Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the proposed regulations regarding overfull optical scan ballot containers Verified Voting is a national non-partisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen democracy for all voters by promoting the responsible use of technology in elections. As a part of this work, we have long advocated for voter-marked paper ballots that may be tabulated by optical scan machines, and we worked in Virgin a to advance the Commonwealth away from vulnerable Director Recording Electronic voting machines to paper ballots and optical scanners. Maintaining proper chain-of-custody of these paper ballots is a critical component of election security Verified Voting believes the proposed regulations address an important issue that arises with optical scanners while maintaining the proper chain-of-custody of the ballots. 

Current regulations in Virginia require two officers of elections to open and overfull ballot scanner container and transfer ballots to a ballot box, which must meet certain requirements. The ballots must then be transferred again to a secure container for storage. The new regulations would allow general registrars and assistant registrars or officers of elections to place the overflow ballots directly in a secure container, sign and date the container as well as  log the number of ballots and then transport the container to the general registrar's office where it can be stored in a secure location. Verified Voting approves of this change, but makes the additional recommendation that the information recorded on the seal as well as the location of the container will be stored also be recorded in a secondary location away from the secure container, to serve as a log. This log will serve to ensure ballot accounting and reconciliation processes can be carried out correctly. The proposed language also requires that he container be stored out of access and out of view of the public. We recommend including the language that the box should be out of access, but believe the "view" language could be removed as long as the ballots are stored in a secure location. With the addition of this secondary log of ballots and locations, this proposal aligns with Verified Voting's recommended best practices for ballot management, which include affixing proper seals, logging the number of ballots in each container and restricting and monitoring access to ballot containers.

Virginia has been a leader in election security in recent years by adopting paper ballots and piloting risk-limiting audits. Ballot security is crucial to trustworthy audits and voter-confidence in the election outcome. The COVID-19 pandemic could cause vote count reporting to be delayed in the upcoming election. The proposed regulations give registrars another method to protect ballot chain-of-custody, especially important in these circumstances They align with our recommendations which are published on our website for use as a public resource (http://verifiedvoting.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Verified-Voting-COVID19-Recommendations-4.7.20-1.pdf) 

As a Virginia election officer, current procedures require that 2 election officers (Chief and Assistant Chief which generally represent both political parties) securely remove the ballots from the machine, count them and log them in multiple places on forms that we submit back to the main election office. We secure the ballots physically, label them, seal the container they are put in and the Chief returns them to the main office when polls close. Ballots should not be allowed to be transmitted by other parties since chain of custody would be compromised. Furthermore, since all election officers sign off on how many ballots we started with vs end up with, if third parties get involved in the transport of those ballots to the main election office after the election, the integrity of the chain of custody is lost. Paper ballots are critical to validating election results. Paper ballots also should have a physical connection back to the original voter in my opinion so we could validate that the vote was cast by a liegitimate Virginia resident and US citizen on what date and the vote entered was assigned to the candidate that the VOTER intended for it to be assigned to.

The existing ballot recording and transmittal procedure works well . We  also document and secure physically the ballots and count them and validate and sign off on how many ballots were used vs sent to us, spoiled, etc. This current process works well and it should be maintained. I do not see the point in making any changes to existing procedures.