In this unusual budget season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, where residents voted in the 2020-21 school budget vote and board of education elections via mail-in ballots, the district will be canvassing the votes and live streaming the event on Tuesday, June 16 beginning at 5 p.m.
[Watch the Live Stream of Vote Canvassing]
With nearly 6,000 returned ballots, it’s too soon to tell when the district will have a final tally number to report to residents. A board meeting to accept the vote results, however, has been set tentatively at 9 p.m. this evening.
The district is practicing social distance guidelines and have the more than 20 Poll Inspectors separated at tables in the BH-BL High School library.
Poll inspectors are grouped into four per table. At each table two people will unseal the envelopes and retrieve the folded ballots. The opened envelopes are put into a tray and the ballots are placed into a different tray. The second poll inspector will take ballots out of the tray and unfold and smooth them out before placing them into a third tray. The final poll inspector will take the unfolded ballots from the third tray and insert them into the voting machine at the end of the table grouping.
There is also a technician from the Schenectady County Board of Elections to assist with the voting machines.
Once all the ballots that can be read by the voting machines have been tallied, the Chief Poll Inspector and Deputy Poll Inspector will count the ballots that the machine couldn’t read. Those tallies will be added to the final vote count.
The budget vote and board election results will become official at a special board of education meeting this evening, Tuesday, June 16, at 9 p.m. (time is subject to change).