01:05] Hopefully, it's just cut off because I put a link

[1:01:07] at the bottom of that slide.

[1:01:10] But that would be kind of a more dynamic way

[1:01:13] for you to get some more information about

[1:01:15] and translating it in a video.

[1:01:18] Well, thank you so much.

[1:01:20] Member Tim, how's she doing?

[1:01:21] Yeah, well, I think just on this diagram,

[1:01:23] this example shows five candidates and five places.

[1:01:27] But you might have, if you're five seats, you might have ten candidates and you rank one through five.

[1:01:34] So I think that's where that's maybe a little bit different.

[1:01:36] This example could also be, yeah, candidates one through ten and you rank one through five if there are five seats.

[1:01:43] So in our case, you could have ten candidates or fifteen candidates and you would rank one through seven with a seven member council.

[1:01:50] Correct.

[1:01:52] Okay, so next slide.

[1:01:54] Okay, so our current voting system, another term for that is called plurality voting.

[1:02:00] And the framework that plurality voting seeks to kind of ask is, who can win the most

[1:02:07] votes?

[1:02:08] So that's what plurality voting seeks to answer.

[1:02:12] In the proposed voting method that we're discussing, proportional range choice, the framework

[1:02:19] of that kind of shifts.

[1:02:20] So instead of who can win the most votes, the question that we're kind of centering around is who can win enough votes to get a seat at the table.

[1:02:34] Next click.

[1:02:36] So the two things that go along with the proportional range choice voting that's different than plurality voting is that the threshold that a candidate has to reach is based off the number of available seats.

[1:02:51] So it changes depending on what kind of contest we're running.

[1:02:59] And the other point to make about rank choice voting is that there's a redistribution process

[1:03:06] of votes proportionally from candidates at the top and or at the bottom of those ranks.

[1:03:17] So at this point, it'd be really helpful to look at some real-life examples of rank choice

[1:03:21] voting. There are two different cities that used this, so the first example was kind of

[1:03:28] a simplified, in Albany, California, City Council in 2022 had an election where there

[1:03:35] were two seats, and they had five candidates. And the process of looking at rain choice

[1:03:41] voting requires that there to be rounds. So in this example, we can see the person who

[1:03:52] So this round one looks at who's getting the breakdown based off of your top choice.

[1:04:05] And at this point, that dotted line is the threshold that someone has to meet to win

[1:04:09] a seat.

[1:04:10] And in this case, nobody has met that threshold.

[1:04:13] So what happens in the next round is that the lowest earner will have all the voters for

[1:04:21] that instead they recognize that okay you're not going to get that person elected.

[1:04:26] So who's the next best person that you'd like to not kind of select?

[1:04:31] And so those votes are proportionally distributed to their next choice.

[1:04:35] And this keeps happening in the next round until someone goes over the threshold and that's

[1:04:45] how they can get elected.

[1:04:48] And there's one final round to pick the second seat, so we see that those votes are redistributed

[1:04:53] once again and a second person has met the threshold.

[1:04:57] So, it's almost in this example

[1:05:00] They're almost using it as a run-off because no one has reached the threshold. Correct. It's a way to have an instant run-off without going to the effort of posting an action. Yeah, important. Well, I was going to add, because this is Albany, California, I actually spoke to one of the council members from this, this city council, not one of the ones elected in this year, but this is an example of a five-member at-large council, but they have staggered four-year terms.

[1:05:28] So this particular election, where they were electing two, but then there would have

[1:05:32] been another election, they would have been electing three, but they are five at-large

[1:05:35] seats and they rotate mayor.

[1:05:37] They have sort of a queue for who gets mayor, and so it's based on the number of votes

[1:05:44] you got, and I'm not sure all the details, but so this is an example of what you were

[1:05:48] asking about, Jenny, of sort of the at-large, but still staggered for your terms.

[1:05:52] Just adding that.

[1:05:58] I'm sorry. I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. Yeah. Slide that you talked about. The differences between the plurality and the redistribution can you just explain to me what you meant by

[1:06:12] redistribution of votes and how that actually works. Okay. Does it? I'm sorry. Kind of break it down. Is it an automatic thing? You said it just keeps happening.

[1:06:22] It does, because when the voters indicate who they're first and that's their second and third choice that's their next choice down on the list is how this calculation is being done by software so nobody's having to try to figure out.

[1:06:39] So it happens very seamlessly in terms of the tabulation.

[1:06:44] but the way that the votes would get moved around are based off of people's next choice

[1:06:50] from either the candidate that's eliminated or the candidate that has excess votes

[1:06:57] and kind of trickles down in a sense to other candidates.

[1:07:03] So to kind of clarify that point, let's actually look at the second link.

[1:07:07] So this is a bigger election case and go back to round one.

[1:07:11] We'll look at just like very beginning because I think there's going to be an example.

[1:07:18] So in this, the first round, we see that there is one candidate who's already crossed

[1:07:23] the threshold.

[1:07:24] So they're elected, and what happens to those excess votes if we go in round two?

[1:07:33] Those excess votes, so what we're looking at is everyone who voted for that candidate

[1:07:39] that did get elected.

[1:07:40] We look at all of the voter's second choice, and then we assign proportionally how much

[1:07:47] of the excess votes to move to other candidates.

[1:07:51] So if 30% of the people, for example, voted for candidate B as their second choice, and

[1:08:04] We know that they have, for example, 100 access votes,

[1:08:10] then 30 of those votes would go to Kennedy.

[1:08:16] And so again, the framework of rank choice voting

[1:08:19] is who can win enough votes to win a seat at the table.

[1:08:23] So we're going to remove access votes

[1:08:26] and spread them out to other candidates.

[1:08:28] And we're also going to eliminate from the bottom

[1:08:31] and redistribute up.

[1:08:33] So that makes a whole lot of sense in a situation

[1:08:36] We have a whole lot of candidates on with so many seats or the threshold is very high.

[1:08:42] Yes, well, the threshold is based off of the number of available seats.

[1:08:46] So you can imagine in for a very simple example in a one-seat election,

[1:08:52] you have to basically have majority more than 50%.

[1:08:57] For a race that has many seats, like a seven-seat city council,

[1:09:02] the threshold is going to be much lower than 50%.

[1:09:05] So if there were four candidates, it would be 25%.

[1:09:08] It's actually going to look...

[1:09:13] 12%.

[1:09:13] Well, so for example, for a seven-seat council, let's just use like our elections,

[1:09:19] the threshold is actually 12.5%.

[1:09:24] And of course, Steve has that number.

[1:09:28] You just know off the top of your head with that number, 12.5%.

[1:09:33] Yeah, it's one-eighth.

[1:09:36] Very good, very good.

[1:09:40] Okay, so we can go back to the present.

[1:09:43] Unless there's any words.

[1:09:44] It might be worthwhile stepping through the rest of that.

[1:09:46] Oh, sure.

[1:09:47] Okay, so let's just continue to step through the different rounds.

[1:09:50] So we've have one seed elected,

[1:09:53] but nobody else has reached the threshold,

[1:09:54] so we're going to eliminate from the bottom

[1:09:57] and redistribute those votes.

[1:09:58] who's

[1:10:00] Who are people's next choice? Is it clear? Can we keep going?

[1:10:07] So we can see that the bottom

[1:10:08] of that list of the people who didn't get enough votes are now being redistributed

[1:10:14] up based off of those voters' next choice.

[1:10:29] And I do want to reiterate that it's pretty

[1:10:32] standard for the reporting to be round by round so that voters can kind of trace how these

[1:10:40] These calculations are being made, and it's not just a black box.

[1:10:44] So transparency is really important with RCD.

[1:10:47] While the software can just tell you who wins those seats, people still like to know how

[1:10:53] that process happened, and so the reporting is a really key part in the communication to

[1:10:58] the voter with the results.

[1:11:00] Well, Ed, and it's interesting that this only has eight because the Cambridge Massachusett

[1:11:04] City Council is a nine-member council, so I'm not quite sure why this ends with only eight

[1:11:09] to be honest, this example. But they, because this is one of the other ones that I looked

[1:11:16] at and reached out, but didn't hear back from the council member that I reached out to on this

[1:11:20] council, they, they, they, they elect their mayor from the nine seats. So similar to, to,

[1:11:27] we do, the way we do, that the mayor is elected from among the, they don't have a separate

[1:11:32] mayoral election. So this, this is probably the most similar that I've seen to, the way we

[1:11:36] do our elections in terms of all that large seats and then electing mayor from among those

[1:11:41] at-lar seats.

[1:11:42] And every two years.

[1:11:43] And I do think there is a provision that the last person who's still standing, who hasn't

[1:11:50] been eliminated, if they haven't technically reached that threshold because of maybe

[1:11:55] writings or something else, or people didn't want to fill out the entire choice selection.

[1:12:03] Because they're the last one standing, they do get the seat.

[1:12:08] So I have just a couple of questions.

[1:12:10] Do you have several more slides?

[1:12:12] We're just going to talk pros and cons and the proposal for advisory questions.

[1:12:18] Okay.

[1:12:19] Why don't you go ahead?

[1:12:20] Because I was going to ask with this example from number 13, iteration number 13, to the

[1:12:26] first slide, the first iteration.

[1:12:29] the order has actually changed over candidates?

[1:12:33] Yeah, so based off of the redistributes of votes you might see some candidates get a

[1:12:40] big jump so they might actually rise up in the by-round-by-round total yeah so it is

[1:12:49] possible that people change.

[1:12:51] So the person who got the second highest number of votes and the third highest number of votes

[1:12:57] in the beginning. How did they come out in the final round?

[1:13:06] Let's see. So at the first, in the first round, it looks like

[1:13:12] Simmons, then Nolan, and then at the last round. If you just click on that drop down.

[1:13:18] I think that they have these in the order that they ended up.

[1:13:22] Oh, okay. So you can actually see that it looks like,

[1:13:25] after the first round, Nolan was actually second.

[1:13:28] Yes, and then I can't tell if it looks like Simmons was third

[1:13:34] toner was

[1:13:37] fourth, so if you just look by the length of the bar

[1:13:39] So I think they they they already have them ordered by the winning by the winning order. Yes

[1:13:44] I think for the purposes of this animation. If if we go back to round one you can see that

[1:13:49] It isn't actually ordered based off who who's getting the most votes

[1:13:55] You can see that third line in the first round that person has more votes than the second line.

[1:14:01] So she got more first choice votes. Patricia Nolan got more first choice.

[1:14:06] Got the second most first choice votes.

[1:14:09] Yes.

[1:14:12] And actually you can see that someone who got a lot of...

[1:14:18] Yes, exactly. Got a lot of first choice votes.

[1:14:21] ended up being kind of towards the bottom, actually.

[1:14:29] I think he may have been number nine.

[1:14:31] So with his supporters, it was like all of nothing.

[1:14:35] And it looks like he is on there's the key council.

[1:14:37] I just checked the Cambridge Massachusetts website.

[1:14:39] So I think he did get elected even though it's not noted on the end of this.

[1:14:42] Right, exactly.

[1:14:43] I think this visualization of the round-by-round

[1:14:47] is also accompanied by some explanatory texts.

[1:14:51] So if you want to take a look and get some analysis

[1:14:54] about what's going on in each round,

[1:14:56] you can feel free to read that as well.

[1:14:58] Thank you, Mr. Harmon.

[1:15:00] Do you need to ask a question now?

[1:15:10] Something Michael Hartman, two-cook hardware. One thing that I don't remember being discussed at the Board of Election meetings is that in the last round, if there's nine seats, if the ninth and tenth candidates have exactly the same number of votes, then you are in a situation where you have, for the last remaining seat, you have actually two people

[1:15:37] people who have the same number of votes and then what happens then.

[1:15:43] And I'm really in favor of a drink choice voting, but I just realize that there could

[1:15:47] be that situation coming up in that.

[1:15:52] So I don't know the answer to that, you know?

[1:15:55] Yeah.

[1:15:57] So let's hold that thought.

[1:15:58] Why don't we go ahead and present your pros and cons?

[1:16:02] Okay.

[1:16:02] I have a couple of questions.

[1:16:04] Sure.

[1:16:04] Yeah so we can come back and I don't actually have that answer for you tonight

[1:16:09] but I can certainly look at that and see what is typically recommended as a

[1:16:15] practice. Okay so Rank Choice Voting thinking about some of the pros and cons

[1:16:20] and who in my benefit will start with the pros so for the voters this does allow

[1:16:27] the voters to express more give more information about how their thinking is

[1:16:34] with the candidates, who their top choices is, who's kind of middle of the pack and who's

[1:16:38] someone that they accept, but maybe not their top choice.

[1:16:43] So it gives the voters some greater flexibility and more nuance in their selection.

[1:16:49] And it also reduces the risk of choosing a candidate who might seemingly be less popular.

[1:16:57] If you're feeling really enthusiastic about a candidate, but you think they don't have

[1:17:03] enough support broadly speaking, you might be disinclined to vote for them because your

[1:17:09] roads are just going to get tossed out if they don't get selected.

[1:17:13] But with ranked choice voting, when someone is eliminated, you get to answer the question

[1:17:18] of who you want instead.

[1:17:23] The pros when it comes to the City Council is that from what we've heard for people who

[1:17:29] to advocate for this issue is that it does actually result in encourage more diverse

[1:17:35] selection of city council or selection of candidates.

[1:17:39] And in thinking about what this process does, it's removing a systemic barrier by lowering

[1:17:47] the threshold potentially and allowing representation from a smaller, less broad group of people,

[1:17:56] but someone who has enough support to win a seat at the table, so to speak.

[1:18:04] From the city perspective, this would save significant money and time by eliminating

[1:18:10] the need to do a roundoff election if that were to be the case.

[1:18:14] I know that potentially it is the case that currently we are asking people to meet a 40% threshold.

[1:18:21] If not enough candidates do so, then we have to put time and money into hosting a runoff

[1:18:29] election for those remaining seats.

[1:18:34] In thinking about the cons, obviously a new process of choosing your candidates on a

[1:18:41] ballot, you know, it's going to require learning a new process for the voters and I would anticipate

[1:18:48] pay potentially that there is an initial higher number of spoil ballots or ballots that need

[1:18:54] correction because of a new process. And so voter education and outreach is likely

[1:19:01] going to need to happen for people to really feel comfortable and understand what they're

[1:19:08] doing. From the city's perspective, obviously they need to communicate this new process or

[1:19:16] the voting method and it would increase the base cost per election by about 1.5,000 because

[1:19:25] you're adding on this tabulation software for rank choice voting.

[1:19:29] Now I still think overall, like if you look at what it costs to just run an election in

[1:19:37] the city, like if we had to do a runoff versus just every time, you know, we use a method

[1:19:44] that doesn't, that eliminates potentially that risk, then you know, you come out on

[1:19:51] top in terms of the money most likely.

[1:19:56] Okay, next slide.

[1:20:00] So, this is a draft rank choice voting advisory question that I've put together, but it's not

[1:20:07] been voted on by the board members. This is just an example when city council for something

[1:20:14] for listeners to think about, like, how this might appear and how this might be explained.

[1:20:20] The question stated such. Do you approve of the city of being vote using rank choice voting

[1:20:28] for all city council member elections and amending the city charter's 40% threshold criteria

[1:20:33] in section 31. The city of Greenbelt currently uses plurality voting for multi-winner races

[1:20:41] where voters can select candidates up to the number of available seats with equal preference.

[1:20:47] The candidates must meet a 40% threshold of all votes cast and those which qualify with the most

[1:20:54] votes win, when the threshold is not met and seats may unfilled a runoff elections held.

[1:21:01] Ranked choice voting is a voting system where voters rank candidates in order of preference.

[1:21:07] Vodes are initially counted for each voter's top choice, if the candidate gets more than

[1:21:12] a necessary threshold of first choice votes, they are elected.

[1:21:16] Access votes over the threshold transfer proportionally to the remaining candidates based

[1:21:20] on each voter's rankings.

[1:21:22] If there are more candidates than seats to be filled, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated.

[1:21:29] There are votes transferred to remaining candidates based on each voter's rankings.

[1:21:34] This process is repeated until no unfilled positions remain.

[1:21:38] Okay, Mr. Roberts?

[1:21:42] I was wondering, has there ever been a runoff election in Greenville?

[1:21:46] I can't remember what.

[1:21:48] I can answer that, and the answer is yes.

[1:21:49] Yes, but not since the threshold was changed to 40%, no, actually there were so much later

[1:21:55] than that.

[1:21:56] I could tell you because I did a lot of that research when we were looking at filling

[1:22:02] Councilmember Gordon's seat.

[1:22:04] But yes, there have been.

[1:22:05] They were actually reasonably frequent when the threshold was 50%.

[1:22:09] I don't think there have been any since it was changed to 40%.

[1:22:13] But there used to be pretty regularly if you look in the news review archives.

[1:22:18] Thank

[1:22:22] you. Thank you. I have a few questions.

[1:22:28] So first, and thank you for pulling this together.

[1:22:32] I know this has been one of your passions to kind of look at this rent choice building.

[1:22:38] I appreciate it.

[1:22:41] First, with the tabulation software, is that proprietary or can anybody,

[1:22:46] There are a number of different places where you go.

[1:22:51] There are certainly different vendors who offer their own software.

[1:22:57] In that sense, do you need to get the license for it?

[1:23:02] Yes, you have to go to the official range, which is voting vendor, but apparently there's

[1:23:07] a number of resources, so it's not a single proprietary system.

[1:23:11] No, it's not just one vendor who offers it.

[1:23:14] Okay. So, here are the other questions. I was just wondering about the spoiled ballots.

[1:23:24] I was picturing a scenario where a voter comes to the polls and there are seven seats.

[1:23:30] Let's say it's queen belt and the voter knows three of the candidates.

[1:23:35] It doesn't really have a strong feeling about any of the three.

[1:23:38] he or she likes them all so the inclination might be to check one on all three or it would

[1:23:48] be maybe it's a little hard sometimes to make that choice between individuals that you know of

[1:23:55] and respect on the flip side of that is if you don't know anybody you know how would you or if you

[1:24:01] only know one candidate how would you go about selecting the other choices I guess you would just pick

[1:24:06] the one that you know, and that's what a lot of people do. They vote for the ones that they are

[1:24:13] familiar with and leave the other ones blank. And I know people do that to, so that question of

[1:24:24] spoiled ballots, you know, in some of the other cities where this has been in place for a while,

[1:24:29] do you have any kind of a sense on how what the percentage of spoiled ballots might be

[1:24:35] from people just not putting in the bottom of the right place.

[1:24:40] No, but I will say usually in the process, especially if you're voting in person, although

[1:24:48] I know for early voting you don't actually scan the ballots just yet.

[1:24:52] but you have typically an opportunity once the ballot is scanned to get feedback from

[1:25:00] Back, did, did, was it able to count what you did correctly? And usually there's an opportunity for voters to make a correction, if they, if they, so choose to correct. Once, once the scanner has told them that there's an issue. That's helpful. That makes sense. You, you do have that opportunity. And if you leave with most voting machines, if you leave something blank, there's, you know, you'll ask you before it casts the vote that you mean to do this.

[1:25:29] But those circumstances where you're in the voting booth, and you know that you support

[1:25:35] two or three people, just making that choice between number one, number two, and number

[1:25:40] three might be kind of hard on the fly and it might become sort of an arbitrary thing.

[1:25:49] That's one concern.

[1:25:50] The other concern just has to do with the practice, the way things typically go in Greenbelt

[1:25:57] And it is sort of like that, as Mr. Roberts was saying, most voters will either vote very

[1:26:04] strategically, or they'll only vote for candidates that they're familiar with, or the other.

[1:26:11] So with rank choice, it seems like it would put even more emphasis on that kind of a strategic

[1:26:18] vote than we presently have.

[1:26:20] Do you know what I mean?

[1:26:24] If the strategies in rank choice voting are different than they are in morality voting, I would

[1:26:29] say but you know I think let's let's look at it let's look at an analogy to

[1:26:39] this you're trying to figure out with a big group of people what you're trying

[1:26:48] to order a pizza and you want to know what toppings you want to get I think you

[1:26:54] I want three.

[1:26:56] You want three.

[1:27:00] I think it's pretty, it's not uncommon for people

[1:27:04] to have preferences about, OK, I really like this topping,

[1:27:07] or like this, these topping.

[1:27:10] And who want to express, which if they're

[1:27:13] going to choose up to seven, which ones

[1:27:15] they like more than others.

[1:27:18] And some people may not have preference,

[1:27:20] in which case still voting, you know, that voting for those that they do like is still

[1:27:29] making a difference in the tabulation. And if there's enough votes for that person

[1:27:34] then they'll still be elected. So it's, there's still some benefits to, you know,

[1:27:42] putting down those names. Whether or not there's an order for you personally as a voter

[1:27:47] is you know kind of like pepperoni onions and black olives right so you've got to have the

[1:27:56] pepperoni but you know between the onions and the black olives it's sort of a toss up I wouldn't

[1:28:02] want to have one without the others I have a really hard time you can't forget the people who are

[1:28:06] I'm really passionate about pineapple.

[1:28:08] Pineapple.

[1:28:08] Yeah.

[1:28:10] Half an hour.

[1:28:14] Okay.

[1:28:15] Let's have one quick question.

[1:28:19] How would it be effective?

[1:28:23] If you don't have a lot of candidates,

[1:28:25] if you only have one extra candidate,

[1:28:28] you've got seven spaces.

[1:28:29] You've got eight people running.

[1:28:31] I mean, yeah.

[1:28:33] I mean, I think in a close race, the impact is probably going to be the greatest in who's

[1:28:41] going to fill that last seat because you have, as a voter, more control in saying, I'm

[1:28:48] going to go out on a limb for someone because I know that no matter what my vote, if that

[1:28:53] person doesn't make it, my second choice can be picked.

[1:28:58] So, I think, you know, one of the problems that you hear with plurality voting or the current

[1:29:05] method is that you might split someone's vote, but those candidates might have very

[1:29:11] similar values and very similar stances on things, just people have a preference of one

[1:29:19] person of the other and that vote is kind of split.

[1:29:22] So this just helps with that issue, actually.

[1:29:25] Thanks.

[1:29:28] Council member McKinney.

[1:29:30] When you look at the pros and cons,

[1:29:32] are there any pros and cons in plurality voting

[1:29:38] across cities that have different population sizes?

[1:29:42] So does plurality voting work better if you are a bigger city?

[1:29:48] Or what are the pros?

[1:29:49] I don't want to say better,

[1:29:49] but are there pros and cons based on city population?

[1:29:54] I'm gonna write that question down sorry I didn't mean to put you on this spot but I just

[1:30:08] Thank you very much for putting together sort of a draft statement. If we were to move forward with this and put it as a ballot question, I just hope that we'll have some chance to maybe tweak some language because we're in reading it. I was like, I don't know if I would totally understand what it was saying, especially when it says, like, excess votes.

[1:30:29] get kind of like, yeah, that just means that it's going to take the

[1:30:32] access votes, smooth it across like if you don't have the background of the

[1:30:36] context, that could weight people's decision very. Yeah, it's a struggle

[1:30:42] because there is a lot of kind of information that you can get into the

[1:30:47] details with not to throw all of that down. You know, you want to be descriptive

[1:30:52] enough that people can understand a process, but you don't want to get too far

[1:30:57] and then have the whole page 100% it's a complex topic to break down into like a

[1:31:06] nothing right but so we'll have to try to figure out if we do yeah and this is

[1:31:10] something that's I think the board of elections is open to being tweaked for

[1:31:15] sure yeah and I think there's there's also there's a video from I think

[1:31:25] Minnesota Public Radio that kind of goes through with sticky notes that also helps

[1:31:28] a little bit, but another way I think to think about it is that the single winner ranked

[1:31:35] choice is sort of like an instant run-off, right? But I think in this one way this has also

[1:31:40] been described as sort of like an automatic caucus because if you imagine a caucus, which I know

[1:31:45] they don't do in Maryland, but I have participated in caucuses in Colorado, you sort of go to your

[1:31:50] corner of your favorite candidate, and then you see, okay, well, okay, this person doesn't,

[1:31:55] And then you walk over to, okay, my second favorite candidate here.

[1:31:58] And then, oh, my second favorite candidate also doesn't have enough votes.

[1:32:02] And then you walk in the people split to the, to the, to the, to, there's, and so it's,

[1:32:07] it's, it's a little bit more like that.

[1:32:09] And actually, the council member from Albany shared a PowerPoint slide that I can,

[1:32:14] I can send to council as well, that sort of has some animations that sort of demonstrate

[1:32:18] That of the idea of is allows you to have your first choice, but then your second and third choice, if your first choice doesn't win the first time around or gets it like is eliminated.

[1:32:32] So if you really love somebody that nobody else likes, then they get eliminated.

[1:32:38] because I think in a plurality and especially in a single winner, then your vote just really isn't counting for anything.

[1:32:44] But in this case, oh, well, if your first choice gets eliminated and you get your second choice or your third choice and so on.

[1:32:49] So I think it does allow voters to give more information about their preferences compared to the way we do it now.

[1:32:56] Yeah, it is a lot of information on the ballot that has the power to kind of do that tabulation round by round all at once.

[1:33:07] But, you know, there's still a process to it and I will say that, that video, I think, is the one that's linked in the presentation, so if you want to look at that, it's in the slide.

[1:33:20] She did.

[1:33:32] J. Davis, Greenbelt East, historical background on this.

[1:33:39] When we were sued by the ACLU and we were looking at ways to put minorities on the council.

[1:33:48] This was talked about quite a bit.

[1:33:51] We had several meetings and people explained it and explained it and explained it and luckily,

[1:33:58] actually at that particular point, we decided, well, maybe the easiest solution was to increase

[1:34:03] the number on council. So we went from five to seven. Lo and behold, now we had a minority

[1:34:11] on the council. And in the past couple of years, having a minority on the council has not

[1:34:18] been a problem. And now we've got female gender almost a majority, well definitely a majority.

[1:34:29] So I'm not sure what problem we're trying to solve here by changing, other than to go

[1:34:36] along with a system that perhaps seems more democratic or flexible or whatever you want

[1:34:43] to say, I sort of kind of agree with Mr. Roberts if we don't have a problem why try to change

[1:34:51] it. So in the 50 years that I've lived here in Greenbelt we've never had to run off one

[1:34:58] and we are the other.

[1:35:00] And they simply did a simple change. They went from 50% to 40% in a lo and behold, finally solved that problem. Having this and using technology, software, people don't trust technology. I mean, you can sit there and say, okay, we're now we're going to go to round one and you change it. And then you go to round two and you change it again. And yet, I'm going to sit there and look at that and say, how do I know that

[1:35:29] But my particular choice is actually being recorded and changed.

[1:35:35] People don't trust the ballots now when we have a regular election in plurality.

[1:35:42] You throw this in and they're going to be even less trustworthy, especially if their

[1:35:48] particular person doesn't even get elected to counsel.

[1:35:50] because I can see a position where someone doesn't quite get to the threshold and then eventually

[1:36:02] eventually doesn't even get elected, but they wear way ahead of, you know, ten other people,

[1:36:07] but then they don't get elected. It's very difficult to explain even to try to put it on a

[1:36:15] ballot question, trying to explain, you know, people are not even going to read that,

[1:36:19] generally they're not. Now, there's a lot of people who know about it. Certainly,

[1:36:23] there are quite a few cities that are trying it, and that's fine.

[1:36:29] And I was just going over the idea,

[1:36:33] if you went by bullet voting, because we do have that, and I'm watching

[1:36:39] thread. So I'm just going to go real fast. Bullet voters is that going to be an

[1:36:45] advantage or a disadvantage? Right now it could be an advantage and it could be

[1:36:51] if you could get enough people to vote number one and you get to the threshold

[1:36:56] and nobody else voted for you for second, third, fourth or fifth or sixth but

[1:37:01] you got past the threshold and the bullet vote worked or it could be a disadvantage.

[1:37:07] You get everybody to vote for you that you want to talk to and they don't have enough

[1:37:12] to get past the threshold and nobody else wanted you, well then you don't get elected.

[1:37:17] But in our polarity, you may have gotten it, who knows.

[1:37:21] The percentage is awfully low to me, but that's what you've decided.

[1:37:28] No, that's not what the math works.

[1:37:30] It's the math, it's still cool.

[1:37:32] Also, in this particular situation, you can't vote for number one for everybody.

[1:37:36] I mean, that's what just have to be, if you try to do it, your boat would be invalidated

[1:37:42] because number one, you have to have a different choice.

[1:37:46] If you voted for seven people, number one, it's not going to work.

[1:37:50] It's like you're bullet-voting seven times, but it's a complex issue.

[1:37:56] Good luck.

[1:37:57] Thank you.

[1:37:58] Thank you.

[1:37:58] Good. Good points.

[1:38:00] Member Tim, then, on Australia.

[1:38:03] Well, and I guess I would say that I think we have had.

[1:38:08] So, you know, obviously we had our first non-white council member elected in 2009.

[1:38:13] But then it took until 2017 for the next one.

[1:38:15] And we still have not had anybody who is not white or black elected to council.

[1:38:21] And there are people in our community who are Latino, who are Asian, who are Southeast Asian.

[1:38:26] So I think while we have achieved some measure of diversity, I think that one of the advantage

[1:38:31] of this method could be to achieve greater diversity because we have not really, the city

[1:38:38] council does not look like the city of Greenbelt in terms of racial distribution at this point.

[1:38:50] The call.

[1:38:51] Well, yeah, if I could just respond, and I think I didn't specifically say, or I don't

[1:38:58] know how I phrased it in that slide, I think I did say diverse, but I didn't necessarily

[1:39:05] mean democratically diverse, I meant diverse in the way that people think about issues,

[1:39:11] what issues are priorities for them, and the way that they approach problems diversity

[1:39:19] in the way that they think, not necessarily a demographic diversity, although that may

[1:39:24] be a benefit from doing main tri-spotting.

[1:39:27] But because we're focusing on a lower threshold, we want to represent a section of the city.

[1:39:35] That's where the diversity is coming from.

[1:39:37] We're getting more input from a lower number of people, yes.

[1:39:42] So, in a sense, if the choices do you want candidates who, across the board, have broad

[1:39:48] support, 40% threshold, or do you want candidates who maybe need a lower threshold and potentially

[1:39:56] have more differing opinions.

[1:40:00] Very, very, very thoughtful. So I would be concerned, you know, based on what Stavis was saying. Mayor Davis was that strategic voting or bullet voting, I don't really understand it. But still, it seems like there is a certain level of nuance that's required in looking through and an understanding went choice voting.

[1:40:30] where some people might understand exactly how they want to use this in order to advance

[1:40:40] particular candidates for demographics or geography or any number of reasons.

[1:40:45] While other people might not really get that, they would just see this choice and there's a couple

[1:40:49] of people who they want and their others and they should make a number two or number three,

[1:40:56] each, and be onions, black olives, yeah, both, so I can see how it could be challenging

[1:41:03] might end up with more spoiled ballots, or it might be easier to kind of change skew

[1:41:11] things somehow, for some people, and other people would pick up on that nuance, it's a

[1:41:17] little complicated, I think we could maybe work on the wording, Mr. Roberts?

[1:41:22] I just want to say that I don't think that four-year terms promotes any kind of diversity

[1:41:29] on the counts.

[1:41:30] So I can't go both ways.

[1:41:34] Thank you.

[1:41:35] I'm Mr. Orleans.

[1:41:39] The Orleans resident.

[1:41:40] History is important.

[1:41:42] I also feel useful.

[1:41:43] I shouldn't be mischaracterized.

[1:41:45] It's my understanding that in 2009, the ACLU, Moore, Francisco, and the LACP did not sue

[1:41:53] the City of Cleveland.

[1:41:53] It's not even threatened to sue the city of Greenbelt.

[1:41:56] What was suggested was that they may have to sue the city of Greenbelt if council do

[1:42:02] not make some changes to a better, better, better population, demographic population of

[1:42:07] Greenbelt.

[1:42:08] History is also all important in this regard.

[1:42:11] It's been more than 20 years since council was first urged to consider ranked choice

[1:42:17] voted.

[1:42:18] I'm glad finally the Council is now, at least considering putting it on about as an advisory

[1:42:25] question, but before it should do that, Council should have a better, a clearer understanding

[1:42:31] of whether it's going to entertain amending the charter to have election districts.

[1:42:37] But that

[1:42:42] would influence the kind of participation that rent-joice voting could influence, appropriately

[1:42:51] influence, more so than simply saying we're going to have rent-joice voting in a multi-out

[1:42:57] large election.

[1:42:58] I have a question with regard to the one page in this handout tonight that reflects the

[1:43:04] Board of Elections.

[1:43:05] And let me say I appreciate all the work that the Board of Elections has been doing recently

[1:43:08] on the various questions. I'm sometimes able to intermitly have a connection to those meetings,

[1:43:14] and when I'm on a meeting, I like it. I'm happy to be on a meeting when I'm disconnected. I'm not

[1:43:20] so happy. But the board is suggesting that if there is to be a change to election districts,

[1:43:33] some members of council will be elected from districts, and remaining members will be at large.

[1:43:39] I don't know if this is intended to go on the ballot and it should be approved by Council to go on the ballot this way

[1:43:45] But that's even more confusing the ranked choice voting if we're going to have election districts all members of council

[1:43:50] Should be elected from their district the only potentially at large position should be that of mayor

[1:43:57] And I would that's been suggested in the past I would agree with that finally

[1:44:02] There's apparently going to be an advisory a question should council members term be extended from

[1:44:08] two years to four years and then should there be a recall if it's extended four years

[1:44:16] I think there should be recall currently recall opportunity currently with two year terms

[1:44:21] and since I've been advocating a return to one year annual options there should be recall

[1:44:26] potentially available to the residents even if it was the term was only one year.

[1:44:30] I hope there will be more discussion before this goes to staff.

[1:44:34] Thank you. Thank you. To be clear, the Board of Elections did not make a recommendation

[1:44:39] on rank choice voting. You recommended the Council discuss the issue and make some decisions.

[1:44:47] Correct. Discuss the issue. Right. This is a presentation to give you more information

[1:44:52] about rank choice voting, whether it's an appropriate advisory question to have on the ballot.

[1:44:57] But ultimately, if it goes...

[1:45:00] Opposed to an advisory question, it's the voter's choice. Thank you. Please go ahead.

[1:45:16] Ms. Jones, in all green belt. As you pointed out, Mayor Jordan, there is a little set

[1:45:37] of them. Okay. Start over.

[1:45:40] For John Estonson from Minneapolis,

[1:45:44] from Greenbelt, originally from Minneapolis, I think

[1:45:53] that there are things even though Minneapolis is just a tad bigger than Greenbelt that we

[1:45:59] could learn from Minneapolis.

[1:46:01] And I was a city election worker for 10 or 11 elections, two of which were municipal elections,

[1:46:08] which had ranked choice voting.

[1:46:11] So on a practical basis, the people who came in to vote,

[1:46:15] and we have a 45-day early voting period,

[1:46:20] there are two questions,

[1:46:22] where do I have to vote for three candidates,

[1:46:24] which was of course, no?

[1:46:27] And can I vote for the same person

[1:46:29] as

[1:46:38] it sort of defeats the purpose?

[1:46:46] And Nicole, I appreciate the presentation

[1:46:51] because it answered some questions I have,

[1:46:55] but it also made me realize that, as the previous speaker said,

[1:47:03] if you have boards, or if you have seven at large positions,

[1:47:11] it will change the way that rank choice voting will work.

[1:47:17] work. So I think that decision should be made first before deciding on rank choice voting.

[1:47:29] I do strongly believe in rank choice voting. There are advantages for the voters. They're

[1:47:36] not wasting a ballot by voting for someone who has no chance of winning because for their

[1:47:44] their second choice, they can vote for somebody acceptable.

[1:47:49] So it's not a matter of voting for their first choice necessarily as the person they like

[1:47:56] the best.

[1:47:57] They may want to support somebody who has no chance of winning.

[1:48:02] But my main point is the methodology would be different either way.

[1:48:11] Hey, thank you for that perspective.

[1:48:13] I can't really think of anybody in Greenbelt who runs who has no chance at all.

[1:48:20] But needless to say, I really appreciate the research that has gone into your presentation

[1:48:27] and really all of the work that the Board of Elections has been doing on behalf of the

[1:48:32] residents of Greenbelt.

[1:48:33] It's really a powerful thing.

[1:48:35] And I think all of Council appreciates just how much work and how much thought really goes

[1:48:40] into these referrals that come from the City Council.

[1:48:44] So I think we're all very grateful.

[1:48:47] The next step, though, in our process, is we would actually have to take a discussion

[1:48:53] from tonight to a work session into a council meeting.

[1:48:59] Thank you so much, and we would discuss it more and actually vote on these valid questions.

[1:49:06] So, I know we asked the question recently when would be the drop that date for making decisions on these valid questions.

[1:49:19] We would like to have the questions by September at the latest.

[1:49:25] Is that when we discussed Monday?

[1:49:28] So, we've got a little time, and I know Greenbelters read the Greenbelt News Review and watch these sessions.

[1:49:36] So, I suspect that we'll probably get a few emails and notes from folks with their

[1:49:41] thoughts.

[1:49:42] So, that's the direction that I would like to go in, definitely have a decision way

[1:49:48] before September.

[1:49:50] But if we need to let this percolate, just a little bit, this question about should we

[1:49:55] be looking at the district question before we consider a right choice?

[1:50:00] This voting is not to overload our voters with ballot questions. Mr. Roberts, perhaps you can give us some perspective on this, Davis. Typically, how many ballot questions might we have on a ballot? Board of Elections? Is it usually one or two? Well,

[1:50:26] it seems like we usually just have one or two. Often it's just one.

[1:50:38] Mayor Davis was saying, sometimes none.

[1:50:40] And the survey, the resident survey that we've done in the past along with the elections is this question has appeared.

[1:50:50] Other questions we will appear on that.

[1:50:53] I would like to say that I think it would be very interesting if you're going to put this thing on about four year terms.

[1:51:02] To also put one on right next to it about should there be term limits.

[1:51:07] Yeah, I don't know that I'm in favor of term limits, but it would be very interesting

[1:51:12] to give the voters that choice and see how it comes out.

[1:51:19] Yes.

[1:51:20] Member Tim?

[1:51:21] Well, I believe that you mentioned that the Board of Elections maybe would want to do

[1:51:26] a little bit more revision of the work, the language, and I think that this was still sort

[1:51:33] of a draft.

[1:51:35] Yeah, I mean, we're willing to take, you know, public and council notes into consideration

[1:51:43] for how, you know, if you have thoughts about how the wording is confusing or where we

[1:51:51] need to put the emphasis for that question in order to give people a clear understanding

[1:51:57] of what they're deciding on, you know, I think we'll open to that.

[1:52:00] It seems like it might be a good idea, and I don't know, I don't see anyone from the

[1:52:04] news review here tonight, but I think that could be helpful to get the draft language

[1:52:08] out there and get some public feedback about, you know, whether they find it confusing

[1:52:12] or how they would recommend what issues confuse them and then maybe get some revisions at the

[1:52:19] next Board of Elections meeting in preparation for voting in July or August on, if we choose

[1:52:27] to put it on there.

[1:52:28] I just think that this is one we're getting more brains on it, could be helpful and asking more people,

[1:52:37] hey, read this. Do you understand this? What is confusing?

[1:52:42] And it has to be readable. So we have green belters at all different levels.

[1:52:48] So the reading comprehension really needs to be perhaps the 10th grade level.

[1:52:52] I believe this is a standard. Is it seven?

[1:52:56] Okay, well, and of course the board of elections you mentioned you hadn't really voted on this so no this was simply just an example of what you could put but it's not been voted on.

[1:53:11] Definitely appreciate it. Mr. Orleans has an additional comment before we wrap up.

[1:53:23] Thank you.

[1:53:24] I will forever believe it's a bad practice of democracy when elections are all about

[1:53:31] the candidates.

[1:53:33] A good practice of democracy, a better practice, elections are all about the people.

[1:53:38] It's the electorate that has to do the fundamental role in elections.

[1:53:46] It has been suggested, regrettably again, from a member of council that, and I certainly

[1:53:53] understand the reason, if there were to be a question on the ballot, should council

[1:53:57] terms be extended to four years, from two years, then necessarily, there should also be

[1:54:03] a question on the ballot, or should we have term limits agreed about?

[1:54:07] I've said before, I'll say again, I'll die believing that we have organic term limits

[1:54:13] it's now, it's just up to the people to unelect folks that they've previously elected.

[1:54:18] I'm opposed or inorganic term of its any voter, all voters have a right.

[1:54:24] I think they make the mistake virtually every election, but they have the right to vote

[1:54:28] for whomever they want to vote for.

[1:54:30] So if J. Davis were still on the ballot in another 10 years, people have a right to vote

[1:54:36] for her.

[1:54:37] If Emmett Jordan is not successfully negotiated in a higher position for himself, and he's

[1:54:42] the ballot in another ten years, then people have a right to vote for them. They're making a mistake,

[1:54:46] I believe, but they have that right. So to have inorganic term limits is a mistake, it's a denial

[1:54:52] of the right of the people those vote for who they would like to do so. Thank you, and of course, we do

[1:54:57] You have a right-end slot on your balance.

[1:55:00] So people can still vote for J. Davis, Ed Pugans.

[1:55:05] Hey, but once again, all kidding aside, I really, really want to thank you for all of the work that you do, and just the preparations for the election that are coming up very soon. I know you're in the city clerk. I know the city administration are working very, very hard, so tremendous lift. Appreciate it so much. And on the pizza question, if you might have some pizza, I could forego the pepperoni.

[1:55:28] We can try pineapples. I don't know if the pineapples would work with black olives.

[1:55:33] I think we'll have a diverse opinion about what toppings people like.

[1:55:36] There you go.

[1:55:38] We can do a practice ring choice of voting election with pizza toppings to help people understand

[1:55:44] the process.

[1:55:45] That's actually not a bad idea.

[1:55:49] Okay. Well, thank you so much. If you know further comments from questions from Council

[1:55:54] there's nobody online let's go ahead and move on to next topic information item so I just

[1:55:59] wanted to ask the city manager about these incredible rains of rabbi was just pouring today it

[1:56:05] seems like it's going to rain some more tomorrow and the the amount of rain that's coming down is

[1:56:10] just phenomenal so I've gotten word I actually have a photograph over at the three sisters

[1:56:16] garden by the Spring Hill Lake Recreation Center what pretty badly so I'm just wondering if you can

[1:56:23] give us an update. I know when it rains very very hard public works will try and clean out the storm

[1:56:29] grains in various locations. I don't know how much more rain will be getting but do you have

[1:56:37] anything to report? On the how I'll check with the team tomorrow and Friday to make sure that we do

[1:56:44] around and clean out the storm drains that have been identified as critical drains that create

[1:56:50] backups in the community, so I'll make sure that that gets done.

[1:56:55] In terms of the rain overall, the COG membership received a recommendation from the committee

[1:57:04] reviewing the drought status, and today just happened that we received a recommendation,

[1:57:10] so it was sent to the Chief Administrative Officers for consideration,

[1:57:18] given the amount

[1:57:19] of rain that we're getting, we're not going to pose, lift in the drought. I think the

[1:57:24] water reserves are being backfilled. So, while it's unfortunate to get it all at once,

[1:57:30] it's much needed rain to help replenish aquifers and drinking water sources.

[1:57:37] At the COG Council of Governments Board Meeting last week, the topic came up briefly. I believe

[1:57:44] Even with all the rain, some of the aquifers in some areas still have not gotten enough

[1:57:50] rain throughout the season, so it's come down pretty hard at the Spring and Lake Recreation

[1:57:57] Center with the new playground.

[1:57:59] There really is more flooding than usual, so if there's anything we can do, meet rains or

[1:58:16] I think the system as you're familiar with the area, there's a strong drainage system that's been designed around the playground that this is a good

[1:58:29] expect to see if it's working. Very good, Mr. Roberts. I noticed that the

[1:58:36] apartments that were by the mobile station there, they were about that far from me

[1:58:42] and flooded it. Did they flood work? When I got there, it was just like right up to the top.

[1:58:50] Yeah, I don't think it quite got up. It was right there. I don't think it went

[1:58:56] actually into the apartments but it was right there but after it stopped raining it went down pretty

[1:59:04] rapidly but I think most of the problem there is that there's a lot of water that's being

[1:59:10] diverted from garden way I think down into that area and I think that's the main problem so I went

[1:59:17] and looked at where is all the water coming from and it's clear that there's a lot of water coming

[1:59:24] I think it can divert that over, you know, towards the center more.

[1:59:29] I think that would solve that problem because it's just too much.

[1:59:34] I think that's true.

[1:59:36] I think the train that's there at the underpass is just too small.

[1:59:40] We know that.

[1:59:40] You know, the light is just too small.

[1:59:42] Right.

[1:59:42] We know that that's too small.

[1:59:44] We've had engineering.

[1:59:45] One of the agreements that were made with Parkway Apartments is that lower apartments would

[1:59:52] not be least out because we can't tear out that storm shortage and replace it.

[2:00:01] Okay. Well, thank you very much for that update. Hopefully we'll see some sun. What's the

[2:00:07] other prediction for tomorrow's supposed to rain?

[2:00:12] In the afternoon or all day? I think it's

[2:00:14] supposed to be hot. Starting on Friday, there's nothing but sun for the next day. Yeah.

[2:00:22] So we'll dry out. Okay. Next. Yes, next week, we expect to be over 100 degrees. I believe

[2:00:30] Tuesday or Wednesday. So we reviewed the weather forecast for next week because we are expected

[2:00:36] that we will open summer camps on Monday and we had the issue with the youth center.

[2:00:41] So we closed the youth center. We have an incline of weather policy that it's a high heat

[2:00:45] we bring to kids indoors, given that we were looking at potentially not having the youth

[2:00:51] center open because of the damage sewer line. We were concerned about the weather. Fortunately

[2:00:58] Finally tonight we had a really exceptional plumber come out and did a survey and video

[2:01:04] inspection and a lot of work to identify the issues.

[2:01:07] The good news is we were able to get two big clogs open and the facility.

[2:01:12] The bad news is that we found the cast iron pipe corroded and it's created bellies underneath

[2:01:19] the slab in the youth center.

[2:01:21] So while the good news is we can operate on Monday and we have to do some preventative maintenance

[2:01:27] At least monthly to keep the line clear until we figure out a permanent solution, a permanent solution is breaking the concrete and replacing the damage pipe.

[2:01:37] Sounds complicated.

[2:01:39] Inexpensive.

[2:01:40] Give me the heads up. I'm going to come asking for money.

[2:01:44] Okay. Well, at this time, we are going into an executive session.

[2:01:52] I hear by call this special meeting of the Green Belt City Council to order. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll, please?

[2:02:00] Here.

[2:02:02] Here.

[2:02:04] Here.

[2:02:10] Here.

[2:02:11] I'm here.

[2:02:12] And the time is 8.32.

[2:02:14] 9.32.

[2:02:17] I move that council go into closed session in accordance with Section 3-305-B1 and 10 of the general provisions article of the annals.

[2:02:24] of the public general laws of Maryland in the municipal building library to discuss the

[2:02:28] appointment, performance evaluation of appointees, employees or officials over whom this public

[2:02:33] body has jurisdiction or any other personnel matter that affects one or more specific individuals

[2:02:37] and two to discuss public security if the public body determines that public discussion would

[2:02:41] constitute a risk to the public or to public security, including one, the deployment of fire

[2:02:45] and police services and staff and two, the development and implementation of emergency plans.

[2:02:49] The purpose of this meeting is one to discuss personnel matters and two to discuss public

[2:02:53] public security if the public body determines that the public discussion would constitute

[2:02:57] a risk to the public or to public security, including the development and implementation

[2:03:00] of emergency plans.

[2:03:02] In addition to Council City Manager Salmaron will be in the closed session, and I don't

[2:03:06] believe anyone else, and note that Council will not return to open session following this

[2:03:11] closed session.

[2:03:13] Thank you.

[2:03:14] Was there a second?

[2:03:14] Second.

[2:03:15] Okay, Ms. Pompey is seconded in the discussion.

[2:03:18] Let's go ahead.

[2:03:19] If you could call the role, City Clerk?

[2:03:26] Yes.

[2:03:26] Yes. Yes.

[2:03:30] No. Yes. Yes. Okay. That's a six to one. Thank you. Five five to five. Thank you. Okay. Let's clear the chambers and close the the

Work Session - Board of Elections

Agenda

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