June 19, 2020–7:17 a.m.
STAFF REPORTS
The Floyd County Board of Elections held their first meeting since the June 9 Elections and discussed the things that went wrong and what could be done better next time.
As you may remember, there was a delay in counting the mail-in absentee ballots.
Elections Chief Robert Brady said that was caused by difficulties they ran into in the way some of the equipment was configured based on “erroneous” instructions they got.
There was another issue when the polls first opened that Tuesday morning that resulted in a wait time for some voters.
“It was a situation of when you plug that piece of equipment in, it automatically goes through a series of startup procedures,” Brady explained. “The poll manager there was told not to turn anything on until she got in Tuesday morning. I found out, after all our discussions, that the equipment had been plugged in the Monday before and then unplugged, and left unplugged.”
Brady said that issue will be resolved through additional training of the poll workers.
Toward the end of the meeting, citizens expressed concerns about the drop boxes for the absentee ballots being closed at 5:30 instead of at 7 p.m. when the other polls closed on Election Day.
That issue along with a discussion of having a warehouse for the elections equipment is expected to be discussed during a called elections board meeting next week.