May 19, 2023 • 21 mins
Matt Finfgeld is in his 2nd year as director of the Richland County Board of Elections. Matt has been involved at the Board of Elections in various roles since the 1990's. Finfgeld was born in Mansfield and went to Madison High School. Learn what all the local board of elections does prior to and leading up to an election. Close to 400 poll workers are need to run an election and Matt shares all the details on the podcast.
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(00:00):
The CEO you should Know, broughtto you by Robie Foster Miller Eric Insurance.
This week CEO Matt Finceguild Director ofthe Richland County Board of Elections.
Good morning, Good to see youface to face today. Good morning,
Aaron. Thank you for having me. Absolutely Matt and I have chatted many
(00:20):
times over the telephone, but yourfirst chance to come in here to the
iHeart studio. So glad to haveyou with us. So let's kind of
do an overview. Everybody knows aboutthe Richland County Board of Elections, but
there's so many things you guys dothat people probably don't know. Could we
kind of do an overview of whatyou guys do at the Board of Elections.
(00:41):
Absolutely, so the Board of Elections, everything we do there is a
bipartisan organization and everything we do isbipartisan. I'm the director, James Immerman
as a deputy director, but herand I run day to day operations of
the Board of Elections. There isn'ta decision that I make or she make
that we don't talk about and agreeon, which is unusual in politics I
(01:03):
know. And then same thing withour staff. We have four full time
staff members to Democrat to a Republican. We have two part time permanent staff
members again, one Republican, oneDemocrat. And then as far as seasonal
workers, it varies based on election. You know, getting ready to go
into next year, we'll be rampingit up for workers. We usually have
(01:26):
about forty to fifty seasonal workers fora presidential election. If it's an off
year election like this year, anodd year election, we'll have twenty twenty
five seasonal as well. We alsohave a board. We have a four
person board, two Democrats, twoRepublicans again, and that's the true bosses
of the Board of Elections. Theymake the decisions. The directors, Jane
(01:48):
and myself we run to day today operations and we present the evidence or
the ballots, petitions, whatever itmay be, to the board and they
vote on them. But they're theones that make the decisions the board does.
Currently right now, Bill Freytach isour board chairman and Meghan Watman is
a member. So Bill and Meganare the Republicans and then Vanitas Shoulders and
(02:10):
Larry Wirek are the Democrat board members. Larry and Vanita are new to the
board, when they were both justappointing in the last few months, but
our board's always worked very well together, so it is great to see that
both parties can work together. Andthen there's a lot of things that we
do with the board that most peopleare not aware of. We do work
(02:30):
more than two days a year orthree days, depending on how many elections
that we have, so about ninetydays prior to election, petitions are due.
So any offices that are gone beyondthe ballot, they have to file
a petition with a certain amount ofsignatures from voters in their area, whether
it be a village they're running for, a township, a school board,
(02:52):
they have to get signatures of registeredvoters within that district that they're running for,
and there is a filing fee whenthey file petition, and then what
our staff does is we verify thosepetitions. We verify that the signature's match
that they are registered voters, andthen that goes to Jane and myself and
we kind of verify our staff's workand then here again that gets presented to
(03:15):
the board to approve those petitions,So that kind of starts the clock on
elections. So from there we thenstart our ballot layout. So we have
to put everything into the system allthe races, there's a certain order.
We get our direction from the OhioSecretary of State. They kind of tell
us what order the ballot will bein, and as well as issues,
(03:37):
so when people file issues townships,you know, if they want a tax
renewal, if they want new taxes, they have to file that by the
same deadline. And then there's templates. So Jane handles all the issues kind
of getting a wording for them,and then we send that wording down to
the Secretary of State. They haveto approve that wording, and then we
(03:57):
send it to the entity so thatthey're where and they're satisfied with how that
issue is going to look on theballot. And then also here again that
issue has to get input into oursystem, into the ballot layout. Once
we get the ballot layout done,then obviously there's a lot of proofing that
goes into that as well. Hereagain we have bipartisan teams that prove the
ballot together, and we usually haveanywhere from four to five teams that look
(04:20):
over at the ballot because you know, it's easy to miss something and everything
has to be perfect, it hasto be right on que. So once
we get that finalize a ballot layout. Then we go into what we call
the testing portion. So every machinethat we put out on election day or
early vote goes through a testing procedureevery election, and that testing procedure is
(04:43):
it's a predetermined vote. So normallywhat we would do is we'd pick the
first position of every race and thenwe upload that to make sure it's tabulating
correctly. And then what we dois we reset the machine, make sure
it has the zero votes, andwe set it for election day. And
then we of course seal the machinesso they're secure, and then we put
them in a room that is alsosecured with double locks, cameras alarms.
(05:08):
Anytime anyone goes in to one ofthose rooms, it comes across to mine
and Jane's cell phone. We knowwhen the doors opened every time, and
we have access to those cameras twentyfour to seven. We can look them
up at home. If someone's inthere and shouldn't be, we always know,
I mean here again, that's asecurity measure, you know, to
make sure no one is tampering withany of the machines or anything. We
(05:30):
also run the paper ballots through ourscanner as a test to make sure that
they're tabulating correctly. So we dothat about we try to finish out about
two to three weeks prior to earlyvote. Early vote starts twenty nine days
prior to every election, so normallyour testing procedure starts about forty five to
sixty days to an election, andthen of course we go into the early
(05:54):
vote session. Like I said,that starts twenty nine days before, so
there's plenty of time for people tovote with having the twenty nine days to
vote and then also election day beingopen for thirteen hours. And then while
we're in early Vote, we're alsoof course getting ready for to train the
pull workers. We're always looking forpoll workers. I mean you and I
have talked about that many of times. That's never ending. So we do
(06:17):
have multiple training classes that we dofor poll workers. How we do our
training as we have stations. Wecall it station training, and we try
to simulate an election. Okay,so we'll have a station to show them
how to check in voters in thedifferent scenarios that you could run into on
election day. We have what's calleda paper ballot table, so we go
(06:38):
over the different types of paper ballots, whether it's a provisional at curbside or
just a regular paper ballot, howyou handle those folks, and then we
go through we have two stations thatgo through how to set up our machines
and how to run to reports anddifferent issues that you could run into there.
So it usually takes about two hoursfor a pull worker to go through
(06:59):
those station training, and we dolike four or five days, and we
do it like for nine ten hoursa day, so we let the poll
workers pick. We try to youknow, hey, just come on in.
If it's from nine to six,we just ask that you're there by
four o'clock so our staff can gohome too. It is a long month
for our staff. We put ina lot of hours to make this happen,
all our staff to us so andthen we go on to Once we
(07:21):
get done with that, we're youknow, running the backup poll books for
the locations just in case, becauseyou know, elections is all about preparing.
You know, you have to prepare, you have to have time to
prepare, and you prepare for everyscenario. You know, if we lose
power, we got to be ableto still vote. So we print what's
(07:43):
called paper backup books. So forour EPs, which is what we check
voters in with. If they godown, they revert back to a paper
the old way before EPs, whichis a paper signature book manette would have
every voter within their location. Itwould have the signature we have on file.
It would have a spot for themto sign. So we start preparing
(08:03):
them about two weeks prior to electionas well as the hanging list. We
have hanging lists that we put onevery location door so case a voter,
you know, isn't sure where they'regoing to vote or what, that list
is always hanging on the door.So we prepare them as well about two
weeks prior to the election and tryto get ready for election day. I'm
terrific to learn this morning all aboutthe Richslin County Board of Elections and what
(08:26):
they do, which is a lot. As you hear from Matt Finskild this
morning, director of the Richslin CountyBoard of Elections. So could you kind
of let's, you know, focusin on you. How long have you
been you know, director, howlong have you been with the Board of
Elections. So I've been director justa little over two years. I was
hired. I started in April twentytwenty one. But I have been with
(08:50):
the Board of Elections since about nineteenninety one. I started off as unloading
supplies on election night as a asa young kid at about twelve or thirteen
years old, and I've been involvedsince that time. I've done many things
at the Board of Elections. I'vehelped train poll workers, I've been a
rover on election day, I've beeninvolved in the testing of the machines.
(09:11):
I've worked early vote and then ofcourse becoming director in twenty one April twenty
one. All right, terrific.Again, let's learn more about Matt Finnskille.
Let's go back to the beginning.If you would tell us where was
Matt Finskille born. I was bornright here in Mansfield, Ohio. So
I've lived in Richland County my entirelife. All right, terrific. Next,
(09:35):
if you would where'd you go tohigh school? I went to Madison.
I graduated from Madison High School inninety seven. All right, a
Madison ram did not know that?So as you graduated high school, did
you know you know career path wouldbe you know, Board of Elections where
there other I know you started ata very young age where there are other
(09:56):
aspirations, i'd just kind of getit into the field. So, I
mean, I've I've always had aninterest in elections, and you know,
it's an important thing to me foreveryone to have that right to vote and
to make sure every vote counts.So I've always been around politics. My
mother was the director at the Boardof Elections, so you know, there's
a lot of conversations at the dinnertable, you know, about elections and
(10:18):
politics and that type of thing.I ran for Ontario City Council when I
was twenty one b one. Ibeat an incumbent that was in there I
believe eight years and to this dateI am still the youngest elected Ontario councilman.
So and then I served on thatfor about five years. I resigned
(10:39):
there to go down and work withBart Hamilton, or Richland County treasure and
I was his chief deputy for fifteenyears there, so I kind of ran
the operations of the Treasure's office.I handled all the tax foreclosures. I
served on the Board of Revision wherepeople challenge the value and the budget Commission,
(11:00):
and then also helped form the RichlandCounty Land Bank when that came around.
So I've been involved in government andduring that whole time, as I
said, I used to take myvacation from there to go out and help
at the Board of Elections about them. So I would take vacation and go
out and help with the testing processfor a week. I would take vacation
to work election day. It's kindof the joke at the courthouse that,
(11:22):
well, Matt must be on vacationand working somewhere else. So terrific to
learn the story. If Matt Finskildthis morning, director of the Richland County
Board of Elections, this week's CEO, you should know as we learn about
people and organizations here locally in thenorth central Ohio area. All right,
So if we get back to theBoard of Elections and you've talked about poll
(11:46):
workers, and you said it doesvary in terms of how many people you'll
need depending on whether it's a presidentialelection whatever. Do you have a ballpark
number of kind of where it rangesfrom in terms of the amount of poll
workers needed. Yeah, I meanwe're anywhere from about three hundred and twenty
up to about three hundred and eightyalmost four hundred workers to pull off an
(12:07):
election. In Richland County. Obviouslya presidential we want to have close to
four hundred to be full staff tohandle. You know, the percentage to
turn out that we get last presidentialis a little over seventy percent turnout,
and that's a lot of people.When you're talking about four hundred poll workers,
you're and and we'll say it again, and we'll probably say it again
at the end. But you're alwayslooking for polls, always always looking.
(12:28):
If if you know anyone's out therethat's interested, all they can either go
online, they go to Secretary ofState's website or our website and apply to
be a poll worker. They cancall our office. They can email our
Board of Elections in email and letus know they're interested. You know,
poll workers do get paid. Theydon't get paid a lot, but they
do get paid. We pay fortraining, We pay twenty dollars if they
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come to training, and then wealso they make anywhere from one hundred and
forty five on election day to onehundred ninety depending on the different job titles.
And they usually get their check abouttwo weeks after election. There is
no taxes taking out of the check, so's it's you know, if you
came to training and you worked.You're one at least one hundred and sixty
five up to two hundred and tenfor each election. So they do make
(13:16):
a little bit. But we're alwaysalways recruiting poll workers because it's you know,
people have things that come up illnessor they might be on vacation that
election, like is what we're goingto deal with in August, I'm sure
quite a bit. So yeah,we're always recruiting people. So if somebody
doesn't know, a lot of peopledo. But if they don't know,
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where is the Richsond County Board ofElections located at. So we're located at
fourteen ninety five West Longview Avenue.We are close to the fairgrounds and we
are around the back. So wedid get some new signage out of the
building. It's very very good directionalsignage to get you back to our back
parking lot. We have a signright above our door that's red and white
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and a board of elections and youwalk in our office. When you walk
in that door, our office isa first door to the left. If
you're coming for early voting, yougo down the hallway and take a right,
and we're always in that lower classroomfor early voting. Again treffic this
morning to learn the story and allabout Matt Finnskild, who is the director
of the Richling County Board of Elections. All right, back to you for
(14:20):
a moment before I let you gotoday found out born in Mansfield, went
to Madison, married kids, andif you would tell us a bit a
bit more about Matt Finnskild. I'mnot married. I do have three kids.
I have boy Brennan and his twentythree and two daughters. Taylor is
nineteen and Olivia is eighteen. She'sjust getting ready to graduate high school,
(14:45):
all right, big time. She'salso getting ready to go to Kent State
for college. So great. Ihave two grand kids also. All right,
now, how about spare time?Sounds like when you take vacation,
you work. So what do youdo? What do you have any hobbies?
Were working? Right? Yeah?I'm working working. There isn't a
whole lot of spare time, especiallyanymore with having three elections in a year.
(15:07):
Um, that takes quite a bitof our time. But spare time,
I mean, I really enjoy thebike trail. I love to walk
and run on that. I enjoyspending time with my family and the kids,
and that's I mean, that's twoof my biggest things I like to
do. Terrific. All right,Well, before I let you go,
we've talked about so many different things. If they want to get more information
(15:31):
about the Board of Elections you mentioned, they can go online to the county
website Richley County to which you knowdot gov and be able to access the
Board of Elections. But tell themyou've really revamped, improved. I mean,
the Board of Elections website is soinformative. It's so easy to find
all the information when you're getting readyto vote, right yep. So that's
one of the things that we've donesince I've been there, as we changed
(15:54):
our voter registration database. We didthat January of twenty two and part of
that was having a new website.So we rolled out the new website last
year. A lot of information onthat. You can print, walking list,
you can look at. If you'renot aware where you vote at,
you can look that up. Youcan pull up sample ballots. We have
(16:17):
our candidate listings on there, soif someone does come in and pull a
petition, we put that out onthe web that day, so you can
see who's pulled petitions, who's returntheir petitions. If we have issues that
are being filed, we put thoseon the website. But I mean,
the walking list is really huge forcandidates. You can print, you know,
if you are a candidate, youcan print your labels right on there
(16:40):
too, if you're sending out absenttee pieces. So yeah, we've had
a lot of good compliments on it. You can look at our voter turnout
for each day of early voting that'sgoing on. It'll break it down by
party, Democrat, Republican, orif they're pulling an issue's only ballot if
it's a primary. So yeah,there's a lot of good information on there.
We've had a lot of compliments aboutwhat we've done with that website.
(17:00):
All right, so ahead to theRichling County website. Click on the tab
for Board of Elections to get moreinformation. As I let you go,
one kind of thing popped in myhead. Somebody may here we're heading toward
an election, about going out andgetting signatures. I mean, how does
all that work? They do?They have to get a certain amount of
signatures to get something to be ableto be on the boat. Could you
explain that at all. Yeah.So, first thing, for anyone that
(17:22):
is interested in running for an office, you can pull a petition online,
but we strongly recommend you come intothe Board of Elections for a couple of
reasons. Number one, we wantto make sure you're getting the correct petition.
We want to make sure that you'refilling out everything that you need to
fill out on that petition prior togetting signatures, because there is some information
(17:45):
that has to be filled out.It has to have the candidates signature on
the front page prior to getting signatures. If you don't, that could void
your petition, and that's the lastthing we want, you know, we
want the voters to make a choice. We don't want to make that choice.
So that's why we always recommend peoplecome in, let us go over
the process with you, let usmake sure that you're filling out that petition
(18:07):
correctly to then go start getting yoursignatures. As far as how many signatures
are needed on petitions, it variesby office, Okay, it could be
as little as you know, ifyou want to run for the Republican or
Democrat Central Committee, you need atleast five signatures, okay, But if
you want to run for a schoolboard like Shelby or Ontario, they need
(18:33):
twenty five signatures. Mansfield school boardneeds fifty signatures. County officials they need
fifty signatures. So it kind ofvaries by what office you're running for.
And here again we go over allthat with the potential candidate you can file.
You cannot have more than three timesthe needed signatures. So if you
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need fifty signatures, you can onlyfile with one hundred and fifty. And
we always recommend that you get morethan the minimum, you know, because
you never know. What we lookat when we're verifying signatures is you know,
if someone prints most of our signaturesthat we have, they sign it
in cursive. So if someone printson a petition and we have a cursive
(19:17):
signature, it's not a valid signature. Now, if they print it on
your petition and we have a printwhere they just print their name, we'll
count in. But the signatures haveto you know, match, so and
here again that's something that we goover with the candidates and we make them
a copy of everything that we wentover so they can refer back to it
(19:37):
because it is a lot of informationthat we do throw at you at one
time. And that's why we wantyou to have that in writing to be
able to go back. Plus wehave you signed saying that we did go
over that information with you. Soyeah, we always recommend that you come
in to pull your petition and we'lllet you know what day and what time
that petition is due by. Andof course we always recommend don't wait until
(20:00):
the last day, because if therewas an issue with your petition, we
will call that potential candidate and letyou know, hey, here's the issue
that we're looking at here. Again, we don't make that decision. We
would present that evidence to the boardand they make that decision. But if
you file that petition with plenty oftime, if there is an issue,
you can always withdraw that petition andrecirculate a new one and have that time.
(20:22):
So that's why we always recommend thatyou know, just because the filing
deadline might be August ninth, likeit's going to be this year, we
recommend that you don't come in onAugust ninth. We recommend coming in week
two weeks ahead of time at least, if not more. All Right,
good to hear from the Ritzlin CountyBoard of Elections this morning. They do
so much you don't even realize,and all the things that have to be
(20:45):
done well in advance of an upcomingelection. We are joined in studio by
Matt Finskille, director of the RitzlingCounty Board of Elections. Well, it's
been great to have you in learnall about you. Did I miss anything
you want to let people know about? Thanks so, Aaron, I appreciate
you have man like I says,my first time in the studio, so
it's a pleasure. Thanks so muchfor coming in and continued success for you.
(21:07):
Thank you, I appreciate it.Matt finns Gild, director of the
Richland County Board of Elections. Thus, CEO you should know rita bio,
see a photo and hear the extendedinterview at WMAANFM dot com. Leading means
having a vision and sharing it withothers. I'm John Roby of RF and
ME Insurance. We're excited to bringyou this program featuring CEOs from our area
(21:30):
who will share the thoughts on whatit means to work and live in north
central Ohio.
The CEO you should Know, broughtto you by Robie Foster Miller Eric Insurance.
This week CEO Matt Finceguild Director ofthe Richland County Board of Elections.
Good morning, Good to see youface to face today. Good morning,
Aaron. Thank you for having me. Absolutely Matt and I have chatted many
(00:20):
times over the telephone, but yourfirst chance to come in here to the
iHeart studio. So glad to haveyou with us. So let's kind of
do an overview. Everybody knows aboutthe Richland County Board of Elections, but
there's so many things you guys dothat people probably don't know. Could we
kind of do an overview of whatyou guys do at the Board of Elections.
(00:41):
Absolutely, so the Board of Elections, everything we do there is a
bipartisan organization and everything we do isbipartisan. I'm the director, James Immerman
as a deputy director, but herand I run day to day operations of
the Board of Elections. There isn'ta decision that I make or she make
that we don't talk about and agreeon, which is unusual in politics I
(01:03):
know. And then same thing withour staff. We have four full time
staff members to Democrat to a Republican. We have two part time permanent staff
members again, one Republican, oneDemocrat. And then as far as seasonal
workers, it varies based on election. You know, getting ready to go
into next year, we'll be rampingit up for workers. We usually have
(01:26):
about forty to fifty seasonal workers fora presidential election. If it's an off
year election like this year, anodd year election, we'll have twenty twenty
five seasonal as well. We alsohave a board. We have a four
person board, two Democrats, twoRepublicans again, and that's the true bosses
of the Board of Elections. Theymake the decisions. The directors, Jane
(01:48):
and myself we run to day today operations and we present the evidence or
the ballots, petitions, whatever itmay be, to the board and they
vote on them. But they're theones that make the decisions the board does.
Currently right now, Bill Freytach isour board chairman and Meghan Watman is
a member. So Bill and Meganare the Republicans and then Vanitas Shoulders and
(02:10):
Larry Wirek are the Democrat board members. Larry and Vanita are new to the
board, when they were both justappointing in the last few months, but
our board's always worked very well together, so it is great to see that
both parties can work together. Andthen there's a lot of things that we
do with the board that most peopleare not aware of. We do work
(02:30):
more than two days a year orthree days, depending on how many elections
that we have, so about ninetydays prior to election, petitions are due.
So any offices that are gone beyondthe ballot, they have to file
a petition with a certain amount ofsignatures from voters in their area, whether
it be a village they're running for, a township, a school board,
(02:52):
they have to get signatures of registeredvoters within that district that they're running for,
and there is a filing fee whenthey file petition, and then what
our staff does is we verify thosepetitions. We verify that the signature's match
that they are registered voters, andthen that goes to Jane and myself and
we kind of verify our staff's workand then here again that gets presented to
(03:15):
the board to approve those petitions,So that kind of starts the clock on
elections. So from there we thenstart our ballot layout. So we have
to put everything into the system allthe races, there's a certain order.
We get our direction from the OhioSecretary of State. They kind of tell
us what order the ballot will bein, and as well as issues,
(03:37):
so when people file issues townships,you know, if they want a tax
renewal, if they want new taxes, they have to file that by the
same deadline. And then there's templates. So Jane handles all the issues kind
of getting a wording for them,and then we send that wording down to
the Secretary of State. They haveto approve that wording, and then we
(03:57):
send it to the entity so thatthey're where and they're satisfied with how that
issue is going to look on theballot. And then also here again that
issue has to get input into oursystem, into the ballot layout. Once
we get the ballot layout done,then obviously there's a lot of proofing that
goes into that as well. Hereagain we have bipartisan teams that prove the
ballot together, and we usually haveanywhere from four to five teams that look
(04:20):
over at the ballot because you know, it's easy to miss something and everything
has to be perfect, it hasto be right on que. So once
we get that finalize a ballot layout. Then we go into what we call
the testing portion. So every machinethat we put out on election day or
early vote goes through a testing procedureevery election, and that testing procedure is
(04:43):
it's a predetermined vote. So normallywhat we would do is we'd pick the
first position of every race and thenwe upload that to make sure it's tabulating
correctly. And then what we dois we reset the machine, make sure
it has the zero votes, andwe set it for election day. And
then we of course seal the machinesso they're secure, and then we put
them in a room that is alsosecured with double locks, cameras alarms.
(05:08):
Anytime anyone goes in to one ofthose rooms, it comes across to mine
and Jane's cell phone. We knowwhen the doors opened every time, and
we have access to those cameras twentyfour to seven. We can look them
up at home. If someone's inthere and shouldn't be, we always know,
I mean here again, that's asecurity measure, you know, to
make sure no one is tampering withany of the machines or anything. We
(05:30):
also run the paper ballots through ourscanner as a test to make sure that
they're tabulating correctly. So we dothat about we try to finish out about
two to three weeks prior to earlyvote. Early vote starts twenty nine days
prior to every election, so normallyour testing procedure starts about forty five to
sixty days to an election, andthen of course we go into the early
(05:54):
vote session. Like I said,that starts twenty nine days before, so
there's plenty of time for people tovote with having the twenty nine days to
vote and then also election day beingopen for thirteen hours. And then while
we're in early Vote, we're alsoof course getting ready for to train the
pull workers. We're always looking forpoll workers. I mean you and I
have talked about that many of times. That's never ending. So we do
(06:17):
have multiple training classes that we dofor poll workers. How we do our
training as we have stations. Wecall it station training, and we try
to simulate an election. Okay,so we'll have a station to show them
how to check in voters in thedifferent scenarios that you could run into on
election day. We have what's calleda paper ballot table, so we go
(06:38):
over the different types of paper ballots, whether it's a provisional at curbside or
just a regular paper ballot, howyou handle those folks, and then we
go through we have two stations thatgo through how to set up our machines
and how to run to reports anddifferent issues that you could run into there.
So it usually takes about two hoursfor a pull worker to go through
(06:59):
those station training, and we dolike four or five days, and we
do it like for nine ten hoursa day, so we let the poll
workers pick. We try to youknow, hey, just come on in.
If it's from nine to six,we just ask that you're there by
four o'clock so our staff can gohome too. It is a long month
for our staff. We put ina lot of hours to make this happen,
all our staff to us so andthen we go on to Once we
(07:21):
get done with that, we're youknow, running the backup poll books for
the locations just in case, becauseyou know, elections is all about preparing.
You know, you have to prepare, you have to have time to
prepare, and you prepare for everyscenario. You know, if we lose
power, we got to be ableto still vote. So we print what's
(07:43):
called paper backup books. So forour EPs, which is what we check
voters in with. If they godown, they revert back to a paper
the old way before EPs, whichis a paper signature book manette would have
every voter within their location. Itwould have the signature we have on file.
It would have a spot for themto sign. So we start preparing
(08:03):
them about two weeks prior to electionas well as the hanging list. We
have hanging lists that we put onevery location door so case a voter,
you know, isn't sure where they'regoing to vote or what, that list
is always hanging on the door.So we prepare them as well about two
weeks prior to the election and tryto get ready for election day. I'm
terrific to learn this morning all aboutthe Richslin County Board of Elections and what
(08:26):
they do, which is a lot. As you hear from Matt Finskild this
morning, director of the Richslin CountyBoard of Elections. So could you kind
of let's, you know, focusin on you. How long have you
been you know, director, howlong have you been with the Board of
Elections. So I've been director justa little over two years. I was
hired. I started in April twentytwenty one. But I have been with
(08:50):
the Board of Elections since about nineteenninety one. I started off as unloading
supplies on election night as a asa young kid at about twelve or thirteen
years old, and I've been involvedsince that time. I've done many things
at the Board of Elections. I'vehelped train poll workers, I've been a
rover on election day, I've beeninvolved in the testing of the machines.
(09:11):
I've worked early vote and then ofcourse becoming director in twenty one April twenty
one. All right, terrific.Again, let's learn more about Matt Finnskille.
Let's go back to the beginning.If you would tell us where was
Matt Finskille born. I was bornright here in Mansfield, Ohio. So
I've lived in Richland County my entirelife. All right, terrific. Next,
(09:35):
if you would where'd you go tohigh school? I went to Madison.
I graduated from Madison High School inninety seven. All right, a
Madison ram did not know that?So as you graduated high school, did
you know you know career path wouldbe you know, Board of Elections where
there other I know you started ata very young age where there are other
(09:56):
aspirations, i'd just kind of getit into the field. So, I
mean, I've I've always had aninterest in elections, and you know,
it's an important thing to me foreveryone to have that right to vote and
to make sure every vote counts.So I've always been around politics. My
mother was the director at the Boardof Elections, so you know, there's
a lot of conversations at the dinnertable, you know, about elections and
(10:18):
politics and that type of thing.I ran for Ontario City Council when I
was twenty one b one. Ibeat an incumbent that was in there I
believe eight years and to this dateI am still the youngest elected Ontario councilman.
So and then I served on thatfor about five years. I resigned
(10:39):
there to go down and work withBart Hamilton, or Richland County treasure and
I was his chief deputy for fifteenyears there, so I kind of ran
the operations of the Treasure's office.I handled all the tax foreclosures. I
served on the Board of Revision wherepeople challenge the value and the budget Commission,
(11:00):
and then also helped form the RichlandCounty Land Bank when that came around.
So I've been involved in government andduring that whole time, as I
said, I used to take myvacation from there to go out and help
at the Board of Elections about them. So I would take vacation and go
out and help with the testing processfor a week. I would take vacation
to work election day. It's kindof the joke at the courthouse that,
(11:22):
well, Matt must be on vacationand working somewhere else. So terrific to
learn the story. If Matt Finskildthis morning, director of the Richland County
Board of Elections, this week's CEO, you should know as we learn about
people and organizations here locally in thenorth central Ohio area. All right,
So if we get back to theBoard of Elections and you've talked about poll
(11:46):
workers, and you said it doesvary in terms of how many people you'll
need depending on whether it's a presidentialelection whatever. Do you have a ballpark
number of kind of where it rangesfrom in terms of the amount of poll
workers needed. Yeah, I meanwe're anywhere from about three hundred and twenty
up to about three hundred and eightyalmost four hundred workers to pull off an
(12:07):
election. In Richland County. Obviouslya presidential we want to have close to
four hundred to be full staff tohandle. You know, the percentage to
turn out that we get last presidentialis a little over seventy percent turnout,
and that's a lot of people.When you're talking about four hundred poll workers,
you're and and we'll say it again, and we'll probably say it again
at the end. But you're alwayslooking for polls, always always looking.
(12:28):
If if you know anyone's out therethat's interested, all they can either go
online, they go to Secretary ofState's website or our website and apply to
be a poll worker. They cancall our office. They can email our
Board of Elections in email and letus know they're interested. You know,
poll workers do get paid. Theydon't get paid a lot, but they
do get paid. We pay fortraining, We pay twenty dollars if they
(12:52):
come to training, and then wealso they make anywhere from one hundred and
forty five on election day to onehundred ninety depending on the different job titles.
And they usually get their check abouttwo weeks after election. There is
no taxes taking out of the check, so's it's you know, if you
came to training and you worked.You're one at least one hundred and sixty
five up to two hundred and tenfor each election. So they do make
(13:16):
a little bit. But we're alwaysalways recruiting poll workers because it's you know,
people have things that come up illnessor they might be on vacation that
election, like is what we're goingto deal with in August, I'm sure
quite a bit. So yeah,we're always recruiting people. So if somebody
doesn't know, a lot of peopledo. But if they don't know,
(13:37):
where is the Richsond County Board ofElections located at. So we're located at
fourteen ninety five West Longview Avenue.We are close to the fairgrounds and we
are around the back. So wedid get some new signage out of the
building. It's very very good directionalsignage to get you back to our back
parking lot. We have a signright above our door that's red and white
(13:58):
and a board of elections and youwalk in our office. When you walk
in that door, our office isa first door to the left. If
you're coming for early voting, yougo down the hallway and take a right,
and we're always in that lower classroomfor early voting. Again treffic this
morning to learn the story and allabout Matt Finnskild, who is the director
of the Richling County Board of Elections. All right, back to you for
(14:20):
a moment before I let you gotoday found out born in Mansfield, went
to Madison, married kids, andif you would tell us a bit a
bit more about Matt Finnskild. I'mnot married. I do have three kids.
I have boy Brennan and his twentythree and two daughters. Taylor is
nineteen and Olivia is eighteen. She'sjust getting ready to graduate high school,
(14:45):
all right, big time. She'salso getting ready to go to Kent State
for college. So great. Ihave two grand kids also. All right,
now, how about spare time?Sounds like when you take vacation,
you work. So what do youdo? What do you have any hobbies?
Were working? Right? Yeah?I'm working working. There isn't a
whole lot of spare time, especiallyanymore with having three elections in a year.
(15:07):
Um, that takes quite a bitof our time. But spare time,
I mean, I really enjoy thebike trail. I love to walk
and run on that. I enjoyspending time with my family and the kids,
and that's I mean, that's twoof my biggest things I like to
do. Terrific. All right,Well, before I let you go,
we've talked about so many different things. If they want to get more information
(15:31):
about the Board of Elections you mentioned, they can go online to the county
website Richley County to which you knowdot gov and be able to access the
Board of Elections. But tell themyou've really revamped, improved. I mean,
the Board of Elections website is soinformative. It's so easy to find
all the information when you're getting readyto vote, right yep. So that's
one of the things that we've donesince I've been there, as we changed
(15:54):
our voter registration database. We didthat January of twenty two and part of
that was having a new website.So we rolled out the new website last
year. A lot of information onthat. You can print, walking list,
you can look at. If you'renot aware where you vote at,
you can look that up. Youcan pull up sample ballots. We have
(16:17):
our candidate listings on there, soif someone does come in and pull a
petition, we put that out onthe web that day, so you can
see who's pulled petitions, who's returntheir petitions. If we have issues that
are being filed, we put thoseon the website. But I mean,
the walking list is really huge forcandidates. You can print, you know,
if you are a candidate, youcan print your labels right on there
(16:40):
too, if you're sending out absenttee pieces. So yeah, we've had
a lot of good compliments on it. You can look at our voter turnout
for each day of early voting that'sgoing on. It'll break it down by
party, Democrat, Republican, orif they're pulling an issue's only ballot if
it's a primary. So yeah,there's a lot of good information on there.
We've had a lot of compliments aboutwhat we've done with that website.
(17:00):
All right, so ahead to theRichling County website. Click on the tab
for Board of Elections to get moreinformation. As I let you go,
one kind of thing popped in myhead. Somebody may here we're heading toward
an election, about going out andgetting signatures. I mean, how does
all that work? They do?They have to get a certain amount of
signatures to get something to be ableto be on the boat. Could you
explain that at all. Yeah.So, first thing, for anyone that
(17:22):
is interested in running for an office, you can pull a petition online,
but we strongly recommend you come intothe Board of Elections for a couple of
reasons. Number one, we wantto make sure you're getting the correct petition.
We want to make sure that you'refilling out everything that you need to
fill out on that petition prior togetting signatures, because there is some information
(17:45):
that has to be filled out.It has to have the candidates signature on
the front page prior to getting signatures. If you don't, that could void
your petition, and that's the lastthing we want, you know, we
want the voters to make a choice. We don't want to make that choice.
So that's why we always recommend peoplecome in, let us go over
the process with you, let usmake sure that you're filling out that petition
(18:07):
correctly to then go start getting yoursignatures. As far as how many signatures
are needed on petitions, it variesby office, Okay, it could be
as little as you know, ifyou want to run for the Republican or
Democrat Central Committee, you need atleast five signatures, okay, But if
you want to run for a schoolboard like Shelby or Ontario, they need
(18:33):
twenty five signatures. Mansfield school boardneeds fifty signatures. County officials they need
fifty signatures. So it kind ofvaries by what office you're running for.
And here again we go over allthat with the potential candidate you can file.
You cannot have more than three timesthe needed signatures. So if you
(18:55):
need fifty signatures, you can onlyfile with one hundred and fifty. And
we always recommend that you get morethan the minimum, you know, because
you never know. What we lookat when we're verifying signatures is you know,
if someone prints most of our signaturesthat we have, they sign it
in cursive. So if someone printson a petition and we have a cursive
(19:17):
signature, it's not a valid signature. Now, if they print it on
your petition and we have a printwhere they just print their name, we'll
count in. But the signatures haveto you know, match, so and
here again that's something that we goover with the candidates and we make them
a copy of everything that we wentover so they can refer back to it
(19:37):
because it is a lot of informationthat we do throw at you at one
time. And that's why we wantyou to have that in writing to be
able to go back. Plus wehave you signed saying that we did go
over that information with you. Soyeah, we always recommend that you come
in to pull your petition and we'lllet you know what day and what time
that petition is due by. Andof course we always recommend don't wait until
(20:00):
the last day, because if therewas an issue with your petition, we
will call that potential candidate and letyou know, hey, here's the issue
that we're looking at here. Again, we don't make that decision. We
would present that evidence to the boardand they make that decision. But if
you file that petition with plenty oftime, if there is an issue,
you can always withdraw that petition andrecirculate a new one and have that time.
(20:22):
So that's why we always recommend thatyou know, just because the filing
deadline might be August ninth, likeit's going to be this year, we
recommend that you don't come in onAugust ninth. We recommend coming in week
two weeks ahead of time at least, if not more. All Right,
good to hear from the Ritzlin CountyBoard of Elections this morning. They do
so much you don't even realize,and all the things that have to be
(20:45):
done well in advance of an upcomingelection. We are joined in studio by
Matt Finskille, director of the RitzlingCounty Board of Elections. Well, it's
been great to have you in learnall about you. Did I miss anything
you want to let people know about? Thanks so, Aaron, I appreciate
you have man like I says,my first time in the studio, so
it's a pleasure. Thanks so muchfor coming in and continued success for you.
(21:07):
Thank you, I appreciate it.Matt finns Gild, director of the
Richland County Board of Elections. Thus, CEO you should know rita bio,
see a photo and hear the extendedinterview at WMAANFM dot com. Leading means
having a vision and sharing it withothers. I'm John Roby of RF and
ME Insurance. We're excited to bringyou this program featuring CEOs from our area
(21:30):
who will share the thoughts on whatit means to work and live in north
central Ohio.
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