Head elections official Joe Paul Gonzalez said Thursday his
office will
”
do its best to release an update at 4:30 each afternoon until
all the votes are tallied
”
but that there’s no guarantee it will be done Friday.
HOLLISTER
Head elections official Joe Paul Gonzalez said Thursday his office will “do its best to release an update at 4:30 each afternoon until all the votes are tallied” but that there’s no guarantee it will be done Friday.
Elections workers haven’t counted vote-by-mail ballots – which make up about half of registered voters – and interested citizens had to wait up until early morning hours Wednesday for most of the polling place numbers.
Gonzalez said the delay could not be prevented and is the result of three factors: a packed court schedule that meant elections workers couldn’t set up the tally room until 5 p.m. Tuesday, larger ballots and greater voter turnout, and the fact that San Benito is a “central location county” with one counting machine.
But a check of similar counties revealed that they at least could post partial results for mail-in ballots Tuesday night, and others have been updating those results ever since.
The most important factor in the delay of mail-in results results going public was “a booked court calendar that prevented the elections office from setting up a tally room,” said Gonzalez, who noted that normally, his office sets up their massive scanning machine two or three days before an election.
“That allows us to process ballots as they come in, although we don’t tally them until 8 p.m. on election night.”
But this year, said Gonzalez, a packed court schedule meant that his office could not access the courtroom as early as they would have liked.
Said Gonzalez Wednesday about the court issue: “We are tethered to whatever locations have vaults to lock up the ballots,” Gonzalez said. “We normally have a tally room two or three days before an election, and that allows us to process ballots as they come in, although we don’t tally them until 8 p.m. on election night.”
As to fixing the problem, Gonzalez said that renovations of the elections office, slated to begin Nov. 26, will give the ballot scanner a permanent home within the elections office.
But it wasn’t just the counting maching causing a significant delay. Another factor, he said, was the larger-than-usual number of voters and size of the ballot.
“The number of voters was huge, and the ballot was a two-card ballot with one of those cards double-sided,” said Gonzalez, adding that double-sided means double processing time.
San Benito also has been constrained by having only one counting machine, he said.
“Other counties have multiple locations to process ballots with a mini-optical scan reader at each location,” explained Gonzalez. “All the ballots in our county come here and are processed by a single, large optical-scanning device.”
Calaveras, Amador and Yuba counties, all central count counties with a similar number of vote-by-mail ballots, all report that they began posting results soon after polls closed, and have either completed their tallies and reports, or have provided continuous updates of counted ballots.
“It took us longer, no doubt about that,” said Donna Hillegass, chief deputy clerk registrar of voters in Yuba County, “but we finished both vote-by-mail and precinct reporting by about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.
Elections Supervisor of Amador County, Debbie Smith, said results were similar in her area.
“We announced about 80 percent of our vote-by-mail returns before midnight, then the rest early in the morning,” said Smith, noting that her office processed ballots as they came in.
