Author: Kim Strach, Executive Director
Directors, thank you for your work during this roller coaster of an election season. Happily, this memorandum contains some good news: County boards of election are now released from the directive set out in Retention of 2012 Elections Records: Numbered Memo 2014-06 to retain all 2012 election records.
As noted in Memo 2014-06, these records included poll lists, registration lists, rosters, authorizations vote (ATVs), provisional applications/envelopes, and absentee applications/envelopes. Such records may now be controlled by the current records retention schedule (2012 schedule [link no longer active] and 2013 amendment [link no longer active]).
Most election records fall under Standard-8* (in most cases, records for elections involving federal office are to be retained for 22 months after results are finalized, records for other elections such as municipal elections are to be retained for two months after results are finalized). Please note that this release from a previous directive comes with a new, related directive on election records. Each county is hereby directed to retain the following documents that contain voter signatures from the 2014 general election:
- Authorization to Vote and One-stop Application forms,
- Absentee ballot requests and absentee ballot application envelopes, and
- Provisional voting application envelopes.
The State Board will periodically review record retention policies to ensure evidence remains available for investigations.
*Standard-8: Please access the link provided above for the 2013 amendment schedule and scroll down to review.
↓ Retention of Records Related to Previous Elections: Numbered Memo 2016-13 (PDF)