STATEMENT TO

[Second Reprint]

SENATE, No. 856

with Senate Floor Amendments

(Proposed by Senator SINGLETON)

ADOPTED: JUNE 16, 2022

These floor amendments amend the bill to:

      (1) exclude provisional and emergency ballots from being counted during the early canvassing process for early votes and mail-in ballots;

      (2) provide that the Secretary of State may establish guidelines concerning the early canvassing process for early votes and mail-in ballots, which changes from being a requirement;

      (3) require the board of elections to transmit the media for the early vote canvass to the county clerk no later than the opening of the polls on election day;

      (4) provide that a board of elections may open the inner envelopes of mail-in ballots no earlier than five days prior to election day (this changes from 10 days prior to election day) and may begin canvassing each mail in ballot from the inner envelopes no earlier than three days prior to election day (this changes from 10 days prior to election day);

      (5) require the board of elections to transmit the media containing the canvass of mail-in results to the county clerk no later than one hour following the close of the polls;

      (6) provide that, to the extent capable, the scanning and tabulation system for mail-in ballots would restrict the generation of any tabulation or results report to system administrators only and prohibits administrator passwords from being shared;

      (7) prohibits tabulation and results reports from being generated before 8:00 p.m. on the day of the election, and, to the extent such system is capable, requires each county board of elections to submit to the Division of Elections no later than 24 hours following the close of the polls on the day of the election a complete copy of the scanning and tabulation system’s audit log;

      (8) provide that the results from the early canvassing process for mail-in ballots be reported as a separate columns alongside the columns for election day results and early voting results; and

      (9) require that the county clerks rather than the board of elections certify the results of the votes cast for members of the county committees to the respective municipal clerks following the canvass of mail-in ballots.