SRA 21-03 Election Services IFB - Pre-Bid Conference Minutes.pdf

MARYLAND STATE RETIREMENT AND PENSION SYSTEM

PRE-BID CONFERENCE

IFB NUMBER SRA 21-03

ELECTION SERVICES

Maryland State Retirement and Pension System 120 East Baltimore Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21202-6700

April 5, 2021

10:00 a.m.

(Via Microsoft Teams)

ATTENDANCE:

AGENCY:

Margie Gordon, Senior Procurement Officer

Megan Myers, Director Special Projects Administration

Kenneth Reott, Director of Benefits Administration

Kimberly O’Keeffe, Deputy Retirement Administrator

ATTENDEES:

John Bodin, Election Trust

Michael Caputo, Yes-Elections

Transcribed by: Carol O’Brocki, Notary Public Hunt Reporting Company, Glen Burnie, Maryland

1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 (10:02 a.m.)

3 MS. GORDON: Good morning. My name is Margie

4 Gordon and I am the Procurement Officer for this

5 solicitation, and on behalf of the Maryland State

6 Retirement Agency I would like to welcome you to this

7 virtual Pre-Bid Conference.

8 Today we will share information with you

9 concerning the Invitation For Bid titled Election

10 Services. The control number for this IFB is SRA21-03.

11 Please note that we have Carol from Hunt

12 Reporting Company recording and transcribing this Pre-

13 Bid, and a copy of the transcript will be emailed to

14 all bidders.

15 I’d like to start with the introductions.

16 Our panel will introduce themselves and then we’ll have

17 you introduce yourselves. We ask that you speak

18 clearly so that the court reporter can transcribe your

19 information correctly.

20 I’ll start with Megan.

21 MS. MYERS: Good morning. My name is Megan

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1 Myers. I am the Director of our Special Projects

2 Department here at the Maryland State Retirement

3 Agency, and we are the unit that will conduct the

4 election. We handle all of the nominations, petitions, 5 and all the communication with the Board of Trustee

6 election.

7 MS. GORDON: Ken?

8 MR. REOTT: Good morning. Kenneth Reott.

9 I’m the Retirement Administrator and Megan’s unit is

10 one of the units that I oversee. So, I’ll be working

11 with her on the death matches during the term of the

12 contract.

13 MS. GORDON: Election Services.

14 MR. REOTT: Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve

15 got an email in front of me and I’ve mixed myself up.

16 Sorry, Margie.

17 MS. GORDON: No problem. Kimberly?

18 MS. O’KEEFFE: Good morning. This is Kim

19 O’Keeffe. I’m the Deputy Administrator, and again, 20 Megan’s unit is one of those under me that I work with.

21 MS. GORDON: Patrick?

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1 MR. BROADWICK: Good morning. I’m Patrick

2 Broadwick. I’m an Administrator III with the Special

3 Projects Division. Megan and I will working together

4 with you on the election. She is my supervisor.

5 MS. GORDON: All right. We’ll start with Mr.

6 Brodin (phonetic).

7 MR. BODIN: Actually, the name is Bodin --

8 B-O-D-I-N.

9 MS. GORDON: Oh, I’m sorry. Bodin.

10 MR. BODIN: That’s all right. I’m general

11 manager of Election Trust. We are a full services

12 election services company. Been in business since

13 2003.

14 We are actually I think coming up to our

15 tenth year of hosting the State Board of Dental

16 Examiners in Maryland -- their election each year.

17 That’s done virtually fully electronic at this point.

18 We have maybe two or three ballots we send out to folks

19 who are not comfortable voting online. But I’m very

20 interested in finding out what the opportunity is here.

21 MS. GORDON: Michael?

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MR. CAPUTO: Yes. Thank you. Good morning.

My name is Michael Caputo. I’m with Yes-Elections and

I’m what we call an election partner or an election partnership coordinator. So I work on everything procurement-wise, proposals, demos, all the way up to the contracting phase before we hand you off to our project manager.

Yes-Elections has been around since 2007 but some of our founding members have been around working on online elections since the late 90s, early 2000s --like election.com, for example, and, yep, we look forward to putting in our bid for SRA.

MS. GORDON: All right. Well, welcome.

First I’m going to go over the general information and the Maryland State Retirement Agency is issuing this

Invitation For Bid to obtain a contractor to provide a secret ballot election for the election of one member

-- excuse me just a second.

19 (Pause.)

20 MS. GORDON: My apologies. It’s going to be

21 providing a secret ballot election for the election of

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1 one member for the Board of Trustees for the Maryland

2 State Retirement and Pension System.

3 The anticipated contract duration is for a

4 period of one year with no renewal options and the

5 Agency intends to issue a single award as a result of

6 this IFB.

7 I’m sure you received the IFB so this will --

8 basically all your information will be on the Key

9 Information Summary Sheet located on page III, and this

10 lists all the important dates for this IFB.

11 It lists the contract monitor as well as

12 myself, and this IFB does not have any MBE or VSBE

13 goals. There will be no subcontracting allowed for

14 this solicitation. The contract resulting from this

15 solicitation shall be a firm fixed price.

16 Questions, they should be directed to me in a

17 timely fashion and should be submitted via email to the

18 following email address, which is

19 procurement@sra.state.md.us and they should be

20 submitted no later than April 9th by 2:00 p.m. We’ll

21 answer as many questions as possible once we have

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1 researched the response and as time allows.

2 This year is something new. Bids are to be

3 submitted via eMaryland Marketplace Advantage -- eMMA

4 for short, as per the Key Information Summary Sheet, no

5 later than April 16th by 2:00 p.m. in order to be

6 considered.

7 Requests for extensions will not be granted.

8 Bids may not be submitted by email or fax. Bids will

9 be opened virtually and an invitation will be posted on

10 eMMA.

11 Min quals (phonetic), only those contractors

12 that fully meet all the min qualifications shall be

13 eligible. The bid contractor’s bid prices and

14 references will be used to verify min quals.

15 And Scope of Work, we will go to Ms. Megan

16 Myers.

17 MS. MYERS: Good morning, again. So I’m just

18 going to brief over the Scope of Work. If you have any

19 questions, please let me know.

20 This is going to be for one election. We

21 have -- it’s for one Board of Trustee’s seat. We have

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1 two candidates for the election. There are about

2 approximately 200,000 people that are going to be

3 eligible to vote in this election.

4 We will provide you a data file based on the

5 election schedule that was provided. That data file

6 will then need to be, you know, reviewed by your agency

7 and a bulk mailing will need to be created. We’ll

8 provide biographies for both candidates. We’ll also

9 provide the voting instructions for the candidates.

10 The contractor will be responsible for

11 creating the documentation that we send. It’s usually

12 a letter that’s front and back. The letter gives the

13 voting instructions. The back will have the

14 biographies on it, sometimes additional information.

15 We will be doing voting by IVR and by

16 website. So those are the two main types of voting.

17 The contractor will have to have the ability to conduct

18 an entire election by paper if that is necessary, and

19 we’ll need to be able to provide paper ballots if

20 requested specifically by a candidate.

21 We at the Agency will handle all of the

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1 international mailing of ballots for our candidates.

2 Let’s see what else. We have some dates on here about

3 when we would expect information to be turned over to

4 us to start testing, and that would be by May 17th so

5 we can test the IVR system as well as the website, make

6 sure any kinks are worked out prior to the mailing of

7 the election materials and that the voting begins.

8 Then there is a time table set up for the

9 last day of voting. Voting will pretty much be the

10 entire month of June, and then we would expect results

11 from the contractor in the first week of July.

12 MS. GORDON: Just a reminder that please use

13 the revised Board of Trustees Election Schedule that

14 was -- it’s dated 3/29/21, Attachment P. It is a

15 revised one with all the revised dates.

16 Bid Format and Submission Requirements --

17 Section 5.1 has the instructions on how to submit bids

18 electronically on eMMA. Section 5.3 is the Bid Price

19 Form instructions, and 5.4 is details on how the bid

20 submission should be submitted, as well as Section 5.5

21 detailing the delivery of the bids which is, of course, HUNT REPORTING COMPANY

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1 eMMA.

2 As of now, we’ll stop now and if you have any

3 questions please ask them at this time.

4 MR. CAPUTO: This is Michael from Yes-

5 Elections. Just to go back, Margie, something you said

6 earlier. You saying that no subcontracting is allowed.

7 MS. GORDON: Yes, that’s correct.

8 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. I just want to make sure

9 that matches up with the IFB because I remember reading

10 that it says that it’s allowed only if it’s approved by

11 SRA, and we always use a subcontractor for anything

12 that’s print and mailed.

13 I always work with professionals in the

14 election world but when it comes to a mail house we use

15 a top-tier production facility. We’ve been working

16 with them since we started. They handle all our print

17 production and mailing.

18 Is that definitely a dead set, that no

19 subcontractors can be used?

20 MS. GORDON: Megan?

21 MS. MYERS: We previously had no

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1 subcontracting. It looks like in the new IFB it says

2 unless approved by the Agency. We would have to know

3 some statistics and some information. We could check

4 kind of offline about that if you want to send some

5 questions to Margie.

6 Our concern is just in the past, issues with

7 subcontractors have been a major deal-breaker for us.

8 They have been where the election basically breaks

9 down, where there’s no communication between our

10 contractor and whoever they’re subbing through, and

11 it’s just not been a good relationship. So we’ve tried

12 to cut it out as much as possible for elections.

13 MR. CAPUTO: I see. Gotcha.

14 MR. BODIN: This is John. I wanted to follow

15 up on that. If I could ask, in the past how many

16 qualified bidders have you had that were able to

17 provide that entire service without subcontracting on a

18 high grade level?

19 MS. MYERS: So our last election was held

20 with the Maryland -- Margie, you would have to tell me

21 about who it was -- but our last election was conducted

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1 by someone who subcontracted and the election before

2 that and they both did not go well, which is why we

3 started this and that’s why we kind of put that in

4 there “approved by the Agency.”

5 We want to make sure that communication is

6 complete to the contractor and not through us. We

7 don’t expect to have any communication with any of the

8 subcontractors and that’s where the problems have been

9 in the past.

10 And, so if, you know, we can have a

11 discussion about that specifically when you respond to

12 the bid to see what the relationship is between you and

13 the subcontractor and what your requirements are of the

14 subcontractor.

15 MR. BODIN: Just a follow up on that question

16 and I think that will be my questions for the day.

17 Under 1.1.1, minimum bidder experience, again the same

18 question. Given those metrics, how many bidders in the

19 past have qualified for that in each of your cycles?

20 MS. MYERS: Qualified for not having a

21 subcontractor?

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1 MR. BODIN: No, no. 1.1.1, “Bidder shall

2 have no less than two years experience within the last

3 five years in providing election services using

4 integrated voice response system, paper ballots, and

5 electronic voting via the internet for a minimum of

6 150,000 voters.”

7 I’m asking is that an aggregate or is that in

8 one instance where there would be 150,000 voters over

9 those three voting channels?

10 MS. MYERS: One instance.

11 MR. BODIN: Well, in other words, are you

12 looking for people who have experience in elections of

13 150,000 voters or more per election?

14 MS. MYERS: Yes. Per election.

15 MR. BODIN: Per election? Okay. And my --

16 MS. MYERS: We want to -- go ahead.

17 MR. BODIN: My question is how many qualified

18 bidders have you had in the past competing for business

19 that meet that requirement, without subcontractors?

20 MS. MYERS: Margie, I don’t remember the last

21 election. I think we had two or three that came in.

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1 The difficulty with answering that question, Mr. Bodin, 2 is that sometimes we put these IFBs out there and we

3 don’t have to have an election, so more often than not

4 we only have one candidate and elections are conducted.

5 So it’s probably been about four or five

6 years since we’ve had an election. So this is the

7 first one since then, and so my memory is sketchy. I

8 think we had at least two or three, though, that I

9 remember Margie opening.

10 MS. GORDON: We didn’t open them. We

11 actually had to cancel them.

12 MS. MYERS: Oh, that’s right. Yeah.

13 MS. GORDON: Because of the fact that we

14 didn’t have to have the election and that’s --

15 MR. BODIN: Uh-huh. Well, just out of the

16 gate I’ll have to say that we’ll probably not be able

17 to apply for this because we would not even though I

18 personally supervised hybrid elections in my career

19 since probably 1999, I actually -- my company right now

20 couldn’t meet that minimum.

21 So, unless that is something you would

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1 consider waiving given other qualifications which I

2 think we meet, that would probably be a problem for us

3 in terms of meeting that very first qualification. But

4 I appreciate the information. Thank you.

5 MS. MYERS: So you have not conducted an

6 election with 150,000 voters in one election? Is that

7 the caveat?

8 MR. BODIN: I’ve conducted an election

9 probably with over 1 million eligible voters. It did

10 not include IVR, paper ballots, and electronic voting

11 in the same election.

12 MS. MYERS: Okay.

13 MR. BODIN: So, I mean, we wouldn’t qualify.

14 MS. GORDON: We then had one vendor back in -

15 - it’s 2018 that bidded but unfortunately, as I said, 16 we cancelled the bid because of no election needed.

17 MR. BODIN: Okay.

18 MS. GORDON: And prior to that we were

19 working with a preferred provider in Maryland -- works

20 within the State of Maryland.

21 Any other questions?

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1 MR. CAPUTO: Yeah. This is Michael again.

2 For the -- it’s just one group that has that election, 3 I believe you said, right? I was just curious. Is it

4 the teacher group or the employer group, or --

5 MS. MYERS: It’s employees.

6 MR. CAPUTO: Employees? And for the

7 candidate bios that get printed on the materials, 8 generally what size -- do you allow them one page --

9 like one side of one sheet? I just want to make sure

10 that I quote this the best way and the most cost

11 effective way. I don’t want to over-quote it, because

12 if there’s only two candidates, will each candidate

13 have at least like one page? One side of a sheet?

14 MS. MYERS: No. They are limited to words.

15 I believe it’s 250 words, but I can get you that

16 specifically via email. But, yeah, they are limited in

17 the amount of words they can give us for their bio.

18 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. So then the entire mailer

19 probably wouldn’t be more than two sheets of double-

20 sided paper, if that?

21 MS. MYERS: Yes.

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1 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. You had mentioned that

2 the vendor should be able to conduct an election

3 entirely out of paper if SRA decides so, which is

4 completely fine. In our response is there a space on

5 that bid form to include what those costs would be? Is

6 that something that we shouldn’t worry about right now?

7 Because on the Attachment B there isn’t a space

8 currently for a cost line to produce ballots to

9 everyone.

10 So I wasn’t sure if that’s something you need

11 up-front within the bid or if that’s something that is

12 negotiated later on in the rare event that SRA asks for

13 it.

14 MS. MYERS: Margie, does it need to be

15 provided up-front?

16 MS. GORDON: I’m a little bit confused as to

17 what he’s asking.

18 MS. MYERS: So, in the IFB you have to put a

19 caveat in there that if for some reason something

20 happens and the State Retirement Agency deems that the

21 election must be conducted by paper ballot, the

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1 contractor must be able to do that.

2 So instead of using the website, the IVR, 3 they can completely do it by paper ballot. It’s sort

4 of a catastrophic thing, I would think. It’s not

5 something we’re striving for.

6 MS. GORDON: Okay. I’m not sure of that one.

7 I guess they could submit on a separate piece of paper.

8 MS. MYERS: When we went through the Maryland

9 Marketplace we did not get a bid on that, like we did

10 not have estimates on that cost.

11 MS. GORDON: The only thing I would say is to

12 submit us a separate -- oh. Not sure how to do

13 that. We’ll have to discuss that and get back to you

14 on that.

15 MR. CAPUTO: Yeah. No problem. You know, I

16 know that Excel spreadsheet was a bit -- I know that

17 it’s strict so I don’t want to add lines or add things

18 that are not going to make us advantageous so I want to

19 keep the form as straightforward as possible.

20 So right now the form is just for the notice

21 mailing, the online voting, the IVR voting. I didn’t

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1 want to add a cost for producing paper ballots to

2 everybody. You know, because usually that package

3 includes the business reply envelope. Then we would

4 have to include, you know, the processing fees for any

5 of the returns that we get back.

6 So, if you do allow us to put a separate

7 sheet within the bid response, I could just include

8 what those costs would be separately so it doesn’t

9 affect the bid form. So, yeah, if you want to just get

10 back to me on that.

11 MS. GORDON: Well, if we do change it we will

12 basically change the entire bid form and sent it out as

13 a revised bid form for everyone, and if it doesn’t go

14 out in time we will ask for a best and final offer bid

15 sheet which will require everyone to respond with that

16 new information on it.

17 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. That sounds good. I’ll

18 look out for that.

19 MS. GORDON: Okay.

20 MR. CAPUTO: I have a few more questions

21 about the form if you don’t mind.

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1 MS. GORDON: Go ahead.

2 MR. CAPUTO: For the paper ballots on

3 requests, how many do you usually get in the past?

4 MS. MYERS: In the last election I think we

5 had five.

6 MR. CAPUTO: Oh, okay. So it’s -- okay. So, 7 I didn’t know if that was five or like, you know, 8 thousands, because then my next question would be is we

9 would have to put a cost associated with that on the

10 form. But if it’s under, you know, 20, that’s fine.

11 We can include those in-house.

12 MS. MYERS: Yeah, we only had a couple people

13 that -- like most people that don’t want to use the

14 website will use the IVR system, which is why we offer

15 it. And then we had a few people that either didn’t

16 want to or couldn’t do either version, and they just

17 called via the customer service line and with the

18 contractor and got the paper ballot.

19 We do send paper ballots to all of our

20 overseas individuals, but we handle those in-house.

21 MR. CAPUTO: Gotcha. Okay. I remember you

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1 saying that earlier. Okay. Can you clarify what that

2 last line is on the bid form? The post

3 termination/expiration assistance? What services is

4 expected there of the vendor?

5 MS. MYERS: Where are you? What number?

6 MR. CAPUTO: Oh, sorry. This is on the

7 Attachment B, the bid form. This is line 33 and 34, 8 Other Services.

9 MS. MYERS: Hold on. Let me get there.

10 MR. CAPUTO: Sure.

11 MS. GORDON: Do you need a copy of that, 12 Megan?

13 MS. MYERS: No. I’m scrolling. I’m trying

14 to find it.

15 MS. GORDON: It’s not in the bid itself.

16 It’s Excel spreadsheet.

17 MS. MYERS: Oh. Did you send that earlier?

18 MS. GORDON: Yes, I did.

19 MS. MYERS: Okay. I have the pricing sheet.

20 Is that what you’re talking about?

21 MR. CAPUTO: Yes. Attachment B, bid form.

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1 It’s an Excel spreadsheet.

2 MS. MYERS: Okay. Got it. Okay. Post

3 termination/expiration assistance. That’s a good

4 question.

5 MR. CAPUTO: Yeah. I couldn’t find anything

6 in the main IFB doc (phonetic). The only thing I can

7 think of is maybe you need help with the retention, you

8 know, at the end of the contract how long we retain the

9 materials or what we send back to you. So I wasn’t

10 sure if that’s what that referred to.

11 MS. MYERS: I honestly -- I think it has

12 something to do with the destruction of the voting

13 information, like after the results are reported to us.

14 I believe that’s what it is, but let me check.

15 Margie, did you add that line? Because I

16 don’t have it on my spreadsheet that I provided.

17 MS. GORDON: No, not that I know of. But I

18 can always send out a revised bid sheet and take that

19 off.

20 MS. MYERS: Yeah. We can look at it. I

21 don’t have it on any of the ones that I submitted. I’m

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1 wondering if somebody else in Procurement added it.

2 We’ll take a look at that, Mr. Caputo.

3 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. Cool. And --

4 MS. MYERS: And I did confirm it’s 250 words

5 that they’re limited to on their biographies.

6 MR. CAPUTO: Perfect. Thank you. On the bid

7 form, the form is not supposed to be inclusive of

8 postage, right? That’s completely separate?

9 MS. MYERS: Correct.

10 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. In the IFB doc, there’s a

11 section about insurance requirements. For two of the

12 polices, the general and the cyber, the amounts listed

13 are a little bit more than what we currently provide

14 and that goes across all our pension and retirement

15 system clients. They usually don’t ask for amounts as

16 high.

17 So I just wanted to ask if that is a deal

18 breaker? If that’s actual -- would you like us to put

19 what we currently provide within the IFB? Is there

20 wiggle room there?

21 MS. MYERS: Margie?

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1 MS. GORDON: You’re not able to change

2 anything on the bid form. You’re only allowed to enter

3 information in the yellow sections. Is that what

4 you’re asking?

5 MR. CAPUTO: Sorry. No. In the main IFB

6 docs -- and not on the bid form -- in the main IFB docs

7 there’s a section about insurance requirements.

8 MS. GORDON: Oh, I’m sorry.

9 MS. MYERS: 3.6.

10 MR. CAPUTO: That’s okay. Thank you. So, it

11 says that it is required for the commercial general

12 policy, a $3 million aggregate -- annual aggregate.

13 That’s a little bit more than what we currently

14 provide, and that goes across all our retirement system

15 and pension clients. We don’t usually provide that

16 much. And the same with the cyber. It’s asking for $5

17 million per occurrence.

18 So I just wanted to ask if that was a deal

19 breaker, if that was definite, if there was some wiggle

20 room there. I mean, I can put in our response what we

21 provide.

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1 MR. GORDON: Okay. Send me an email for this

2 question request and I will present it to our Finance

3 Department to discuss that and we will get back to you.

4 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. That sounds like a plan.

5 And I think you also need the insurance for our

6 subcontractors so I will work on that, as well.

7 There was information in the IFB about

8 possibly having a recount, and I just wanted to know if

9 there was any more information about what could warrant

10 a recount and what the procedures would be for a

11 recount. And if you want, I could include that

12 question in writing if that’s something that you have

13 to look up, as well.

14 MS. GORDON: Megan?

15 MS. MYERS: I believe the Board of Trustees

16 would have to request a recount, or the Executive

17 Director. Ken, do you know off the top of your head?

18 Or Kim?

19 (No response.)

20 MS. MYERS: I think I lost both of them. I

21 think it’s based on COMAR. I think it’s based on our

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1 Code of Maryland Regulations. I believe that only our

2 Executive Director or the Board of Trustees can vote to

3 have a recount. I don’t think it specifies what would

4 constitute that.

5 You can obviously shoot that in an email and

6 I can come back with any legislative information I have

7 about that as to what would require a recount.

8 MR. CAPUTO: Yeah. That would be great.

9 Which was leading to the next question, but we could

10 hold off. I was just -- usually when there’s a recount

11 there’s different services that we provide. You know, 12 everything is automated so there’s different tiers of

13 recounts which have different price structures.

14 So I wanted -- I just was trying to feel out

15 how likely it is that there would be a recount, what

16 you actually need, and then I can apply which services

17 we would provide, because there isn’t a line to include

18 the cost for a recount on the bid form and I wasn’t

19 sure how often that happens, if that should be included

20 within our management costs, things like that. So the

21 info that you send should help me determine that.

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1 MS. MYERS: So in the history of our

2 elections we have never had a recount.

3 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. Okay.

4 MS. MYERS: We also don’t have elections very

5 often. Every couple of years -- every four or five

6 years. I’d like to say the possibility is maybe one

7 percent, but I also know the last two calendar years

8 have been complete craziness, so this would be the year

9 that it could happen.

10 So, I can’t guarantee that it wouldn’t happen

11 but we can send you whatever we can find in the

12 regulations that would provide for that.

13 But, yeah, we’ve never had a glitch or --

14 even when we were doing it more manually we haven’t had

15 to do a recount.

16 MR. CAPUTO: Gotcha. Okay. That’s helpful

17 right there. And, yeah, I’ll put that in my questions

18 to you folks and whatever info you can send me that

19 would be great.

20 Just a few more questions here. When the

21 voter is logging in to the IVR or the online ballot, HUNT REPORTING COMPANY

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1 are they using a set of credentials that the vendor

2 generates, or are they using a partially generated

3 credential and then like their last four of their

4 Social, for example? What have you done in the past?

5 MS. MYERS: So, in the past we provide the

6 vendor with an Excel file that has first name, last

7 name, address, and I don’t believe it’s a member ID; I

8 think we call it a person (phonetic) ID, and then

9 usually the vendor has taken that spreadsheet and

10 randomly selected a code to assign to that number.

11 So they’re given a four-digit or six-digit

12 PIN basically and that’s how they access the voting.

13 That’s how it’s worked in the past. And then they get

14 that piece of paper in the mail and this paper in the

15 mail has this four or six digit PIN on it that provides

16 an access to the website, or to use the IVR.

17 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. So it was just one code?

18 One set of credentials?

19 MS. MYERS: Right.

20 MR. CAPUTO: Okay.

21 MS. MYERS: And that was a long time ago, so

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1 things have changed drastically. So we are always open

2 for new ideas and concepts from our vendors.

3 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. That’s good to know.

4 Okay. I’m going to include some information about that

5 in the response. Okay. We already have -- you said

6 there’s two candidates?

7 MS. MYERS: Uh-huh.

8 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. What is the overall

9 turnout numbers if you have them? And if you have them

10 by method, even better. (Indiscernible) --

11 MS. MYERS: I can get those to you. I can

12 tell you in the past we’ve had very low voter turnout.

13 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. I can email those to you, 14 too, if you want --

15 MS. MYERS: Yeah. I can provide you a

16 breakdown.

17 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. I’ll send that in an

18 email. Do you have PDF samples of the past cycles --

19 past cycle materials that you’ve mailed out?

20 MS. MYERS: We do.

21 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. So I will ask you for

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1 that in the email, as well. If you could send those

2 that would be great just so I could take a look.

3 MS. GORDON: What we’ll do is those -- all

4 the information that you are requesting will go out to

5 all vendors -- I mean, all bidders.

6 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. Just wrapping up here.

7 The IFB mentions live customer support, which is --

8 it’s something that -- we certainly can provide it.

9 Usually we include a help desk service but it’s not

10 live. It’s by voice mail or email during business

11 hours, and we tend to see that it’s actually a little

12 bit better and can save on the costs as opposed to

13 having live support just because the help desk staff

14 has time to listen to the message or the email and look

15 up the voter before they bring them back. So it just

16 saves a little bit on time, and actually the voter

17 experience is improved because of that.

18 So we can definitely include a cost for

19 external support, but I wanted to know if, one, what

20 was the volume of the calls if you have that

21 information, and if SRA would consider using the cost

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1 saving live support option if I could include that in

2 the IFB in the response.

3 MS. MYERS: So I don’t know that we have any

4 statistics of how many calls were received by customer

5 service in our last election. I can surely look but

6 I’m not sure we have those.

7 MR. CAPUTO: Okay.

8 MS. MYERS: Regarding the live verus not

9 live, that might be something we’re going to push for

10 live. Our fear probably would be that if they call the

11 number and they don’t get a response they’re going to

12 call Member Services here at our agency, and our Member

13 Services department can’t help them.

14 So, that would be my concern. Our members

15 love to do that. They will pick up the phone. If they

16 get a voice mail they’ll hang up and try a new number, 17 or try a new number. So that would be my concern.

18 You can put that into your questions as well

19 and we can talk about it more internal, but I’m pretty

20 sure we’re going to push towards the live assistance.

21 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. Sounds good. And my last

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1 few set of questions, for a lot of our retirement

2 system clients we’ll also send out emails right at the

3 same date that we mail, right at opening, and it

4 includes the same information as the mailer.

5 So, it helps improve turnout. It’s also an

6 included feature that we do. It’s not an additional

7 cost. So I wanted to see if SRA was open to that idea, 8 if they had the email addresses of members. Also, one

9 thing we do is we can collect email addresses as a

10 service and give you a report of that later on at the

11 end of the election if you’re trying to get more

12 emails.

13 So I was just trying to feel out if SRA was

14 open to the vendor sending out emails with the same

15 information as the postal mailer, and how many email

16 addresses you currently have on file of the voters.

17 MS. MYERS: So we currently don’t have the

18 capabilities to do that. We historically have never

19 captured email addresses in our systems until recently.

20 We are undergoing a large change here at the agency

21 that’s going to take multiple years and we are

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1 capturing email addresses now, and members are able to

2 sign in to their online accounts if they’re registered

3 properly.

4 So it is not something that we have

5 statistics on. It’s not something that we would have a

6 group of email addresses that you could do any kind of

7 an emailing out for this election.

8 MR. CAPUTO: Okay.

9 MS. MYERS: Our hope in the future would

10 absolutely be for that, and I’m not sure how

11 administration would feel about capturing email

12 addresses for the election. I’m not sure what we would

13 do with them once you capture them, because I don’t

14 think we can put them on the accounts unless the member

15 actually personally registers it.

16 So, no to the first part. We can’t send an

17 email. The second part about capturing email

18 addresses, I will have to get back to you.

19 MR. CAPUTO: Yeah. I’ll include that in my

20 questions to you in the emails. There’s a way for

21 folks to -- when they go to the online site as an

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1 option -- they don’t have to do this, but there’s a

2 space where they could update or add their email

3 address and we collect that roster of email addresses

4 and give it to the client at the end.

5 MS. MYERS: Okay.

6 MR. CAPUTO: So just know that that is a

7 possibility if they decide.

8 MS. MYERS: Uh-huh.

9 MR. CAPUTO: I think this is my last

10 question. Well, second to last question. Sorry. I

11 notice on the time line that it looks like we’re

12 mailing -- I think it was May 24th (indiscernible), but

13 then the online and the phone voting was opening June

14 1st.

15 MS. MYERS: Correct.

16 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. So we can definitely

17 honor that time line. There’s no issue. Just from my

18 experience we try to urge groups to open the online and

19 the phone at the same time that we mail in the event

20 that someone gets their mailer early and then they

21 can’t log into the system and vote, and then that

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1 affects the turnout.

2 So, would SRA be open to the idea of opening

3 the online and phone voting at the same day that we

4 drop the mail?

5 MS. MYERS: That would be something that we’d

6 have to get approval for. Our scheduling and our dates

7 are approved usually by our Board and by our

8 administration. I wouldn’t see why they would have an

9 issue with that, but we would have to get a final

10 approval on that.

11 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. I’m going to include that

12 question in the emails that I send you -- the email

13 questions that I send you.

14 MS. MYERS: I think our schedule is set up

15 that way because prior vendors have asked for a gap in

16 time for mailing delays and things like that. They’ve

17 actually pushed for that difference. So I think that’s

18 why we’ve just established the schedule that way. It’s

19 not anything that we prefer, necessary.

20 MR. CAPUTO: Gotcha. Okay. Last question is

21 really just an overall question. If you had any issues

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1 that you wanted to bring up from the past with your

2 previous vendors or if there’s any areas that you’re

3 looking to improve, it would help me put together the

4 response.

5 So, just in general, is there anything that

6 you can think of of any problems that you’ve had, or

7 maybe there’s some goals in mind, for turnout, for

8 example?

9 MS. MYERS: I just -- I’d say communication.

10 Communication with the vendor will be absolutely

11 paramount. This is going to be a tight turnaround for

12 this election. So if the vendors have any difficulties

13 I ask that they, you know, contact me quickly and let

14 me know what’s going on.

15 If there’s any time where the website goes

16 down, if your own system goes down during the time that

17 they’re allowed to vote it would be extremely important

18 for us to be, you know, contacted quickly so that we’re

19 notified of those type of things.

20 If we do approve the use of a subcontractor

21 then we want to make sure that that subcontractor is

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1 working with our contractor and not reaching out to us

2 individually. We always expect to have contact with

3 the contractor.

4 MR. CAPUTO: Absolutely. That’s the way it

5 should be. Yeah.

6 MS. MYERS: Sadly, that’s not the way it’s

7 been in the past, so.

8 MR. CAPUTO: Wow. Yeah. I’m sorry to hear

9 that.

10 MS. MYERS: But, yeah, I mean, that’s what

11 we’re looking for. We’re just looking for open lines

12 of communication, especially in today’s world with

13 people, you know, teleworking and being in the office, 14 and sometimes we’re hard to locate. Just being able to

15 reach out and know that you guys are keeping us up to

16 date on everything that’s happening.

17 MR. CAPUTO: Okay. Absolutely. Okay. Very

18 good. I think that covers everything on my list and

19 I’ll be sure to send you the ones that we discussed via

20 email.

21 MS. MYERS: Okay.

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1 MR. BODIN: Megan, this is John.

2 MS. MYERS: Hi.

3 MR. BODIN: Mr. Caputo, thanks very much.

4 You ticked off quite a few things on my list there.

5 MR. CAPUTO: Oh, good. Good.

6 MR. BODIN: Actually I just had a couple

7 more, and although we may not qualify this year we very

8 much would love to be able to be in the process in the

9 future years and if you would allow me to ask a couple

10 of questions, I’d appreciate it.

11 MS. MYERS: Yes.

12 MR. BODIN: One is that given that the vendor

13 is going to be assigning a unique credential to the

14 voter, I presume as holding that in confidence is third

15 party. How do we manage to provide that to you without

16 disclosing it for your international mailers if we have

17 to go to a paper ballot that goes overseas?

18 MS. MYERS: So, if memory serves me correct, 19 when we did the international mailing we had our

20 Internal Business Operations office create the

21 information. We don’t provide any of the international

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1 information to our vendor.

2 MR. BODIN: Then how would the international

3 voter -- in other words would you be creating

4 credentials for that voter?

5 MS. MYERS: It’s all paper ballot, so we --

6 MR. BODIN: Oh, oh. Okay.

7 MS. MYERS: Yeah.

8 MR. BODIN: Okay. All right. Got it.

9 MS. MYERS: So we can’t do -- well, I mean, 10 that’s the way that it’s worked prior. Our vendors

11 weren’t able to allow international individuals to use

12 the IVR or use the website.

13 MR. BODIN: Right. Correct.

14 MS. MYERS: And therefore we just did paper

15 ballot. We created, you know, a random number sampling

16 and it went out that way, and they came back in and we

17 didn’t know who they were from or what they were and

18 then we sent them on to the contractor to tabulate.

19 MR. BODIN: Okay. And the other question I

20 had was given a 200,000 piece mailing you’re going to

21 get quite a few of those back undeliverable.

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1 MS. MYERS: Correct.

2 MR. BODIN: Those would come back to the

3 vendor’s PO box; is that correct?

4 MS. MYERS: No. They usually come back to us

5 because they’ll have our return mailing address on

6 them.

7 MR. BODIN: Oh, they’ll have your return?

8 Okay. And there’s no effort to do fulfillment beyond

9 that?

10 MS. MYERS: That’s something we can discuss.

11 Usually we do our own research and try to get them back

12 out the door. We have some staff here that’s really

13 good at that type of thing. I also know usually when

14 you do a mass mailing I believe you guys get some sort

15 of a reporting back about address changes.

16 MR. BODIN: Yes. So, in other words, you

17 would just repackage the already sealed credential --

18 MS. MYERS: Right.

19 MR. BODIN: -- information and send it out.

20 So you’re not opening that up and repackaging it?

21 MS. MYERS: Correct. We just take the

HUNT REPORTING COMPANY

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1 envelope and put it inside of another envelope with a

2 new (indiscernible).

3 MR. BODIN: Got it. Okay. Thank you very

4 much. And just one final comment question, given that

5 technology and elections has changed dramatically over

6 the last five to ten years, I’m wondering if there’s a

7 time and a place to maybe suggest some changes to the

8 process that might, as Mr. Caputo had pointed out, make

9 things a little more efficient and likely less costly.

10 MS. MYERS: Absolutely. I would love to have

11 that discussion. We’ve batted it around a little bit

12 here in the Agency and our concern is just basically

13 that we don’t ever know when we’re going to have an

14 election and so that’s the concern, too, trying to get

15 the IFB together and get it out there and on the street

16 for bid and, you know, we’re only doing this every

17 couple of years.

18 So things change dramatically and we’re aware

19 of that. We were hoping to do that before this

20 election but with everything that’s going on and it

21 just didn’t happen. Plus, we’re undergoing so many

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1 changes here internally.

2 So, absolutely. If you provide your contact

3 information to Margie, I would love to talk to you guys

4 offline and get some ideas and thoughts about the way

5 things are.

6 MR. BODIN: Yeah. Just as an offhand thing, 7 if you’re going to be asking people to provide an email

8 address as part of a registration process you might

9 want to also ask for their smart phone number.

10 A lot of our voters are not living on email

11 any longer. They’re in text-land. So that is a way to

12 actually drive turnout and actually better communicate

13 with the voters. Just to throw that out there. If

14 you’re planning processes for data collection I’d

15 recommend you look into that.

16 MS. MYERS: Yeah. All good ideas. We’re a

17 little bit behind that curve ball. Here at the Agency

18 we are driving ourselves into the current century but

19 it’s taking a bit. So we don’t have the ability to

20 text anything. We don’t have the ability to do any

21 kind of email blast (phonetic) for anything else from

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1 our agency.

2 MR. BODIN: I appreciate it. Thanks very

3 much.

4 MS. MYERS: Thank you.

5 MS. GORDON: Okay. If that’s all for the

6 questions, as stated we will await your questions, and

7 as far as the pricing form we will go over that. If it

8 definitely needs to be revised we will revise it and

9 put it out for everyone, hopefully very soon so that

10 anybody that does wish to bid will have that ability to

11 get it done.

12 If it doesn’t get accomplished shortly, we

13 will put out a BAFO (phonetic) price bid sheet for

14 everyone to bid on and make it a requirement, okay?

15 MR. CAPUTO: Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

16 MS. GORDON: So, we do thank you all for

17 attending, and as stated, the bid will come due on

18 April the 16th by 2:00 p.m. Again, you must submit

19 your bid via eMMA, and questions will be emailed to the

20 procurement@sra.state.md.us as soon as possible so that

21 we can answer them.

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1 Hunt Reporting will have their transcript to

2 me by Friday the 9th, and I will transmit that to

3 everyone, also. Okay?

4 MR. BODIN: That sounds good.

5 MR. CAPUTO: I know it’s a lot to go through

6 but it definitely helps us, so I appreciate the time

7 here.

8 MS. GORDON: Yes, as I said, we’re in a bit

9 of time crunch. Unfortunately sometimes legislation

10 pushes us back in our schedule as far things that

11 happen in the procurement world.

12 But we thank you, and as I said if you have

13 questions please contact me and I will get your answers

14 as soon as possible. All right?

15 MR. BODIN: Thank you.

16 MR. CAPUTO: That sounds like a plan. Thank

17 you.

18 MS. GORDON: Thank you for coming. Well, not

19 coming -- we thank you for showing up and appreciate

20 your input.

21 (The meeting concluded at 10:53 a.m.)

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CERTIFICATE OF NOTARY

I, Carol O’Brocki, Notary Public, before whom the foregoing testimony was taken, do hereby certify that the witness was duly sworn by me; that said testimony is a true record of the testimony given by said witness; that I am neither counsel for, related to, nor employed by any of the parties to this action, nor financially or otherwise interested in the outcome of the action; and that the testimony was reduced to typewriting by me or under my direction.

This certification is expressly withdrawn upon the disassembly or photocopying of the foregoing transcript, including exhibits, unless disassembly or photocopying is done under the auspices of Hunt Reporting Company, and the signature and original seal is attached thereto.

CAROL O’BROCKI, Notary Public in and for the State of Maryland

My Commission Expires: January 15, 2023

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