Author: Kim Strach, Executive Director
One-Stop Early Voting in the 2014 Primary and Session Law 2013-381’s Hours-Matching Requirement: Numbered Memo 2013-05 (dated Oct. 17, 2013) provided some information about new hours-matching requirements for one-stop voting that will be in effect starting with the 2014 primary. It also made reference to new tools to streamline the process of submitting one-stop implementation plans and meeting the statutory mandates set by the General Assembly.
Attached is one of those tools, the new one-stop implementation plan form. This form was previewed at the December Training conference. It is a save-able PDF form that collects all of the basic one-stop voting information required of a one-stop implementation plan, but delivers the information to SBE in a simple, uniform fashion. It also collects key technical and statistical information about each one-stop site, such as the type of building, number of planned voting stations, etc. This type of information will be very valuable going forward, as one-stop voting transitions to the shorter time period.
For the May 2014 primary, every county must match the number of cumulative hours offered for the May 2010 primary. These hours totals from the May 2010 primary were provided in a spreadsheet along with Numbered Memo 2013-05. This new form does automatically calculate the total number of cumulative hours scheduled for the May 2014 primary based on the number of hours entered for each day.1
Because information can be saved into the PDF form and returned to or edited later, the director could certainly complete this form in advance of a county board of elections meeting in which the implementation plan is to be considered (the director could even save multiple versions of schedules to present alternate versions of schedules to the county board). Or, a director could choose to use the same format traditionally he or she has traditionally used to present the implementation plan to the county board. However, this form is the only form required to be sent to the SBE office, and in fact is required to be sent to the SBE office in order to receive an approval letter. The approval letter will refer to the schedule as entered into this form, and the information will be collected uniformly, which will greatly simply the one-stop implementation plan approval process.
The form should either be printed and signed by all county board members (and then scanned), OR sent along with a resolution signed by all three county board members.
The e-mail accompanying this Numbered Memo provides details covering how to send the files via SBE’s secure FTP server. Please do not send hard copies of implementation plans to the SBE office. Also, it is not necessary to attach other documents along with implementation plans, other than attachments specifically requested in the implementation plan form.
You will notice that this form includes specific information for the May 2014 primary, including dates. For future elections, implementation plan forms will be distributed that contain the appropriate information and dates.
If the county board is not unanimous in voting for a one-stop implementation plan: This form can be used by a county board member (or members) to petition the State Board of Elections to consider it as a proposed implementation plan, to be considered by the State Board at its next meeting.
Many counties have made inquiries about requesting a reduction in required one-stop hours (the law only allows this if the request is made unanimously by all members of the county board of elections, and may only be granted by a unanimous vote of the State Board of Elections). Another Numbered Memo will be forthcoming on this topic.
1 For example, if the CBE site is going to be open from 8 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 24, 2014, the user would select an open time of “8 a.m.” and a closing time of “5 p.m.” from the drop-down menus in that day’s row. The user then would enter in the number 9 for in the box labeled “Total hours for day.” The user would repeat this process for each day in which the site is open. The form will calculate the total number of cumulative hours for all sites based on those daily hours totals (the form will multiply the additional site schedule by the number of additional sites, if applicable).
↓ One-Stop Implementation Plans for the May 2014 Primary: Numbered Memo 2014-01 (PDF)