Postmortem Report for Precinct 19-24 for the 3/3/26 Election

Summary

Although this was the second election at the Hope Lutheran Church polling place, it was the first to use the Friendship Hall and Lobby as the Voting Enclosure and to use the Church's traffic circle for curbside voting. This change was made because of a Church scheduling conflict, but occurred very late in the election cycle. The lateness caused some difficulties. However the new configuration worked very well. It is desired as our normal configuration vs the Narthex and its nearby curbside area that we had used in the first election at this polling place on 11/4/25.

This was a fairly light election. Occasionally there were lines of about a dozen people for the Registration Table and lines of two or three curbside cars, sometimes with two curbside voters per car. The weather was not very good -- cool and cloudy much of Tuesday. During Monday Setup there were some sprinkles at the start, but that didn't last. There were no major problems during the election.

Statistics

As of 3/2/26 the total number of registered 19-24 voters eligible to vote in this election was 5092. The turnout for this election was about 10.8% at the polling place and 11.0% via absentee voting (mail-in or one-stop) for a total of about 21.8% of the Precinct 19-24 people eligible to vote in this election. In contrast, for Wake County as a whole, 20.3% of the eligible voters cast ballots.

Tabulator vs ATV counts:  550 vs 550
Provisional ballots:          2
Spoiled ballots:              7
Emergency bin ballots:        0
Challenged ballots:           0

Curbside voters:             14
ExpressVote voters:           0
Observers:                    0  (0 Precinct-Specific Observers)
                                 (0 At-Large Observers)

Eligible voters:           5092  (eligible to vote in this election)

Monday-list absentees:      555  (the long list in pollbook box #1)
Last-minute absentees:        4  (the short list gotten from the PO website)
                           ----
Total absentees:            559

Voting booths set up:        14  (includes 1 provisional and 1 accessible)
Total chairs at tables:       0
                             --
Total "booths"               14

Here is the Ballot Count Reconciliation web page.

Staffing, Email, and Votari

1. We were assigned eleven Officials for this election, one less than my desired twelve. Twelve provides a person at each position, including two at the Help Table (HT) and two at curbside. That is with no one taking a break. Fortunately the turnout in this election was light enough and ATV-exception-free enough that we did not require two people at the HT. However we definitely did need two people at curbside a number of times. When that happened, I usually filled in at the Tabulator to free up the Tabulator Monitor to work curbside.
2. The Officials rotated thru the positions a great deal, giving everyone a good experience at many positions. That will be useful in future elections.
3. Spam filtering caused difficulties when contacting two of the Officials.
4. Votari seemed to have a number of problems, e.g., being offline or not properly recording class attendance status. However the latter may have been a manual problem, resulting in the BOE Staff sending out "not attended" notices to people who had actually taken the online Basics class.
5. I put key files on my website as reference material for the Officials in Precinct 19-24.

Polling Place Setup

1. See our Voting Enclosure layout and voter path diagrams. We configured for three Registration Table (RT) lines; that turned out to be required, even for this pretty low turnout election. Friendship Hall is very spacious, in contrast to the Narthex. It gives more than enough room for the three RT lines as well as a nearby Observer area and all the election stations. The Hall also has separate entry and exit doors.
2. Having the Lobby as part of the Voting Enclosure is a definite plus. It gives us a place to line up many voters inside. That would certainly be good if the weather is bad.
3. We set up a rain table in the Lobby at the Hall entrance to let people dry themselves and put their umbrellas in plastic grocery bags if needed. Fortunately Tuesday turned out to be a dry day despite some earlier weather forecasts.
4. For curbside layout information, see curbside.
5. Diagrams show our outside signs and inside signs layouts. Most of my signs had a red "Return to Jeff" written on the back. For the next election, that will be added to all of my signs.
6. The preschool was still in session on Election Day. That complicates voter parking.
7. An attempt was made via a Nextdoor social media post to warn voters about special considerations for the Hope Lutheran polling place. The post linked to the 19-24.htm web page, which also had a lot of "how to" election information, e.g., how to see/change your voter registration information.

ATV Form, Photo ID, and HAVA ID

1. I audited all 550 ATVs and found only one problem, which was at the Ballot Table. See the Ballot Table.
2. We did not have any photo ID problems. A far as I know, all voters successfully used an NC driver license for the ID. We had no HAVA ID exceptions. There were MANY "V" pollbook labels, but only one of those people came in to vote. No voter forgot to bring in their photo ID and had to go back to the car to get it.
3. We encountered one very unusual pollbook label. A lady had an exception-free pollbook label; however the RT Official saw there was another label with almost the same voter name (different middle name) and exactly the same residence address as the lady's. That other label had an "F" and an "ID" exception. We let the lady vote since her label had no problems; she knew nothing about the peculiar label that specified her address and almost her name. She was understandably anxious to find out what was going on. After the election I sent an email to the BOE Staff with details about all this so they could investigate the "ID"/"F" label that seemed to be trying to be the label for the lady who had a valid label.

Registration Table

1. At our Monday Setup meeting, I went over my index-card-size "flowchart" that describes the RT procedures. I pointed out things that are sometimes missed by RT Officials. The RT card is easier to follow than the RTQG flowchart. It also corrects a number of ATV-marking errors that can arise from the RTQG flowchart's flow. On Election Day the RT Officials used that card for their personal notes and had the RT Quick Guide flowchart taped to the table, as required by the BOE. During the day I often had the Officials refer to the card to answer a question they had.
2. Only one person signed the Voter Assistance Log.
3. No actual voter had an "F" exception. The only "F" encountered was on the likely bogus "ID"/"F" label mentioned above in Photo ID, HAVA ID, and ATV Form.

Ballot Table

1. We had two ballot styles, so two BT Officials and a scanner, which worked properly.
2. For the first few voters the Ballot Table Officials had not filled in the "Ballot Style Issued" field in the ATVs. I caught that and it was quickly corrected. Also, twice I had to remind the POs to be sure the "Ballot Style Issued" field was filled in for curbside ATVs when the ballot was issued by the Ballot Table. Other than these few cases, the 550 ATVs were error free.

Help Table

1. Despite the many "V"s in our pollbooks, we had hardly any Help Table activity. There was just one "V" voter, who had moved from one address in our precinct to another address in our precinct, but had not updated their voter registration information.
2. There was one Libertarian voter who had to be told that he was not in our pollbooks because there were no Libertarian contests in our precinct in this election.
3. Our HT got one call from another polling place to do the "T" processing, which went well. On the other hand, our HT did not have to call any other polling places to handle an unreported move into our precinct.

Line Monitor and Door Monitor

1. In this election we had enough Officials to designate one as the combined Door Monitor and Line Monitor. That Official asked every entering voter if they had brought in their photo ID before the voter got in an RT line. No voter forgot their ID and had to go back to their car to get it.
2. There were a few parents/kids who tried to enter the Lobby to get to the back stairs, which led to some classrooms. They were told about another way to get there. We wanted only BOE-authorized people to get into the Lobby, which was part of the Voting Enclosure.

Curbside

1. We had 14 curbside voters this time. At least three times there were two such voters per car and sometimes two or three cars lined up for curbside service. Fortunately we had a very experienced Curbside Official and she was able to train two others to do this work. So we usually had two Curbside Officials who could be called upon when needed to handle a surge of curbside voters. Often I filled in, usually as the Tabulator Monitor, at the unoccupied position left open by the person who was needed to be the second Curbside Official. In this election vs in 2025, I never had to be a Curbside Official.
2. The new "F" process was not documented for curbside, but applied there just as much as at the Registration Table. The "Voter Assistance Log" process was added for curbside by the NCSBE at the last moment and was not well documented.
3. All these new processes and the old photo ID check mean the Curbside Official now has to carry many pieces of paper out to the car; it's no longer just an ATV that is required or may be needed at the car. To handle this problem, I put together a special folder for each Curbside Official to hold all this material. I taped my curbside diagram to the front together with a pen that the Curbside Official could use instead of the pen tied to the privacy sleeve that the voter uses.
4. For this election the Church required us to use a different Voting Enclosure, which meant a different Curbside Parking area than we had used in the Narthex configuration. For this election's curbside area we used the traffic circle that goes by the Lobby door and then by the main Church door that leads to the Narthex and Sanctuary. That arrangement worked very well. Hopefully we can use it in the future even in the Narthex configuration.
5. The Curbside Parking area that we used for the Narthex configuration in 2025 was totally dark near the end of the day. For this election the BOE provided an LED lighting system. It worked well and is much more compact than the system they gave us to use at the Sanford Creek Elementary School polling place. The Friendship Hall configuration has a little outside Church lighting, but the LED system is probably still needed there. For this election we did not have any curbside cars show up after dark, so did not get a chance to do a real-life test.

Coordinator

1. We had one visit from our Coordinator. She found no problems with our setup.
2. She was able to provide us with two more sign stand kits. I had requested those several times for the Hope Lutheran polling place, but they were never provided. We had used such extra stands at the Sanford Creek Elementary School polling place; they are needed at Hope Lutheran for the same reasons.

Voters

No voters acted improperly. All seemed to be in a pretty good mood.

Campaigners/Others

1. There were few Campaigners. There were no problems with any of them.
2. One Campaigner complained that she was not allowed to use the Church restrooms. I explained that the BOE explicitly restricts who can enter the Voting Enclosure. The Lobby restrooms are accessed thru the Lobby and the Lobby is considered to be part of the Voting Enclosure. Moreover, the Church does not want ANY non-official people inside the Church buildings. That is very understandable considering the preschool activity at this site during Election Day.
3. After poll closing and we had printed the Tabulator tapes, I hung tape #4 in a well lit area near the Lobby door. I then notified the remaining campaign workers that it was available for them to take pictures. There were no problems in that area.
4. The campaign workers did a very good job cleaning up. I found nothing left on Church property when I did my check on Wednesday morning. The only remaining signs were on Town property along Rogers Rd. near the Church driveway.

Observers

We had no Observers in this election. I had set up a table and chairs in a wide, open area across from the Registration Table in case we had any Observers. It is much easier to do that in the Friendship Hall configuration than in the Narthex configuration. For the latter I still don't know where we could put Observers since the Narthex room is very narrow compared to Friendship Hall.

ExpressVote

1. We had no ExpressVote users.
2. In the Friendship Hall configuration, there is plenty of room to set up the ExpressVote, well away from where it might accidentally be considered to be the Tabulator.
3. For this election as for the ones before, I had copied the relevant pages from the Manual and Chief Judge Pocket Guide so I could put a hardcopy of those pages by the ExpressVote. There is still no hardcopy setup/use/takedown document packed with the ExpressVote as there had been with the AutoMark. That lack of easily accessible documentation where it is most needed seems to be a problem.

Tabulator and Black Tabulator Base

There were no problems in this area.

Reconciliation Process

The end-of-day ballot reconciliation worked well. I had provided a ballot count worksheet and copy of a draft Reconciliation Form for the Ballot Table. Our BT Official completed all this before the Judges got involved, so all we had to do was doublecheck the arithmetic and copy the numbers to the official form. See Ballot Count Reconciliation for 3/3/26 for the worksheet. The only problem we had was me, the CJ, trying to remember what one of the Reconciliation Form's fields was supposed to contain; finally I read it correctly. (Getting up at 4:00 AM has its consequences.)

Packing Up

1. Packing up is always a hectic time, as we rush to meet the deadline for the dropoff site. We use a Packing Up after the Election set of pages to try to keep things organized. One of our Officials acted as a packup coordinator and did a very good job.
2. Because we had many Friendship Hall (Church) tables available at the end of the day, vs no Church or BOE tables in the Narthex configuration, packing up was easier in the tables area than in 2025. We had two designated tables (a WCBOE Table and a Jeff's Table) to separate the items that must go to the BOE dropoff site vs those I take home, e.g., some signs I keep in my garage between elections.

   In this election we found the WCBOE Table had so many items on it that it was overflowing. For the next election we will create a larger WCBOE Table by combining two Church tables. In contrast, one Church table should be adequate for the Jeff's Table.

3. For the 2025 election, on Tuesday night we had to cram all the BOE furniture and other election equipment into a small closet, which was not easy -- think of one of those a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles. For the 3/3/26 election, the BOE instead delivered all the BOE items to the front of Friendship Hall and had us put the items back there at poll closing. Unfortunately this was also where Church furniture was stored and the two sets were mixed together.

   No one had notified me that the delivery location had been changed from the outdoor closet to Friendship Hall, so my Packing Up pages did not reflect this change of the movers area. It also made poll closing harder since the front of the Hall was where the Tabulator was plugged in and the Judges needed that space for poll closing. This all meant the BOE items for the movers had to temporarily be put elsewhere during the first part of poll closing, then moved to the front of the room (the designated movers area) after the Judges had packed the ballots.

4. I met with Pastor Murphy on Election Day to discuss how we could handle the BOE delivery, etc., in the future. I proposed that from now on we would use just Church furniture and have the BOE no longer deliver any tables and chairs. The reduced set of BOE items (voting booths, the Tabulator Base, the ExpressVote and its table, a bunch of A-frame signs, and the gray bin) should more easily fit in the outdoor closet. The Pastor agreed that we could use any Church furniture we needed and they would move it where required, e.g., to the Narthex. We just must tell him before the election what is needed. I sent all this information to the BOE to have them update the appropriate places.

Supply Pickups and Delivery

1. Except for the standard non-sticking ballot box labels, there were no problems at the weekend pickup site. There were some documentation problems with the CJ Supply Bag contents. I emailed the BOE Staff about those on Saturday night.

   As usual the "don't open" ballot box labels applied at weekend supply pickup tend to get unstuck easily and even fall off completely, e.g., in the trunk of my car before I unload the boxes to my house. The Voted and Unvoted labels we Judges apply on Election Day seem to stick better. I have been told that all the labels are from the same stock. Is it just that we apply our labels more carefully? At the 2025 CJ class another CJ pointed out exactly the same problem, as I have done for many years now.

2. There were no problems with Monday Supply Pickup.
3. I barely made it on time to the Tuesday night dropoff site. I think when removing the BOE items from my car the workers also removed five of my signs. I emailed the BOE Staff pictures of the missing signs. I need to get them back before the next election.

Hardware and Supplies

1. The CJ Starter Kit Polling Place Report no longer lists the number of laptops we are supposed to get. We got only one this time, which was adequate for this light election.
2. At Weekend Pickup I received an iPhone as our mobile phone. We had little trouble with it during the election. Other than a cryptic email from the Staff on Saturday night, there was no information about using this replacement. We later heard the replacement was done at only about 20 sites and is temporary.
3. We red-tagged a Quick Stix vinyl sign stand which had one missing rod and one badly bent rod. We also red-tagged a dry-erasable sign stand; it had a broken base, which we taped together.

See Hardware and Supplies for some other supplies comments from past elections that still apply, e.g., for the CJ lanyard and card holder.

See BOE Wish List for my current general wish list.

Documentation and Training

1. It was very good to provide Chief Judges the ability to take the Help Table course online and to give them access to the Basic module.
2. Over the months before this election I have emailed to the BOE Staff a lot of document comments. Some of the more significant are also noted in Actions for Remaining Proposals and Comments.
3. The three "F" documents used at the Registration Table and at curbside were never put on the PO website under Training Resources.
4. The assistance details on the back of the VA Log differ from those in the Manual.
5. The late information about "F" and the VA log did not make it to the Manual or curbside instructions, e.g., on the back of the privacy sleeve. Hopefully the NCSBE is being told (OFTEN!) that their late changes can cause worse problems than the problems they think they are solving.

Miscellaneous

1. We put two Registration forms in the blue bag.
2. We found an iPhone some voter left behind in the Voting Enclosure, but could not immediately find the person who had left it. The Officials thought it probably belonged to a man, his wife, and two kids, who had been in a while earlier. They had made a big impression on people. Sometime later, well after the phone was found, the BT Officials made a good guess about who might own the phone by looking back thru the ATVs to find two that looked like a man and wife pair.

   Using that guess, I called the BOE Staff and gave them the ATV names to see if they could contact those people and determine if the phone belonged to them. A short time later the found phone rang (it was in my pocket). I answered and learned it was the BOE Staff calling the man. So now we knew who owned the phone, but calling him just called me, not him. Next the Staff member said he would call the wife's phone -- fortunately they had that second phone number. I heard nothing more from the Staff, but apparently that call to the wife was successful since later the man showed up at the polling place, child in tow, to retrieve his phone. There was a lot of applause and smiles from all the Officials. As the man left he yelled, "Pizza for all!" However we never got any pizza; maybe because it was late in the day and the delivery was attempted after we had left.

Future Considerations

1. We need two more sign kits (the sign stands) from the BOE, as we had two extra at Sanford Creek Elementary School -- we need eight in all.

   We may also need more outside signs; that will depend on whether Hope Lutheran does declare the next Election Day as a teacher work day.  TBD.

2. See the last item in Packing Up for how we should now handle BOE equipment delivery. In summary:
   • No longer deliver BOE tables and chairs. The Church will now provide any furniture we need.
   • Put all delivered items in the outside closet, as was done for the 2025 election.
3. See Actions for Remaining Proposals and Comments.
4. In the CJ portal, say who has signed up for classes. You already say who has taken them. Then CJs can help bug the laggards who haven't signed up.
5. Put the PO assignees list back on the PO website. I was told it was removed because it had personal data (which data?), not because it named the POs and exposed them to harassment. The assignees list was very useful, e.g., to let a PO learn the name of the CJ for the PO's assigned precinct. Then the PO would know to expect contact from that CJ and should regularly check if that person had been spam filtered. More on this is in suggestions about CJs contacting their assigned Officials.

Photos

Photos and explanatory text for the pre-setup Hope Lutheran Church site are in the Hope Lutheran Church album.

Photos and explanatory text about the post-setup 19-24 Voting Enclosure, voting equipment, etc., are in the Election in the 3-3-2026 album.

If you are unfamiliar with viewing Google Photo albums, here are some hints. In particular, note how to use the "circle i" to view the full text beside each picture. When viewing the information, be sure to scroll to the top; sometimes Google Photos starts the information display partway down.