High Turnout Wide Margins recently traveled to the 40th annual Election Center conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, and spoke with election administrations and officials from across the county about how they do the work of elections in their communities.
In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Gretchen Reinemeyer, the General Registrar/Director of Elections for Arlington County.
They spoke about some of the challenges that come from running elections in an area that has a large overlap with other metropolitan areas, as well as a large and ever changing number of military voters.
High Turnout, Wide Margins Credits:
Managing Editor: Rebecca Smith
Managing Producer: Aaron Hay
Associate Producer: Katie Quinn
Digital Producer: Mark Johnson
Transcription of the episode is as follows:
Gretchen Reinemeyer: We do have some voters that will be deployed on a submarine in the middle of nowhere where they know they're not going to get mail for eight months. So if we have a voter come in that's telling us they're going to be – there's no way they're going to get email or mail for eight months. And, we know we've got a governor's race on the ballot this year, and we think these will be the candidates. We can go ahead and have them fill out that. Write an absentee ballot before we ever have a ballot, so that they can get their ballot cast before they go serve our country overseas.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Introduction]
Eric Fey: So, welcome to another exciting episode of High Turnout, Wide Margins. I'm Eric Fey, Director of Elections in St Louis County, Missouri, with my cohost –
Brianna Lennon: Brianna Lennon. I'm the county clerk in Boone County, Missouri.
Eric Fey: And today our guest is –
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Gretchen Reinemeyer, the general registrar and director of elections from Arlington County, Virginia.
Eric Fey: Well, thanks for being here today, Gretchen, with us at the Election Center 40th Annual Conference. Our first question always is – your election origin story. How did you, Gretchen, get to be where you are now?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yeah, that's a good story or good question. So, I got my start in elections, much like many other people, my mom recruited me to be a poll worker in her precinct when I was 18 years old.
I'm from Houston, Texas, and they have elections every other day, it feels like down there, and so, they – our school board always had elections the Saturday before Mother's Day. So, if you wanted to see mom on Mother's Day, then you better work at the elections with her the day before. So, that is – I first started as a poll worker down there. And then, when I was looking for a job in grad school in Arlington, she recommended that I apply with the elections office. So, I started there as a temp and then worked my way up to the director position.
Brianna Lennon: What drew you into it? Because I think there's plenty of people that really do love being election judges and poll workers and things, and they continue to do that. They do that for years and years, but they don't necessarily make it their career. So, what really drew you in?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Customer Service has always been a priority to me, of really helping people connect with government and make decisions about their life and how they want to be governed. So, being able to deliver quality customer service in a non-partisan environment where I wasn't trying to influence anyone's feelings about it. Because I had done some work with political parties as a volunteer, and I just prefer the more non-partisan environment that we're in. We're really it's just like I said, giving people that voice and doing meaningful work. Yeah, to help get voters connected to their government.
Eric Fey: Before we get into other things, can you explain to us just kind of briefly, the structure of election administration in Virginia?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yeah, so Virginia is unique in that each city and county is separate. We don't have cities buried within counties, like a lot of states do. So, in Virginia, we all work for a three member electoral board. The makeup of the electoral board reflects the party of the current governor. So, right now, I have a Republican governor. So, every electoral board in Virginia has two Republicans and one Democrat. This three member electoral board in every city and county, they appoint the general registrar, my position, and then the registrar appoints the staff. At the state level it's similar. We now have a five member state board of elections, and then they don't appoint the Commissioner of Elections. That's appointed by the governor, still.
Brianna Lennon: So, in your position in Arlington, how many registered voters do you serve?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yeah, so I get – everyone knows the number of registered voters changes every second of every day. But right now, we have around 187,000 total voters. That does include inactive.
Eric Fey: Is there an Arlington County in Arlington city?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: No, there is no Arlington city.
Eric Fey: Okay, interesting.
Gretchen Reinemeyer: There's just Arlington County.
Eric Fey: Yeah, and there’s no cities in Arlington County.
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yeah, there are no cities as governmental entities within Arlington. We do have an area called Crystal City or Pentagon City, but they are not actual government run cities with mayors or anything like that. So, it is confusing.
Eric Fey: So, mentioning the Pentagon and those places you are very closely situated to – Washington, DC, immediately adjacent –
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yes.
Eric Fey: You have some very prominent places within your jurisdiction. Do those – does that reality, your geographical position, present any particular challenges or anything special about administering elections in Arlington?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: So, being a jurisdiction and a large metro environment, and we are, in reality, a tri-state area, if you will, because we have Metro, sorry – we have Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia. And all of us have our own election laws and our own, yeah, our own laws, our own schedules. And it's a really crowded media environment. So, when it comes to outreach and education about elections, specifically within Arlington, Virginia, it can be very hard to target Arlington voters in such a crowded media environment.
Being in Arlington, we do have some unique challenges. As you noted, we have the Pentagon located in Arlington, which is the second largest office building in the world, and every single one of those employees at the Pentagon is eligible to some certain special voting roles for uniformed and military voters from the federal level.
Brianna Lennon: You brought up UOCAVA [The Uniformed And Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act], and I would think that education for members that are in Arlington would also be very interesting, because they're not necessarily wanting to vote in Virginia. They may be wanting to vote where they consider themselves still to be residents. How have you gone about like I would think that's a pretty large section of your demographic. How have you approached that? And I'm curious if you've gone the route of, like, trying to connect them with their home one or let them know that they could potentially vote in Arlington if they're living there. Like, how has been – what's been your approach to that?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yeah, so I think one of our priorities is meeting the voter where they're at. So, it starts by making sure we understand the federal voting laws surrounding these voters in and out, so that we can provide them with as much information so they can make an informed decision that matches what they want to do. So that does mean having staff trained specialized and that attending some of the – because the army or the military, they do train individuals to help military members know what they need to do to be able to cast their ballot.
We've been lucky enough to be able to attend some of these trainings so that we can be trained right next to the officers that will be helping some of these voters figure out how to cast their ballots. It's important to make sure voters know their options. And as you know, we have highly transient individuals, and so registering to vote in Virginia can have consequences to taxes that they may not necessarily understand. So, like I said, it does make – we do make an effort to make sure they understand what they're doing. Try to get the ballot from the jurisdiction that they want to get their ballot from, whether that's helping them fill out a federal write in and absentee ballot application or anything like that.
Eric Fey: What are the UOCAVA ballot delivery laws in Virginia and does that make it easier or harder for you to deal with this population?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: For every – just some background knowledge, UOCAVA stands for Uniformed and Overseas. What is it? Citizens act? It was passed. It's federal legislation that allows anybody in the military or any US citizens residing overseas. It requires jurisdictions to be able to transmit ballots to them using email, fax or mail. So, there are just special federal regulations around how these voters are classified and treated. Virginia does allow for electronic ballot delivery to UOCAVA voters. We certainly – that stands for email sorry. So, we make an effort to make sure any of our UOCAVA voters understand that getting their ballot via email is the fastest, securest, easiest way to have their ballot delivered to them. The mail – trying to get the mail to an Embassy on the other side of the world is not reliable in our experience, but Virginia does require that all ballots be mailed back to us. So, at least with like I said, if you sign up for an email ballot, you can have your ballot emailed to you, but it still has to get in the mail and back to us within 45 days of election.
Eric Fey: The fact that they all have to be mailed back do you think that increases the number of FWABs [Federal Write-In Absentee Ballots] you get as a result?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: A FWAB is a federal write-in absentee ballot application. That is an emergency backup ballot. What we always instruct voters, but once again, these networks, they have their own information sharing platforms. And so, once word gets out that they can, that voters can do a FWAB as a backup, then suddenly we start getting an influx of FWABs from certain parts of the world. So, the FWAB is an emergency ballot. It is designed for special use cases. And I would never if somebody hasn't gotten their ballot, then I would encourage them to go ahead and use a FWAB. But what a lot of people do is they'll submit a FWAB when they haven't applied for their ballot yet. And for us, you have to apply for that ballot. You have to have that application in by 10 days before the election. Otherwise, your FWAB is just not going to count because you didn't apply for a ballot.
So, the FWAB for us, like, if you really can't get mail to you or email, then go ahead and fill out the FWAB and email it to us. If we do get your ballot back, then we won't – we'll accept – the FWAB Is your backup ballot in that case, if we get both ballots back. But the FWAB is really great for we do have some voters that will be deployed on a submarine in the middle of nowhere where they know they're not going to get mail for eight months. So, if we have a voter come in that's telling us they're going to be there's no way they're going to get email or mail for eight months. And we know we've got a governor's race on the ballot this year and we think these will be the candidates. We can go ahead and have them fill out that write an absentee ballot before we ever have a ballot so that they can get their ballot cast before they go serve our country overseas.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Midbreak]
Brianna Lennon: So, what are Virginia's rules about the length of time that the application is good for? Because I only recently realized that, especially in a lot of places that have like, I guess, probably more steady people that have gone overseas. And they continue to be overseas, like their application can be good until they say that they don't want it to be applicable anymore.
But ours is good in Missouri for up to two years, if that's when you apply. But I would imagine people are moving and deploying to different places so often it would be hard to do that. So, my second question to that after you answer it is: Do you follow up with people whose applications are expiring?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yes, so our application, Virginia does have a general election every year, statewide election every year. So, our FWABs are good for two election cycles, as we say. It's going to get you through two general elections. Two years, essentially, but it might not be exactly 24 months. We do follow up with our UOCAVA voters to let them know your ballots expiring. Go ahead and put in a new application.
We try to do that in January or February every year, and then, once again, summer is high transfer season. If we have the means, we'll send out another message in the summer to let people know, like if you're transferring coming back from overseas, then go ahead and put in a new application. Just so we can make sure your records is up to date as possible.
Eric Fey: I'm interested in workforce in your region, being in the DC metro area. I mean current events aside, with the federal workforce, the federal workforce, traditionally, you know, is relatively high paid and, you know, relatively highly educated. Is it difficult finding qualified individuals to work for a county in your area?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yeah, so that traditionally is a problem in Arlington County. Especially with our police department, they we train the workers, and then the federal government will snatch them up. With elections, it's not quite the same problem, because our office does pay as well as the election jobs across the river in DC pay at the end of the day. But it is difficult because we're a small office. We only have nine full time staff, and for 187,000 voters with two elections every year, it's just really exhausting.
But the way our office is structured, we have entry level jobs. We don't have much in the way of middle management, but by the time we get to an election, everybody who's permanent staff is managing some temp at some point in the process. Whether that's overseeing like certain tasks that the temps are being assigned, or full scale managing a temporary employee. And so, like I said, we keep our permanent staff small. And then we really scale up with temporary employees when it comes to an election, and that's where being located, so close to the federal government is super beneficial, because we have a lot of retired federal employees who still want to remain active and engaged in the process.
And so, we can get really high caliber workers that are retired from their first career. They really only want to come in for six weeks around an election, and then they don't want to hear from you the next six months. And I think that's – and they're used to things, like [two factor authentication] and everything because the security things that we're implementing at the local level, they've been doing at the federal level for the last half of their career.
Brianna Lennon: I wanted to ask – you had mentioned how challenging it is to do voter education in a saturated market, and also just, I think probably the closeness of having the three different rules and procedures and everything. I'm sure that there are times when you have an election and Maryland doesn't and vice versa. How, I guess overall, maybe not just in your county, but are there built relationships between election offices in that area to try to combat some of that? Or are you just used to, "Oh, you know we're gonna get calls today because Maryland's got an election. So, we just have to build that into our expectations."
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yeah, we definitely know when a neighbor is having an election because we will get the calls and be "Like, are you having Election Day?" "No, that's DC. Let me transfer you to their office if you have questions." We did have strong relationships. We had a regional meeting in DC. There's something called the Metro Washington Council of Governments. And we did have an election technical committee with inside this organization, where we did meet regularly, four times a year.
Unfortunately, this is one of those partnerships that dissolved when the pandemic hit. So, our last real in-person meeting was in January of 2020, and there's been so much staff turnover in some of the larger localities. There is some interest to get it back up and running. But once again, who's going to take the lead and get it up and running remains a question.
And we've done – we do coordinated things like the Nats, the Washington National baseball team, when they'll do voter registration events. So, DC will invite us to come have a table next to theirs, because we realize we are in a tri state area. Virginia voters are going to a Nats game as well as DC voters. Yeah, so, we do our best to coordinate Metro day, where we're all outside Metro registering voters. A lot of those things are things of the past.
Eric Fey: What about voter list maintenance across those jurisdictions? Are all three jurisdictions ERIC [Electronic Registration Information Center] members still?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: No.
Eric Fey: No, okay. So, you've been around long enough to know things before ERIC, and then during, and I suppose after. So, talk about voter list sharing maintenance across those jurisdictions.
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Virginia used to be a part of ERIC. We are no longer a member of ERIC. That was a decision made by our current Commissioner. But that doesn't mean – we still have a law in Virginia that requires us to share lists or engage in memorandums of understanding with every neighboring state to engage in list maintenance processes. So, we are still getting data from DC and Maryland. We get a list monthly of everybody who has gone to DC and say they are active in Arlington, and we'll go through and cancel them. So, same with Maryland.
Eric Fey: How does that information come to you? Through the state?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Through the state, yes. All that information goes up to the state. The way we do it is when we're registering voters, they can tell us if they've been previously registered another state on their application. And then, that data is sent to the state election director in all of the other states. Whether that state elections office chooses to share that information with localities we can't control, but we certainly in Virginia, take – we share the information that we're getting, and we process the information that we receive.
But with that said, I don't know how many states, because all this is done at the state level, Virginia does have memorandums of understanding to share data in a confidential, secure environment with I want to say it's more than 20 states now. They've just been done independently, as opposed to through ERIC. In addition to that, we are also getting driver's license information. So, DMV information, when people surrender their license in another state, we will receive information that this person has surrendered their Virginia driver's license when they moved to another state.
Brianna Lennon: That's really interesting. I wish we had that.
Eric Fey: Yeah.
Same day voter registration – you said that's a big deal for you?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yes.
Eric Fey: What if any safeguard is in place to guard against voters from DC or Maryland coming over?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yeah, no, that's a really good question. So, same day registration is new in Virginia. We've only been through a few election cycles with it. We don't have any ,once again the election – we only have a 10 day certification window, so we have to get all those same day registrations entered, approved and counted and reconciled and canvased within 10 days after the election. Maryland has something like a 30 day certification window. We are, yeah, done, and they're still counting ballots. We don't have great safeguards in place with DC and Maryland, but within Virginia before we are allowed to accept these ballots, so we have hard deadlines of all of the applications.
The registration applications have to be into the system by three days after the election, and then the state runs this massive cross check report. So, we can see if anybody went to another jurisdiction to do a registration, if they voted in that other jurisdiction at any point, did they vote a mail ballot or in person. And so, from that we the electoral board has the information that they need to decide whether to accept or reject the ballot for that same day registered voter. Yeah, and they do cast it as a provisional ballot. So, it does – all of them do have to be adjudicated by the electoral board before they are counted.
Eric Fey: My understanding, in Virginia, the state promulgates some kind of book or regulations you all have to follow a manual of some sort. I mean, is that a hard edict, like whatever's in that manual you guys have to do? And if so, do you have any input into those kind of regulations?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yeah, so, Virginia does have a very long, in addition to our law book, which is also very long, our code section, and it gets thicker every year. And we also have what is called the GREB handbook, journal, registrar, electoral board handbook, or the GREB, as some have started calling it. Yeah, I do not do the GREB. We still say G-R-E-B, but some are calling it the GREB now. It is a very thick book too. It is not designed to be printed. It is designed to be an online resource with links that you can connect to. So, it does include very detailed regulations for how to run your central absentee precinct where you're counting mail ballots. And it's not there is debate over, should we follow it to the letter of the law? But it is not law. It is guidance.
And so, I will say, in Arlington, we don't do every single thing the GREB handbook tells us to do. We always go back to the code section to make sure we're following code first and foremost. But if we have a different way of doing things that might be more efficient for Arlington County, then we will implement those solutions. We do not – when I say we don't have any input on the GREB handbook. I like, we don't – we aren't consulted on it. There were working groups at some point in time. But if we do recommend improvements or refine a typo or something, they will certainly take those recommendations on board.
Yeah, I think it's so where Arlington is in Virginia, we're the ninth largest locality in Virginia. So, we are certainly on the larger side of and there are 133 localities in Virginia. So, we range anywhere from 1500 voters in a county all the way up to over 600,000 in Fairfax County. What's going to work for a county with 1500 voters, and what's going to work for a county like us with 187,000 it's not going to be the same two things. We had more same day registration voters than I think 20 localities have total voters in their jurisdiction. So, you just can't have the same policy and procedure in every county in Virginia, I would say.
Brianna Lennon: Is Virginia state that everybody has to use the same voting equipment and things like that?
Gretchen Reinemeyer: Yeah, so, it's an interesting model. We'll hear a lot about top down or bottom up states. And how Virginia's structured is we really had the general registrar managing voter registration, and then we had, historically, electoral boards who are managing the elections aspects. And so, what happened, especially after NVRA, is we really went to a top down system on the registration side. So, we have a centralized voter registration system. When we're entering changes into our voter registration, it's live.
I can see, like Fairfax county can see that I've moved one of their voters into us, and it's a good system. But when it comes to some of the elections policies, that's where it really is more locally based. We're more of a bottom up model. We do have, and there is this conflict in Virginia, I would say, of things where the state wants control, or things that are really up to the localities, because they're the ones that are going to have to pay for it. We don't have a statewide voting system. Each locality does purchase their own voting system and their own poll books, but these systems have to be certified for use in Virginia, so there is this, yeah, we can – we have to purchase one of the four approved vendors.
Eric Fey: I just zoned out for a second because the GREB sounds like this Russian. Sounds very Russian. Yeah, you read GREB. All information in GREB.
Gretchen Reinemeyer: I don't know. I would be surprised if anybody admitted to having read the GREB cover to cover every year. Is there certain sections in there? There was one regulation in there, that I was just reading. I was like, how long has this been the law? And I start going through and I'm like, 2013? I feel like we all should have known about.
So, then I start asking my colleagues about it, and they're like, "I had no idea, no idea." It's one of those – it wasn't major. We were all like, doing the right thing, just putting things in a different bucket than they should have been accounted for in. But it was one of those things. Was like, it's been the law for a really long time, but none of us, yeah.
Brianna Lennon: You've been listening to High Turnout Wide Margins, a podcast that explores local elections administration. I'm your host, Brianna Lennon alongside Eric Fey. A big thanks to KBIA and the Election Center for making this podcast possible. Our Managing Editor is Rebecca Smith. Managing Producer is Aaron Hay. Our Associate Producer is Katie Quinn, and our Digital Producer is Mark Johnson. This has been High Turnout Wide Margins. Thanks for listening.
