Seminole County canvassing board adopts Robert’s Rules, reviews new ballot‑processing systems and procedures

County Judge Jim Dlova, serving as chair of the Seminole County canvassing board, opened the meeting and said the board would adopt Robert’s Rules of Order as its procedural standard and reviewed a set of operational changes the Supervisor of Elections’ office has made to ballot handling.

Assistant County Attorney Andrew Lenus reviewed Florida’s sunshine-law obligations, telling the board that court interpretations treat as a meeting “any gathering of two or more members of the same board to discuss some matter which may foreseeably come before the board for action.” His presentation covered open‑meeting duties, public‑records custody and the requirement that minutes be taken and made available.

During a procedural motion, the board voted to adopt Robert’s Rules of Order for canvassing‑board business. The chair announced, “We will adopt the Robert’s rules of order for future meetings, including this one.”

Staff briefed the board on several substantive changes to how ballots will be handled. They said the office has installed an independent pre‑certification audit system intended to audit 100% of ballots before certifying results, a change the office described as replacing the prior manual postelection hand count. Staff also introduced two OPEX envelope‑opening machines purchased to speed the administrative opening of vote‑by‑mail envelopes and described a new vendor‑assisted duplication workflow for ballots that are unreadable by tabulators.

Under the proposed workflow, staff will use the OPEX machines to process incoming envelopes and will run unreadable ballots through a vendor system that recreates a machine‑readable duplicate. Staff said the canvassing board will no longer be required to perform the mechanical duplication step; instead, board members will review the original and the duplicate and then vote on voter‑intent questions and whether to approve the duplicate for tabulation.

Staff asked the board to consider delegating, under Florida Statute 101.682A, the monitoring of ballot opening to one board member so that the administrative work can proceed efficiently while the canvassing‑board meeting remains open. The office suggested the supervisor of elections would be the logical designee for that monitoring role. The transcript records the request and discussion; a formal, fully recorded roll‑call vote on that delegation is not recorded in the transcript.

The office also gave a vote‑by‑mail update, reporting around 33,000 requests for vote‑by‑mail ballots so far, which staff characterized as “about half” of a normal presidential‑cycle volume; no ballots had yet been mailed at the time of the meeting.

A vendor representative demonstrated the duplication workstation and explained how staff will select the correct ballot style, recreate the selections, and print labels and serial numbers so that originals and duplicates can be tied together and time‑stamped for chain‑of‑custody transparency.

During public comment, Michael Johnson asked whether candidates have the right to have observers and what the observer‑deadline is; staff said they would follow up after the meeting rather than answer on the record at that time. The meeting concluded after a motion to adjourn was seconded and approved.

What happens next: staff announced the next canvassing‑board session will be the logic‑and‑accuracy test on July 31, when the board can observe test tabulation procedures and the upgraded equipment in operation.

Direct quotes in this account are attributed to meeting participants who spoke on the record: Assistant County Attorney Andrew Lenus, County Judge Jim Dlova and public commenter Michael Johnson.