Enjoy Your LATTE

Welcome to the LATTE website!  If you’re reading this, you have entered LATTE, which stands for Labor, Announcements, Time, and Travel for Elections.  The new website has and will continue to improve the Voting Rights Program’s administrative processes.

Here’s what LATTE already does: 

• It provides news and announcements for all observers. 
• Using iPads, onsite leadership staff enters time and other data for observers into it. 
• Observers verify their labor hours in LATTE on staging site iPads and instantly receive copies of their labor worksheets by email.  
• Observers complete their travel vouchers at home online in LATTE. (See article below for details.) 
• It allows participants to review labor worksheets and travel vouchers from previous elections (beginning in August 2012). 

In the future, you’ll be able to do the following in LATTE: 

• Submit address and banking changes. 
• Indicate your availability to serve on upcoming coverage. 
• Know your status going into an election. 
• Retrieve travel documents. 
• Access training materials. 
• Find links to travel-related sites. 

As functionality changes over the coming months, we’ll keep you posted.  The project should be complete in 2013.  

November’s A-comin’ 

Are you available to serve this November?  If so, be on the lookout for an email from one of the Election Coordinators and respond to it as directed.  That’s the most important thing you can do at this point.  But here are some additional steps that you can take to prepare: 

• Do a self-assessment.  How are your vision and hearing?  To be an effective observer, you’ll need to be able to see and hear what happens in the polling place.  How’s your stamina?  Remember, VR often involves travel, a very long work day, working with others under pressure, standing, and driving.  If you have concerns about your health or limitations that you may be facing, contact your Coordinator by email. 
• Clear your calendar from Nov. 4 to Nov. 7 (leadership will travel on Nov. 3), making sure you can get leave from work and be free of other commitments during that time. 
• Look into voting absentee or early in the event that you are deployed. Make sure that you have reported any recent contact or banking changes to votingrights@opm.gov. 
• Refrain from calling the Election Coordinators.  They are handling logistics for multiple sites and hundreds of observers.  Email is the best way to reach them.  In any case, please do not ask about where we are deploying or make requests about where you want to serve. 

At this point, we anticipate that we will be deploying over 75% of our observer cadre.  Those chosen to serve will be notified by 4:00 pm on October 30.  Those not chosen will be placed in a standby status and will be finally notified by 4:00 pm on November 2.

Full-time staff meeting last month, planning for the upcoming General Election 
L-R: Chris Hammond, Robbie Brock, Renée DeHerrera-Gallegos, and Paul Farmer
Photo by Sherry Johnson

Most Valuable Observers

Congratulations to persons recently named Most Valuable Observer (MVO) at three staging sites this summer: 

Bobbie Battle displayed self-motivation and quick-thinking as the Administrative Liaison at June coverage in Sandoval County, New Mexico.  Upon discovering a shortage of forms, she used local resources to reproduce needed material just in time.  Through careful observation, she also alerted the Captain to improper reporting of time.  The resulting corrections prevented waste of program funds.

Benita Beard exhibited exemplary leadership skills during May coverage in Dallas County, Texas.  She led her team in such an efficient and effective way that they had their report form completed before departing the polling site. 

Sylvia Hunt, who was training a new observer, led her two-person team at September coverage in New York City.  Her site with the most turnaways.  A DOJ attorney identified the team's report as the best one he had read that day.

The person named MVO is the observer who, in the judgment of the Captain and the Election Coordinator, contributed the most to mission success at a particular election site.  If no single observer’s contribution stands out or if coverage is so uneventful that no one has the opportunity for distinguished service, the Captain may decide not to submit nominations.  

Catching More Z-z-z’s  

In the world of VR, Election Day is always intense.  But the day after the election (usually Wednesday) can be rough too.  Observers, having stayed up to work on reports into the wee hours, sometimes get little sleep before having to pack up and travel home.  The Captain—the last one to get off the clock—can be particularly fatigued.

To give all of our observers to get a little more shut-eye, we’ve made two changes to the out-briefing: 

1. It’s shorter, especially now that we have the LATTE system for labor worksheets and travel vouchers. 
2. It’s starting later.  Out-briefings now will normally begin at 9:00 am.  However, if the Captain determines on Election Day evening that all personnel will likely be off the clock by midnight, s/he may designate an earlier start time for the out-briefing.  

We hope that this will give everyone a little extra time to unwind and refresh for the trip home.

New Fact Sheet

You may have heard the expression, “More is less.”  Well, we want to provide you with less information on the election fact sheets.  That’s right!   We’ve removed most of the items covered in the online training, leaving only the essential information you need for traveling.  Contact numbers, the hotel name and location, and important dates will be displayed in a grid at the top of the page.  A checklist will appear at the bottom. 

We whittled it down to just one page!  But here’s the catch:  You need to read all of it and follow all instructions carefully.  Thanks in advance for giving special attention to this document.

Language Assessments

To date, over 99% of observes claiming minority language skills have been determined to have the proficiency needed to interpret voter assistance and to interview voters and poll officials in one of 12 languages.  We well exceeded our goal of getting 50% of the assessments done this year, thanks in large measure to the diligence of our trained language assessors:  Teresa Billy, Xiaomin Cai, Luis Carrasquillo, Lupita Chewiwi, Conrad Chin, Edwina Diswood, Adelene Esquibel, Manny Garcia, Cindy Howe, Nicholas Huynh, Bang Nguyen, Susan Nolasco, Eneida Ocasio, Mirta Reyes, Lawrence Sanchez, Danny Tang, Antone Togiak, David Toledo, Gilbert Waconda, and Norma Warner.  Thanks to all of you! 

Submitting Travel Vouchers Online 

As mentioned above, VR participants are now submitting their travel vouchers using the LATTE system.  The new system has several advantages: 

• By asking you a series of questions, it eliminates items that do not apply in your case. 
• Based on your answers to the questions, it automatically calculates all costs for you. 
• You have the option of attaching receipts to the voucher (if you have scanning capability).  If not, you can indicate that you will be faxing in documents to the Election Coordinator within 5 business days. 

Here’s how to use it: 

1. On your personalized home page in LATTE, click the “Pending” link under the Voucher column for the election where you served.
2. In the voucher, answer the first question (“Did you travel by airplane?”).  This will give you a set of relevant questions.
3. Carefully answer the questions about your ground travel.  Here is an example of a question asked of someone who did not travel by air:If your travel plans were unusual, you can give details in the Remarks box further down the page.
     
4. Enter the one-way mileage from your home to the airport, staging site, rental car facility, or carpool meeting area.  Based on your previous answers, LATTE will determine your entitled mileage and multiply it by the GSA standard mileage rate.  Calculations appear in the black box on the upper-right side of the page (shown above).  You will also need to insert amounts for any other expenses at this point.
5. Indicate if/how you will be submitting receipts.  If you have the ability to scan your receipts, you can upload and attach them to the voucher, by clicking the Attach button.
6. Click “Save & Submit.”  On your home page, the word “Complete” will appear in green under the Voucher column, showing that your voucher has been submitted.

It’s that easy! 

Our Contact Information

Program Office (Washington, DC)
VotingRights@opm.gov | Ph: 202-606-1400 or 1-866-885-4122 (toll-free) | Fax: 202-606-0398
Chris Hammond, Program Manager | chris.hammond@opm.gov
Sherry Johnson, Program Assistant | sharon.johnson@opm.gov 

Northern Region (Philadelphia)
Paul Farmer | paul.farmer@opm.gov

Southern Region (Atlanta) 
Robbie Brock | robbie.brock@opm.gov

Western Region (Denver) 
Renée DeHerrera-Gallegos | renee.deherrera-gallegos@opm.gov