The #cambma Election Commission is setting up for "advance removal" of early voting ballots today. This is basically removing them from envelops and flattening them, but not running them through tabulating machines (which comes Friday).

Rumor has it that staff will recommend that the Cambridge lock its ballot dropboxes overnight at 8pm, instead of 24x7 access, in light of security concerns after the BPL dropbox fire/arson.

(Arguably such a step will mean the arsonists have successfully disrupted the election.)

Oh, editing! That was originally: "that the Cambridge Election Commission lock" but it got edited down to "the Cambridge lock" instead of "Cambridge lock."

Ah, well.

Anyhow, it's (probably) a decision for the 4-member Board of Election Commissioners to make.

ANYHOW, back to Advance Removal.
They are going precinct-by-precinct, starting with the largest, 11-2:
STEP ONE: Counting the jurat envelopes into piles of 50. Verifying that all ballots have been properly sorted. The envelopes are not opened in this step.

705 jurat envelopes are counted for Precint 11-2.

Step two is slicing open the jurat envelopes AND verifying that there is only 1 ballot in each envelope.

(There was some talk of an electric envelope opening/slicing machine, but apparently there MAY be problems with it slicing ballots sometimes, so it is not present right now, but it might be coming.

…

…

The State changed the jurat envelope design to have the flap on the long edge, which increases the risk of ballot damage when the envelopes are opened))

Cambridge Precinct 11-2 is, by the way, North Cambridge:

Turns out the 705 number was not correct — an Election Commissioner just showed up with an additional stack of ballots for precinct 11-2. Not sure it's been counted yet, but it will be added to the count.

Step 3 is checking in the voter on an iPad, ensuring they have been properly checked in. They use the barcode scanner.
Confusingly, GREEN on the iPad is bad (voter already checked in) they are looking for a PURPLE banner on the screen.

Also, they got upgraded fro. old fashioned knife-style letter openers to plastic protected razorblade openers (pictured here) that are *much* more efficient.

As the check-in occurs, poll workers are to read the name of he voter aloud to facilitate observation, jut as would happen at a regular poll.

This is…a little rough.

After check-in,
Step 4 is unfolding and flattening the ballots so they will be ready to feed into the tabulation machines on Friday.

Sometimes, despite best efforts, a ballot gets cut durong the opening process. Then it gets taped back together and placed in the "auxilliary" ballot pile that may be hand counted after election night.

Also, apparently the label printing process had some alignment issues, and some label stickers have a barcode from the previous sticker (at the top?) as well as the correct barcode (at the bottom?).
This means that scanning those labels on the iPads is problematic — can be wrong.

This is a place where the iPad software could be better.
Ideally it would see two barcodes in the picture and raise an error, rather than just going with the first one.

The iPads (also known as "PollPads") also print a "receipt" for each ballot checked in. Pictured here hanging off the table.

I'm told that this is to facilitate a potential future audit.

[It's not the most convenient format, but I'm not sure what all the equities are.]

And if you're curious, Cambridge had a massive oversupply of election workers, with far too many volunteers (hundreds more than they could use), so they had to turn people away starting months ago.

https://twitter.com/HarvardAsh/status/1320758682574008323

(Ugh, @HarvardAsh deleted the above quoted tweet. It linked to a landing page that then went to: https://medium.com/election-issues-spotlight/poll-workers-on-election-day-a-crisis-overcome-f712f958ad38

)

And Cambridge's oversupply of poll workers includes having extra workers signed up in case any poll workers find themselves sick or unexpectedly quarantined on Election Day.

Advance Removal of Cambridge Precinct 11-2 is taking a break for lunch. They are almost done with this precinct, I may or may not be back after lunch.

(I feel bad, without an observer they are not required to read names aloud, so my being here does kind of slow things down.)

11-2 finished before I got back. Total of 826 ballots. I'm clearing out for the day.

They've moved on to Ward 9. (not sure if it was 9-1 or 9-2)

Apparently only 7,181 ballots have been advanced-opened so far. Out of 34,000 ballots received so far.

[ The Election Commission seems to think that is good, but it sounds pretty ominous to me. ]

Dropped by Advance Opening. They are on 6-2 and have done about 12 of the 34 precincts in 3.5 days. So there is no way they'll be done with all 34 by tonight when they finish around 6.

Advance Tabulation of early ballots in #cambma starts at 9:30. So far, tabulation machines are shoved in the corner, not sure where the high speed machine is.