With another meeting not scheduled until September, the V.I. Joint Boards of Elections met Thursday on St. Croix with the goal of finishing a list of unfinished business related to the ballot layouts and the 2014 policies and procedures for the upcoming primary and general elections.
After some bickering over what the agenda would be, the first 75 minutes of discussion centered on the process and policies regarding walk-in, absentee voting and how to stay compliant with elections laws defining that process despite having new tabulating equipment to use that wasn’t around when the laws were written.
The conundrum, which was debated heavily and – at times – heatedly among board members, was whether to keep that process the same as was done in past elections despite the new voting equipment being in place for the upcoming 2014 election which can in fact provide an independent paper audit trail and be secured daily if necessary.
Simply put, whether or not to put full trust into the new machines and the security features that come along with them.
Board member Raymond Williams wanted the DS200 machine utilized immediately, meaning the walk-in absentee ballots would be fed into the DS200 machine designated for absentee voting once the voter finished completing his or her ballot.
A process for how to handle absentee ballots received from outside the territory was discussed and passed at last month’s joint boards meeting.
“The bottom line is whatever number of machines we use, we don’t close the polls. We just secure the machine until the next day,” Williams said.
Board member Lilliana Belardo de O’Neal disagreed and wanted to utilize the absentee ballot boxes that were used in the past.
“In previous elections we’ve had too many people accuse this board of fraud and all kinds of things and, in order to secure those ballots, we should put them in the box, not in the machine, secure them and lock them and then open them 10 days after as mandated by law,” she said.
“Allow the people to not have the perception that we are putting in ballots by opening the machine every day and closing it. We should go through the simple method of putting those ballots into the box that we have.”
De O’Neal clarified her position in more detail later.
“On that day that you decide to open that box and you do it in front of people so that people see it, then if you want to submit them to the machine you do that process. But those ballots should be secured until such time,” she said.
When Supervisor of Elections Caroline Fawkes was asked to chime in on the subject, she wanted policy change.
“We can utilize the wooden boxes that we did in the past. But I would add to that that we’re using new systems and, if we’re going to change, we need to move forward,” Fawkes said. “If we got new systems and we need to be moving ahead then we need to adopt and change some rules and (regulations) to use the new system. We can’t be mixing the old box with the new system.”
Board member Wilma Marsh-Monsanto agreed with the supervisor.
“To go back to the old box system with a lock, we have record of a security breach by those same boxes,” Marsh-Monsanto said. “Do we want a repeat of this same thing? We have to be very careful how we address the issue of securing ballots in their entirety.”
Ultimately de O’Neal’s motion passed after board member Rupert Ross made an amendment to it that said the walk-in absentee ballots would be opened the day after the election.
At one point the debate got so heated that de O’Neal said to Marsh-Monsanto that if she didn’t like the current law, then “change the law.”
In other policies and procedures discussed for the upcoming election cycle, the board also decided that an audit would be performed within 30 days of an election being certified.
After a lunch break, the sample ballots and how they’d look in terms of color and fonts and how they would read, specifically in Spanish, took the stage.
With the Aug. 2 primary now less than two months away, it was imperative primary ballots be squared away as law requires them to be delivered 45 days prior to the primary election – June 17.
“Some of these words I myself have a problem with,” de O’Neal said of the Spanish and her desire to ensure more Crucians who speak Spanish understand what’s actually being asked of them.
Fawkes told her she had two days to get it right, and eventually Rupert Ross and O’Neal agreed they would try to do just that.
Marsh-Monsanto wanted more, and specifically asked for Fawkes to contact a foreign languages expert from the Department of Education.
“How do we know her Spanish is the good Spanish?” Marsh-Monsanto said of de O’Neal.
O’Neal appeared slightly offended by the remark.
“Because I’m a Hispanic here,” she said.
Board Chairwoman Alecia Wells was absent as were members Claudette Georges, Lawrence Boschulte and Lydia Hendricks.
