[0:02] OK, this is the um Smith County Elections Commission meeting for Wednesday, December

[0:08] 8th, 2021. The time is now 3:01 p.m. The agenda was uh sent out and proper notice

[0:15] was given to all members of the, uh, the committee for a meeting to begin at 3 p.m.

[0:20] today. Here present with us is Miss uh Karen Phillips, our county clerk, Mr. David

[0:24] Stein, the Republican Party chair, Mr. Gary Barber, who is our, uh, tax assessor

[0:30] collector. Absent at present is Mr. Michael Tolbert, the Democratic Party chair.

[0:35] Um, Michelle Alcon is, is here as well as our elections administrator to give us

[0:40] an update. So we'll call this meeting to order. Item number one is received presentation

[0:45] and report from the elections administrator regarding operations of the Smith County

[0:48] Elections Office. Ms. Alcon. Hi, good afternoon. Uh, so the county judge just asked

[0:54] me to give y'all a quick update of the things that have happened in our office the

[0:58] past, uh, past few months since we, since we last met. Um, so the first thing, uh,

[1:04] that y'all need to be aware of is that the remodeling of the Elections Administration

[1:08] building is complete. Uh, the work was finished in September. The hub now has a permanent

[1:15] wall, as you can see in the pictures here. Um, the, uh, there are secure doors for

[1:21] the storage area. The AV system has been completely updated. Um, the office side

[1:27] of the building, we have a secure place for storing the voted ballots, um, a new

[1:34] office for the EA. Uh, and we have windows in the mail ballot room and the tabulation

[1:41] room, so that it will, uh, facilitate transparency for people who are, who are watching

[1:48] what we're doing during an election. They can see that we're not hiding anything.

[1:52] Um, the second thing that I wanted to update y'all on was, uh, staffing. The hiring

[1:58] of staff in the elections administration is complete. We have 4 full-time staff and

[2:02] 1 part-time staff member. Uh, we do bring in 2 part-time elections, uh,

[2:09] workers, staff members, I'm not sure exactly what you would consider them, uh, for

[2:15] elections prep, both before an election and after an election. They're almost always

[2:19] the same two people that I have listed here. Uh, and then we have one person that

[2:23] we bring in, uh, as a part-time voter registration clerk to help us make sure that

[2:29] the voter registration applications don't get backlogged during, uh, either right

[2:33] before or right after a large election. So, there's myself and Edna, who's been here

[2:39] for 13 years. Um, Grace Biggs and Erica are both new hires. Uh, Trey Fields is our

[2:46] permanent part-time assistant, and he has been here for several years as well. And

[2:52] then all three of the part-time people also work early voting as early voting workers.

[2:59] And then as a quick summary of the November 2021 election, we had a total number

[3:05] of voters check in 10,839. The total number of votes cast was

[3:12] 10,836. Uh, occasionally we do have what's called a walkaway, and we know exactly

[3:19] where this happened. We had, uh, one walkaway at the first Christian Church on election

[3:23] day and two at noonday. So essentially a voter will come in and they'll check in.

[3:28] Um, and they get that ballot card and they make their selections, and then instead

[3:33] of putting it in the ballot box on their way out the door, they think it's a receipt,

[3:37] and they end up putting it in their purse or their pocket, and sometimes we just

[3:40] miss that. Uh, so that's something that we're definitely gonna, gonna work on, um,

[3:45] but 3 out of the amount of people that we had at those locations, it's not too bad.

[3:50] It's, there's room for improvement. Um, and I'm not sure if y'all are aware of some

[3:55] of the categories I have listed here. Uh, so I just wanted to give y'all a quick

[3:59] review of those. A limited ballot. A limited voter is a voter who is currently living

[4:05] in Smith County. This is their county of residence, but they have moved from a new

[4:10] county and have not changed their registration yet. So, say they are registered in

[4:15] Tarrant County or Dallas County, but they moved to Smith County two months ago. They

[4:20] are allowed to vote a limited ballot during early voting at the main early voting

[4:25] location. That allows them to vote over anything that overlaps between their previous

[4:30] county of residence where they're registered and their new county of residence. So

[4:34] we did have 11 of those. We had a confidentiality voter. There are multiple confidentiality

[4:40] programs that people can be part of, uh, so we did have one confidentiality voter

[4:44] for this election. Uh, a provisional ballot is a ballot that basically means we need

[4:52] to look into that voter before their ballot is cast. Either they are not registered,

[4:59] but they claim that they did register. So them voting a provisional ballot, it gives

[5:04] us a chance to research that and either confirm that they are correct and they did

[5:09] register, there was a computer error, and their vote will then be, would actually

[5:14] be counted, or that no, they didn't do it correctly, so their vote is not counted.

[5:19] A provisional ballot also allows us to register that person if their ballot cannot

[5:25] be counted. So then they do become Smith County residents or registered voters. Did

[5:31] that make sense? You're a little confused. OK.

[5:37] A confidentiality program, I mean, the most, the, the easiest thing would be a, um,

[5:44] would be a A voter who has Um, who's in some

[5:52] type of protection program, um, abuse program, uh, there are multiple different varieties

[5:58] of those, so they could be part of the AG's confidentiality program. You have lesser

[6:04] extents of that when you see, um, privacy addresses for judges or police officers.

[6:11] That is a type of confidentiality program, but it's not on the same level.

[6:17] OK. Any other questions on the, the different categories? No? OK.

[6:26] Um, we also had, uh, 15 different training classes, just so y'all are aware for workers.

[6:31] Um, I did, uh, train 84 election workers for the November election. Some things

[6:38] that we want to take away from that election, we had, uh, Two locations that were

[6:44] huge on election day. So we've taken away that we need to, uh, prepare more, uh,

[6:51] personnel and equipment for both noonday locations and Lyndale locations. Uh, even

[6:57] if it's considered a small election. We're going to go ahead and have extra equipment

[7:02] because extra is always better than not enough. We also need to put more, uh, emphasis

[7:07] on the walkaways and make sure that we do always have a worker stationed near the

[7:13] door so we can try to catch those. A lot of the times, we put the ballot box closer

[7:19] to the door so someone can put their ballot in as they're walking out the door. So

[7:23] we can have some, a worker stationed in that general area telling people, hey, remember,

[7:28] put your ballot here. So we're just going to have to emphasize that again to make

[7:32] sure that people realize the importance of that. Uh, completing the paperwork accurately.

[7:38] We did have, uh, some paperwork that was not done completely or not done at all.

[7:45] So I'm going to make sure that we cover that in training in more depth than we did

[7:48] this last time. And then we have the election workers who agreed to work and came

[7:55] to training, and then didn't show up. So we just have to emphasize that when we have

[8:03] somebody who agrees to work during an election, that they actually come to the election

[8:08] to work, that sometimes that is a little bit difficult. Sometimes it's impossible

[8:14] because there's an emergency. We did have one of those individuals who ended up in

[8:18] the hospital. We didn't know that until about, I don't know, I think it was like

[8:23] 2 o'clock on election day, but they, they had a reason for not being there. Uh, and

[8:29] they were a little preoccupied and couldn't call us and tell us, hey, I can't make

[8:33] it. So, there are times that, that is understandable, but there are also times when

[8:38] it's just not, when they just refuse to show up and we can't contact them at all.

[8:42] Um, and those are the people that we need to make note of and potentially not use

[8:47] again.

[8:49] And then, oh, I hit the wrong button. Sorry.

[8:53] And we have upcoming dates for 2022. So we do have, uh, these are the important dates,

[8:59] the major dates for the 2022 year. We do have mass mailout starting, uh, January

[9:04] 1st. So that first week in January, we'll start mailing out about 148,000 voter registration

[9:12] certificates. The primary election. The May general election. The primary runoff

[9:18] in the gubernatorial election are all happening this year. Uh, just as an aside,

[9:23] for those of you who may not know, the May general election will have two constitutional

[9:28] amendments on the ballot. One of the special sessions passed 2 special or 2 constitutional

[9:35] amendments, but it was passed the cutoff date to put them on the November election.

[9:40] So they decided that the May election would have those 2 constitutional amendments.

[9:45] So, it will be a countywide election, not just a city and school election. Has there

[9:52] ever

[9:55] Party has no runoff.

[9:59] And is that typical? I don't think it's typical. It, it varies by, uh, by county.

[10:06] I have had in my previous county, I had a runoff where one party did have a runoff

[10:13] and the other didn't, but be, but that was because the state didn't have anything

[10:18] and then the, the locals didn't have anything either. So it has to be. You know,

[10:23] it has to end up being perfectly aligned.

[10:27] But yes, it has happened.

[10:30] The same.

[10:36] Well, we, what we did was we, we kept the staff the same. We were on a much smaller

[10:42] scale, so we had a lot fewer choices to work with, um, and we didn't have an issue

[10:47] with, with using the same workers, uh, but it's, if I'm, if I'm understanding correctly,

[10:54] the. If it is just a Republican runoff, the staff there can be all Republican. However,

[11:02] if we do decide to do a joint primary, that would mean a joint runoff too. So we

[11:07] would need to look into the legalities and make sure that we can do that if that's

[11:10] the case. Yeah.

[11:16] All right. Questions. Go ahead.

[11:21] So you have, uh, this information about future elections. Is it already on our Smith

[11:26] County website under your department? This, this one here, it, uh, the primary is

[11:33] on the website at the moment, and I can update the rest of it just so that the dates

[11:37] are all listed there. Yes, I can do that.

[11:41] May want to just To decide because they're so different.

[11:50] Oh, that's true. Yes, precinct chairs for the will be, will be on the, uh, runoff

[11:56] election. So there's, it's very unlikely that we will just have a single party during

[12:00] the runoff, but yeah. Yeah, it's a good addition and we ought to push that out by

[12:07] email to both sides of the party too, that, that calendar. Yeah, so everybody's aware

[12:13] of that because I'm sure that some of them still missed it.

[12:17] Any other questions for Ms. Alcon?

[12:21] All right. Uh, we promised you guys that, uh, we would, uh, come back after every

[12:26] election and have an update from the elections administrator and then, uh, give you

[12:30] an opportunity which is item number 2 to go into executive session and talk about,

[12:34] uh, how she's doing and how she's performing, so we're gonna do that at this point

[12:38] unless there's any more questions. Uh, something just popped in. Uh, so the incorrect

[12:44] paperwork that you mentioned, what, what type of paperwork are you talking about?

[12:47] It's just a lot of the simple things like um there's something called a spoiled ballot.

[12:52] So when a voter makes an error on a ballot, oh, I chose, uh, proposition A for instead

[12:59] of against, I made a mistake there. How do I correct this? As long as they haven't

[13:03] put that ballot in a ballot box, we can take that ballot and spoil it, so they won't

[13:09] use that one, and we can reissue that card to them. Um, and then that card itself

[13:14] we're supposed to log and sign, and a lot of them, they. They handled the card correctly,

[13:21] but they didn't fill out the form, so simple things like that that we really need

[13:26] to make sure that our paperwork is all accurate. Nothing that affects the legitimacy

[13:32] of the election. It's it's the small details that help us go back and

[13:39] Assist in an audit to make it simpler if there was one. Good question. All right,

[13:46] thanks, Ms. Alcon. We appreciate it. All in all, it was a fantastic election. We

[13:50] appreciate that. Uh, that's gonna take us into item number 2. We're gonna, uh, recess

[13:55] executives, uh, recess open session, go into executive session and discuss, receive

[14:00] consultation, seek legal advice regarding the commission's duties regarding the appointment,

[14:05] employment, and duties of the Smith County Elections Administrator. So, we're gonna

[14:09] do that under Texas Government Code sections 551.071 and 0.074. The time is now.

[14:16] 3:15, we stand in recess. We'll come back and adjourn on the backside of this. Let's

[14:22] clear the courtroom.

[14:27] OK.

[14:32] The time presently is 3:18, 3:23 p.m. We adjourned executive session at like

[14:39] 3:20 p.m. We are adjourned. No further business before this, uh, body, so we will

[14:45] see you in about six months.

[14:49] As you want to do

Election Commission Meeting

Transcript