NC Elections 2010

In the past week there has been a lot of discussion at several meetings and among neighborhood council leaders across the City on how we can bring the cost of neighborhood council elections down. As you may know, the City Clerk will oversee our elections in the future and they are earnestly working on all the preparations for the 2010 election year.

STNC's election will be held during the week of March 21-28, 2010 unless the City Council votes next week to postpone til after July 1, 2010.

I attended the City Clerk hosted Elections Group meeting this past Saturday. Below are some notes from the meeting. More to follow in the coming weeks. Also see this announcement flyer by the City Clerk's office: http://tiny.cc/C6vPk

1. Concern regarding City Council and budget dollars for NC elections.
2. Vote By Mail - Regardless of City Council decision the NC Elections Group has determined the VBM procedures:
- VBM person fills out form that can be provided by NC outreach but once goes to City Clerk there is no other handling by anyone other than the City Clerk.
3. Disabled stakeholders and on site voting on election day. Concerns as to cost for transporting disabled voters.
4. Ballot Design - Suggested that color ballots be used to include all voting categories for that region. Example: EC Board on Region 1 + group rep ballots. Reason: some NCs have had as many as 7 pages of ballots per voter.
a. City Clerk is testing an Electronic voting system that would be integrated.
b. City Clerk has designed the ballots so they will always be the same as to design, fonts, no titles, alpha order per Elections Procedures, etc.
5. Vote Results - No results on night of election. Official results within 7 days (this varies depending on NC). City Clerk will issue certified results and post to web site. City Clerk will certify final election results.
6. Challenges - There is a thorough list of what challenges must provide to file a challenge to an election. City Clerk will respond to challenges within 30-days. The NC Regional Grievance process will be used should the City Clerk's response not be satisfactory.
7. The 5-day period is same period of time for recount and challenge. Same time window.
8. Election timeline reviewed. Does not include outreach. NCs responsible for elections outreach.
9. NCs to create an Attachment C to the Elections Procedures that will be the "outreach timeline". This will be in collaboration with the Region NC's they want to work with. Outreach costs to be responsibility of each NC.
10. City Clerk staff are available to visit all NCs to go through the 2010 Elections Procedures. They will visit twice if requested.
11. City Clerk determines polling location.
12. 2008 Filing Forms will be posted to the City Clerk web site. This will be the next item reviewed at the Elections Group meeting on June 6.
13. June 13 will be the voting for election day for the Regions. It would be good for NCs to get together on this in advance so as to save time. STNC is Region B.