With only 40.5 percent of eligible voters’ ballots accounted
for, it has left a lot of uncertainty in many local races.
HOLLISTER
Head elections official Joe Paul Gonzalez said today that vote-by-mail ballots, which about half of registered voters use, likely won’t get counted until later afternoon Friday. He attributed it to scheduling problems with the electronic tallying machine Election Day, large turnout and the county’s use of just one location to process ballots.
With only 40.5 percent of eligible voters’ ballots accounted for, it has left a lot of uncertainty in many local races.
Gonzalez said his office will “do its best to release data earlier.”
Gonzalez said the delay could not be prevented. The earliest sign of a big problem Tuesday was a booked court calendar that prevented the elections workers from setting up a “tally room,” the official said.
“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.”
Turnout, meanwhile, came in higher than anticipated, a problem amplified by the relatively large ballot, he said.
“The number of voters was huge, and the ballot was larger than usual – a two-card ballot with one card double-sided,” said Gonzalez, noting that it amounts to double the processing time.
The third major factor he pointed to is the county having just one location – the courthouse room – for processing ballots.
“Other counties have multiple locations to process ballots with a mini-optical scan reader at each location,” said Gonzalez. “All the ballots in our county come here and are processed by a large optical scanning device.”
