Special Board of Aldermen 8-24-2020 Page 8
ON THE QUESTION
President Wilshire
Any discussion on that? Alderwoman Lu?
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you. What are we planning to use that money for?
President Wilshire
| would have to defer to the Mayor.
Mayor Donchess
Well we, of course, we could get a complete explanation from City Clerk Lovering. We expect many, many
absentee ballots. Right now the City Clerk for the Primary has processed about 3,300, 3,400, 3.500 but we
expect many more ballots than that for the General Election. We have about 60,000 voters, we expect
maybe 45,000 will vote, maybe more than that.
This is all guess work but 50% may vote absentee. So in order to process these absentee ballots we need
additional personnel in the City Clerk’s Office. If you were to sit down with the City Clerk and go over the
process that is required for each absentee ballot, it requires six to eight different steps to be completed over
a period of time as the ballot comes back and forth. There are multiple entries into a data base up at the
State of New Hampshire. And each ballot probably takes, in total, 15 or 20 minutes to process for a single
person.
So we need to add a lot of people in the City Clerk’s Office. Some of them have been added already but we
are looking to add more; considerably more. This money will be used to pay those employees to process
these absentee ballots.
President Wilshire
Thank you, Mayor. Madam Clerk, did you want to add anything to that?
City Clerk Lovering
| think that was an excellent summation of what we have in front of us. | thank everyone for their
consideration and support in this time.
Alderman Klee
Madam President, | do have a question but would it be more appropriate after we have brought this in for the
second reading to ask my question or would now be the better? Ok | will wait for then, thank you.
President Wilshire
Ok the Motion is to suspend for a second reading; further discussion on the Motion to Amend? Seeing
none, would the Clerk call the roll?
