We can there we go. There goes the music. Thank you. Alright. This is, the Northfield City Council work session for Tuesday, 07/22/2025, and, I will request a roll call. Harris Weifel? Here. Counselor Holmes? Here. Counselor Ness? Here. Counselor Peterson White? Here. Counselor Silke? Here. Counselor Beamer? Here. Counselor Dahlen? Here. Great. So the item only item on our, work session agenda tonight is a presentation on absentee balloting and election services.
Alright. Mayor, members of the council, I will be presenting here, then I'll be going back to my, normal spots that I I can take notes. Alright. So, in light of a twenty twenty six election, we thought we'd bring in, bring to you the absentee balloting process, costs, and all that information. The first slide just shows the absentee ballot process that currently post secondary institutes with at least a 100 in student housing spaces can request a temporary location for the general election, and they have to request that by May 31. Absentee balloting process starts forty six days before an election.
That is both for the primary and the general election, which in 2026, we do not have a PNP election. We only have the primary and the general. Then staff continues to administrate the absentee ballot processing until eighteen days prior to the election, which is a new law change. Eighteen days prior to the election, staff switches to early voting process where the machines actually come out in the room and they can insert the ballots into the machines. Prior to that, that was seven days prior. Early voting process continues including weekend hours until election day.
Just a little bit of history regarding our absentee balloting here at the city. Counties must provide absentee absentee voting sites, but would not require it to be in Northfield. Northfield has provided absentee voting in Northfield historically. Northfield has served as a remote absentee voting site for Rice County at City Hall since 02/2016. This is different than most cities. We contract with the county, and we actually have all the ballots for Rice County up in our absentee balloting room. And anyone from any township or city in Rice County can come and vote here.
The city contracts with Rice County to provide absentee validating services. In 2022 and 2020, when I first came here, we received $10,000. After looking at costs, I requested to increase that to 20,000 in 2024, and the county granted that. Temporary election staff are hired by the city to administer absentee voting at city hall. For 2024, some of our absentee voting statistics now this is just for the general election because that is the bigger election of the two. For the twenty twenty four general election,
Northfield City Hall processed the following absentee and direct balloting applications. We process 1,656 absentee applications. That's with the whole envelope process before the machines are present, which is 76.45% were from Northfield residents. And during the direct balloting process, we processed 3,154, which was 75.11% were from Northfield residents. In total, we processed 5,320 Northfield resident applications, both in Rice County and Northfield city hall locations.
4,810 of those were processed at City Hall, which was 90.41%, and 510 were processed in Faribault at the Rice County location, which was a little over 9%. There are election changes for 2026 include direct balloting trans transitioning to early voting in 2026, so it will no longer be called direct balloting. Early voting period will begin eighteen days prior, which it used to be ten days prior. I think I just quoted that wrong earlier that I said seven days. So it is previously ten days. New law requires a minimum of three temporary election staff on-site during voting voting hours
at all times. So up in our room, in our Second Floor Training Room, we would have to have three staff members present at all times. It could not be the deputy clerk or myself just popping in and out to help during, busy times. We'd have to staff at three people, which is a change from 2024. In 2024, we did have two election staff in there at all times. And then when it did get busy, Sarah and I ran into there and helped out. They'd just buzz us, and we'd come over. Also, in 2026, temporary campus voting locations will be,
available. Postsecondary institutions with a 100 or more student housing spaces may request a one day temporary voting location for the general election. Now in 2024, Carleton College did request this, and we did do a test pop up, which worked really well. We worked out kind of some quirks, and and the state gave us a grant to do that. And we were one of the cities that decided to go ahead and try it out. And I think we processed quite a few voters in quite a short amount of time. The city or county must provide the location if requested.
And if the city discontinues absentee voting services, this would probably be the responsibility of the county. Expenses that are additional with new law changes. Additional expenses associated with the new law changes is increased staffing required at the absentee voting site for the full eighteen days prior. So the early voting period including including weekends and extended hours. And now with the weekend and extended hours, we would definitely have to have staff make sure that they're not not getting overtime during that period. So we'd have to have enough staff members that we would be just doing the
regular rate. Potential additional costs if both colleges request temporary on campus locations. Expenses for our absentee balloting location in City Hall, that are estimated that we estimate we estimate 30,000 for temporary election staff salaries at City hall absentee site, 5,000 for temporary campus staffing if requested by colleges, and then a thousand for mileage and staff time related to ballot delivery to Faribault. Currently, we do not have a JPA. We have a JPA with, Dakota County that they have a courier service that comes and picks up the ballots. And this past year,
we had to transport them over to Rice County quite a bit. They sent somebody over a few times if our staff couldn't get there. But more or less, we have to work that out with them, and they don't have a career service. So the total, estimated expenses for twenty twenty six election, assuming the continuation of absentee ballot location at City Hall, we have the primary and general judge salaries, and that would stay the same. That would be about $54,000 for both of those elections. Staff for the a b City Hall location salaries would be 30,000
for both both, elections. Remote voting requests from colleges would be about 5,000, and that would be that's only for the general election. They cannot request it for the primary election. Election judge training is about $5,700. Mileage for delivering absentee ballots to Faribault is about a thousand dollars. And then we have mileage for election judges to attend training in Faribault, which is about $2,000. And we'll, get back to that one in some of the further questions. Our current contract with Rice County reimburses the city 20,000 for the AB location at Northfield City Hall.
So that would offset that $97,700. So if we calculate, without having an absentee balloting location here at City Hall, it would be the total of 61,700. At this time, there is no cost, obviously, for us to process the ballots. Well, there's there's no cost given to Faribault for Rice County, processing their ballots. So we do not know at this time in talking with county staff. They have not indicated if they will charge us or figure out a way to
charge us if they would end up processing our ballots. So that's kind of the unknown on that. And once we would if if the council would decide that they do no longer want to continue an absentee ballot location, then we would have to talk to the county and make sure that they still would be okay with processing them. And since they do not currently charge Faribault, they would either need to charge Faribault and charge us or not charge us and not charge Farewell. Does that make sense? Okay. So we have some council discussion and questions, and this is for the August work session. We would these are just to put in your mind and kinda think about.
First question is, does the council support continuing absentee balloting at the city hall, or would it prefer to discontinue the service for a potential net budget reduction of 16,000? And that's from that that second table. We would take out the 20,000 that we do get reimbursed from the county because we would no longer receive that. So it'd be a net cost of, $16,000 or net budget reduction. The second question is if absentee balloting continues, does the council support negotiating with Rice County for additional reimbursement beyond the current $20,000?
It never hurts to ask. I don't know that they would, with if that they would go any higher, but it would never hurt to ask if we do continue that. Our third question is election judge training. So in 2024, Rice County held one training session in Northfield in the council chambers. They did one of each of their sessions so that our judges did not have to travel to Faribault. For 2026 and discussions with them, they plan on holding all training sessions in Faribault, and they are not willing to come here to Northfield. Should the city request that Rice County offer a training session in Northfield given that
approximately a 100 Northfield election judges need training? To me, this is a no brainer. I have asked. They have not they've not said that they will. I think if the council gave directions, they may be more, apt to grant that and do a a training session here. I thought it worked out really well here in the council chambers. We could also do it over in the police department in their training room. It just if we offer a training session here, we wouldn't have to pay our election judges to travel to Faribault. And if they weren't able to attend the one day training here,
we still wouldn't have to really offer them mileage because they couldn't clear their schedules to to get to our training here. And that would save us another $2,000 in mileage costs. City city clerk? Yes. I know. We did do prep on this. Would you mind a brief commentary about a compare and contrast on training with Dakota County that we Yes. Just a little bit related to that, how they handle the election training? Yes. So Rice County does do quite extensive election training for our judges. They want training on the machines, on the pull pads, on everything, in person.
They do not do really there there's a two hour online training that everyone has to take also, but they go above and beyond, the two hour mandatory and the extra additional one hour for head judges. Whereas Dakota County has it all online. Our judges would log in, do the training, and they'd be considered done. There's no travel cost. There's nothing like that. Now Rice County does do the two hour online. However, they also do require our judges to go over there for other training, And they they plan on continuing to do that. Now they did say that normally,
they require all of their judges to take all of the training, and I have indicated to them that I would more than likely just send our new judges to some of that training like the pull pad and the and the machine training. Because really, honestly, if you have a head election judge that knows what they're doing and we do we actually do co head election judges here. So one of our election judges can be working on getting the machine set up in the morning. One can be working on instructing the the individuals to do their jobs for the day.
But they do, they're very adamant about us sending our judges to all of the training. Counselor Peterson White has a question. What happened before 2024? I said in 2024 can you flip back a slide? Yep. What happened in 2018, '20, and '22? Did they hold a training session in Northfield? My first year was here was 2022, like, April because I came the end of twenty twenty. They did not hold an election training here. So that's why I requested it in 2024.
I do not know what they did prior to that. Yeah. Follow-up. I guess I would be interested in knowing the history of that and how long they've been requiring this additional training that Dakota County doesn't require and whether I I It seems like a real challenge for recruiting election judges. It it is a lot, and it's it's a lot for our judges to be able to take off work if if they do work to come to all that training. They do offer some evening trainings also, and we did here, in 2024. I do feel that the training is a bit extensive for for the judges.
And they have indicated that I am not allowed to train the judges, which in other cities, I have been allowed to. So I you know? And we could definitely do a pull pad, like, open, lab. Like, I know Deb used to do that where there was a pull pad open lab. We could do that here as part of our training, just because we have the Dakota County pull pads, and they will program them for us so that we can do a pull pad open lab here. Good question. Other question? Is that do you have more? That is it. So I will take my seat and write down your questions.
Great. Yeah. Mayor, I would just encourage people because my head spins sometimes when you talk about all the election laws and even sometimes the language used on what does this word mean exactly related to it? So I just say that either tonight or offline, if you have questions, don't feel like there's any dumb questions related to elections because there's it's a lot of complexity to it. And, Lynette, Peterson, our city clerk, is excellent at at the work. I one maybe I don't know if you have the answer tonight, but one thing I was wondering about is is there reciprocity between any other counties
in terms of election judge training where if you're trained in one county, you can also serve as an election judge in another county. Yes. Mayor Weifel. If you are trained with the in a city or a county, they should that should carry over to any city or county that you are at, or that you work in. Now you do have to do election judge training every two years. So, I mean, you you can only carry it over so long. Right. So is it an option to send all of our election judges through the Dakota
County training? Mayor Zweifel, yes. We have sent several through that training. If they are not able to attend the other ones, I will. And Dakota County is very good about that. They're they're fine with us, having them do that training. The only thing is right now Dakota County machines are different than Rice County. However, we are in the process of of doing some testing and, some demonstrations on machines for Dakota County. And by the next election, they could be the same. We don't know what vendor they'll pick. Thank you. Councilor Peterson White.
Forgive me if you don't know the answer to this, but I'm curious. What does Rice County require of township officials who are, what's the word, administering elections? Are those are those trained election judges, or do township officials do it? And are they subject to the same requirements that Northfield election judges are from Rice County? Councilperson Peterson White. Yes. They are required to do all of that training, as far as I am aware. I know that they do attend the same training sessions that our judges do over in Rice County, And I'm assuming that more than likely they do the two hour plus the machine
training plus the other machine training plus if they're head judges, the one hour head judge training. It it can rack up to be about six hours of training if if they would do all of them. And yeah. So I even hesitate to send all of my new judges there without I mean, because that is that's a lot of training. That's a lot that's a long day of elections. Mister Holmes. Yeah. Thanks. And if you don't have this now, that's fine. But, I had asked for wanting to see the percentage of, absentee direct balloting versus, like, all Northfield voters,
just to get an idea of, like, how many the percentage of people who are voting early. In here on the slide, it says it has the percentages breakdown by absentee and direct, and the total that were processed at City Hall in Rice County. But I think what I'm looking for more is, like, as we look at this as an option and continuing to fund this option, my assumption is there's a high percentage of people that do absentee or direct ballot. I mean, 5,320, but I I don't know what that is compared to the total voting population.
Like is that 50%? Yes. Okay. Councilmember Holmes. We did have the total number of people that voted during the general election in 2024 was 12,097. So it was a very Almost Yes. It was a very large percentage. And I think it continues to increase as people are learning that you don't need a reason to vote early. Right. Okay. That that just tests my assumptions. Yes. Thank you. Councilor Peterson White. Do we have have we been able to reduce the need for election day election
judges if half the people are voting early at city hall? Councilperson Peterson White. Not yet. There is a certain you have to pretty much have four judges on staff all day at least minimum depending on how the workflow goes to allow for breaks for the judges. Normally, most of our judges do half day shifts. So then, we at least have four to five at the precinct for the primary. For the general, we usually add a couple additional. I have not reduced yet in Northfield, just for the fact that you need to have so many certain judges,
certain like a balloting judge, a greeter judge, and all of those positions. Mhmm. Other questions? We'll have another chance to weigh in on this. Yes. Thank you so much. All right. That concludes our work session agenda. Looking for a motion. Councillor Nuss? Move to adjourn. Councillor Beamer? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Motion, it passes. We are adjourned. Thank you all.