Recommendation to receive and file a presentation from the Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk relative to the November 3, 2020 General Municipal Election.  (Citywide)
Item six. Just one moment. Report from City Clerk recommendation to receive and file a presentation from the Los Angeles Registrar Recorder County Clerk relative to the November 3rd, 2020. General Municipal Elections Citywide. A Vice Mayor here to assist us with the presenting information on the November general election is Monica Flores, government and legislative affairs manager for the Los Angeles Registrar Court county clerk. Good evening. This is Monica Flores. Thank you for having me. I've mentioned I'm the manager of governmental legislative affairs with the county's registrar recorder's office. And today I will be providing a quick overview of how long before voters voted in March, as well as how our preparations are going for the November election. Next slide, please. One more. In May I present the findings of our analysis of the March election to your Election Oversight Committee. A few questions were raised during that meeting and then were asked for me to come here to present to your full council and some of these details in the March election. We found that 35% of Long Beach voters voted in person and 65% of your voters actually voted via mail. 22% of those in-person voters voted during the first ten days of the voting period. And the busiest voting centers in your city were Eldorado Park West, Bayshore Community Congregation Church and the Panamerican Park. You can see here in the presentation the number of voters that voted at each one of these locations. Next five things. One more. So we are now well on our way with the preparations for the November general election. And as all things in our lives, the election will look very different than any of the elections we have seen before. To begin, all voters will be issued a vote by mail ballot. This is a 2.5 million ballot increase over what was mailed in the county for the primary election. This was done by initially by a board motion supported by a governor's executive order and then legislation that was passed in the state. We have also expanded our vote by mail drop boxes to 400 that will be placed across the county. This is an increase from approximately 250 that were placed in the for the March election. Additionally, the number of centers that we will be deploying in the county will change. For this election, we will have 11 days of voting, so a ten day early voting period and we will have 75 sites open for 11 day and 725 of the sites open for five days for a total of 800 sites open throughout L.A. County. Additionally, we have implemented a safe election plan which incorporates the state and county code with guidelines to ensure safety at our vote centers. Next slide. Our priorities in this election are the safety and security of our voters and election workers. We seek to maximize vote by mail options and participate participation. We are looking to align the capacity to the highest expected volume and to predictive analytics, so placing the resources in the right place. We are looking to market voting events to encourage early voting. We will be targeting our mobile and flex programs to address geographically isolated areas and voters who have historically faced barriers to access. Additionally, we will be placing these types of sites at locations that have a lot of essential workers, such as hospitals, to ensure that those essential workers have the opportunity to vote. We are looking to implement and communicate a broad mass media campaign and voter education campaign to encourage our voters to plan ahead and to make sure they know all of their options for voting. Like. This. Here is a list of the vote centers that we have confirmed for Long Beach for the November election. In your city, we have 29 confirmed sites and we are currently either assessing or negotiating a few more sites, just about another handful. You may notice that some of the sites used in March are not on this list due to COVID social distancing guidelines. We need larger spaces for our vote centers. This means that some of the sites used in March did not meet the new requirements. We will be finalizing this list within the next week and I will share that list of both centers in Long Beach with your city clerk, Monique, who can pass this information along. Additionally, the vote center lists will be shared with all our voters, as we did in March. We will be sending a booklet that lists all of the vote centers in the county to every household in L.A. County. Next slide, please. This. Here is a list of the drop boxes that will be in Long Beach. We have 18 box boxes secured. Some of these boxes are still being installed, but all will be installed by October 5th, which is the date which all the boxes must open. Voters will receive information on these drop boxes within their vote by mail packet. In that packet they will have a list of their nearest locations, and then they can also find that all of the drop boxes on our website as they count the votes centers. We did receive one more request for a Dropbox and we are currently in Longreach and we are currently looking at our inventory and the spacing or distribution of boxes to see if that box really adds value to the Long Beach boaters. So this list might grow by one or two more. Next slide. As I mentioned, we have established a safe presidential election plan to keep our voters and election workers safe at our vote centers. This plan complies with state and county guidelines. So to begin, as I mentioned, all voters will be mailed a vote by mail ballot. We will encourage our voters to stay home and use their ballots, but we will offer in-person voting. The in-person voting will implement social distancing throughout the whole process, from the line to casting the ballot. We will ask voters to wear a face covering, and we will have masks and gloves available for voters who request them. Hand sanitizer will be available upon entry and exit and on other key stations throughout the vote center. Our election workers will wear protective gloves and masks, and all of the devices will be sanitized between our after after voters. Finally, curbside voting will be available for any voters who do not have a mask or refuse to wear a mask, or for any voter who is just unable to enter the vote center. Next slide. The timeline or key dates for this election. September 24th, we will be mailing sample ballot booklets. October 5th, we will begin the mailing of vote by mail ballots. This is also the date that our drop boxes open and the date that early voting begins here in Norwalk at the RCC headquarters. Next important deadline is October 19th, and that is the end of voter registration. The voter is not registered by this date. We will not be mailing a vote by mail ballot. They do have the opportunity to register in person at a vote center if they still wish to do so. Our vote centers will open on October 24. The hours of operations are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., except for the final day of voting, which is the 7 a.m. m to 8 p.m.. That's fine. And this is my quick overview of what we have coming into Long Beach as we continue to secure vote centers and drop boxes . Like I said, I will communicate with your city clerk, move money, and I will pass on information as well about election worker recruitment and training. And then my final comment is, is to thank you, your council and your city clerk money. Thank you all for your support. You have been great partners in this. You really assisted us in overcoming challenges that we have seen due to COVID, and our department truly appreciates that. Thank you. Thank you very much. I do have anybody coming in this item. Yes, we have Tiffany Davey. Good evening, Mayor. Council residents of Long Beach and Stephanie Darby, fourth district resident. I want to thank Monica Forest so much for that really in-depth presentation. And I just want to highlight a couple of reflections actually following this presentation, coupled with the presentation she gave to the Election Oversight Committee on May 26. So just speaking to Howie, just a couple of reflections during this crucial transition to the voting solutions for all people and vote center model. Having served in elections for the past 12 years, I make the following advertisements. Having served as well in the 2020 primaries, L.A. County has 20 you know, 27% of the voters take part in voting in the ten days prior to Election Day, with the remaining 73% of voters taking place on Election Day. With that, a couple of issues arise. Address with the disproportion of previous polling places. L.A. County previously to voting model had 5000 polling places. But with implementation of this up, we had in that primary 978 I believe the report stated. With the new system, it also allows any resident of L.A. County to vote at any vote center, which I am a strong opponent and supporter of. Access to the polls, as every person has a right to vote, should exercise that right part of the way to serve the public. However, that dissatisfied 20% and the aforementioned wait times are resulting up to 2 hours kind of reflects that squeeze towards. 73% voting at 20% over the previous amount of polling places. So I just want to take this opportunity to really encourage all voters to take part in early voting. As Monica stated in the report, polling places will be open from October 24th, October 5th, on vote by mail boxes will be open, really take advantage of those dates . We saw very few voter turnout as again reflected with the percentage. So, again, let's remember a couple of other things really quickly. California's a no I.D. state, so please, to ease whatever we may face on Election Day, please remember the election staff will advise you on whether or not you need to show ID, as there are some exceptions to that rule. Again, we do not need to see your ID unless you are asked to do so. Thank you in advance to all of our nation's poll workers and disaster service workers as we are facing this continued ongoing pandemic. And I look forward to us taking care of each other as a nation. Thank you, everyone. Have a good evening. Thank you. That concludes public comment. Thank you. Do we have any further comment on this item? We just finished that. Okay. Do we have any council phones? You know, I do not have any council phones, so you see, it's so good. Keep it up. You know, I'm going to go down in order, you know. So the council comments. So District one. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to say thank you very much for that great presentation. I know that this is a challenging time for everyone, and I just want to say thank you and thank you to our city clerk's office for the amazing work that they do. And I look forward to seeing all their great work be shown on November 3rd and before that so when elections happen. Thank you so much. Very supportive of this. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you so much for joining us and presenting today. I think as I mentioned earlier in the council meeting, civic engagement and voter turnout is very critical not only for statewide measures, but local measures and just ensuring that our residents feel like they're engaged and that their vote matters. We know that there when we're talking about inequalities in our city, we know that different demographics in our city vote higher than others. And sometimes that's related to multiple jobs, maybe childcare situation, maybe not being able to get to the polls in time. So I hope that every constituent that is able to vote in this election knows that they will be getting a vote by mail ballot and that they can vote before the final Election Day. And so I really appreciate having the time to talk about this with the council. I appreciate the partnership with the county. Thanks so much. Disagree. District four. Thank you for an excellent presentation. Thank you. Second District by. It seven. Again. It's my honor. And I want to thank the staff for the great presentation. Very important that we get out the vote and that we make it as easy as possible to submit the vote. One question in regards to the drop boxes, are they secured? Yes, the drop boxes are secured, so the drop boxes are actually bolted to the ground. They are a material that is has been tested to be very difficult to destroy. The boxes themselves are also locked in during periods that are not voting periods. And can you give an example of when a person would be required to show ID? Sure. There's really in one instance, there were an individual's required to provide an ID, and that is when it is a new voter who when they registered, we were unable to verify them in the state database. And that is usually either because they didn't provide either the last four digits of their social or a California driver's license number. So very small instances, but there are opportunities. So I appreciate a council member bringing that up. And finally, will there be literature going out to the voting public in regards to the information we provided tonight? Yes. So we have already sent out two mailers to every registered voter. The first one was an address verification postcard, really informing voters to to ensure that their postcard is verified. It was affordable by us. So if you move but didn't notify us, then you would return that ballot with that postcard with the new address. We also sent out a postcard asking any voter who's interested in updating the language in which they receive their material to let us know. And then the other pieces of mailers that will be sent out are, as usual, the sample ballot, the vote by mail packet. But then they will also be receiving that information within that booklet that I mentioned that lists all the vote centers. And then voters will also be receiving a postcard listing their nearest vote centers, as they did in March. So all of those mailers are opportunities for us to communicate with the voters, and they will have messaging that includes this information that I shared. Additionally, we are kicking off our mass media campaign this week. So beginning tomorrow you should see us all over social media, over traditional media. We will be out of home. So billboards, even in signage, in supermarkets, locations that we know voters are frequently that these days. So radio, local publications and so forth. So a lot of messaging will begin tomorrow. Thank you very much, everybody. It's. Mr. Gay. Disegno. Sure. Thank you. Just thought, first of all, thank you. The president. This is a big election. There's a lot of changes. One thing I wanted to. One thing I wanted to raise during the primary. We would have a number of vote centers, Colin Powell, a local church and smothered in the North Lombard area. And Colin Powell, although there was a lot of space, a lot of empty voting booths. A lot of people knew about it. It was hard to. It's it's on the edge of the town and it's hard to access. And at the time, our regional park out in park was under construction. And so that's our regional park. That's where everyone goes. That's right in the heart of North Long Beach. And and now it's open. The training center's done. I wonder, is it you mentioned you're considering additional voting center locations. I think Highland Park makes more sense in the 95 zip code, given it's the largest zip code in the city and it's smack dab in the middle and it's accessible from all directions. What needs to happen in order to make Highland Park a vote center? Thank you, Councilmember, for that recommendation. Let me take this back and look at it. I will definitely. If the park wasn't open, maybe it just wasn't fully on our radar and we didn't consider it as we assess locations. But I have made note of this and we'll we'll go back to our team to see if we can immediately send out an assessment team to assess the location and, if possible, work out an agreement with the facility. And I can work with City Clerk Moni to to secure the location. That that works. I think it works a lot better. There's a fresh new parking lot turning loop, the 30,000 square foot facility with lots of open space so you can social distance. I just think it makes a lot more sense in that space. Thank you for for looking into it and I'll keep in contact. Thanks. Thank you. Bye. And you have a motion in second on this place. Emotions and dangers. Second Richardson. Thank you very much, Greg. Please take a vote. District one. I district to. My. District three. High. School. District four, District five. District five. Right. District six. By. District seven. By District eight. District eight. District nine. All right. Motion carries. Thank you. Now who I am. Could you go ahead and read the item, please? Communication from Councilman's Councilman Super Na recommendation to increase appropriations in the Capital Project Fund Group in the Public Works Department in the amount of $620 to install a new streetlight in the fourth Council District. District four.