County Elections Chief Ready For November Elections

Riverside County Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore said today that despite budget-straining costs, her office will have all the resources necessary to make the Nov. 2 general election go smoothly.

“We’ve added staff and equipment and enhanced communication on our website, with the intent of putting out an accurate (ballot) count and doing that as efficiently as possible,” Dunmore told City News Service. “My only concern is I want people to get out and vote. I urge people to vote.”

According to the registrar, her staff is gearing up for a projected 55 percent voter participation rate in the upcoming election. In the June 8 primary, about 31 percent of the county’s registered voters turned out.

“Perhaps our projection is a bit ambitious, but we certainly want to have everything in place for voters to cast their ballots,” Dunmore said.

The deadline to register to vote in California is Monday. According to Dunmore, as of today, the county has 840,000 registered voters. The registrar’s office will remain open until midnight Monday to accommodate late-arriving registration applications.

On Oct. 22, the Registrar of Voters’ Office will shift to 24-hour operations, enabling staff to count absentee ballots around-the-clock. Under state law, votes cannot be tabulated more than seven business days before an election.

Dunmore said the first election results will be posted on the registrar’s website around 8:15 on election night. She said the ballot tabulation will likely continue through Nov. 6, though the counting of provisional ballots — which are requested at the polls by voters not listed on the registrar’s rolls — could take longer.

Riverside County was among the last to report its election returns to the California Secretary of State following the June primary. Executive Officer Bill Luna accepted part of the blame, saying budget cuts absorbed by the Registrar of Voters’ Office led to staffing reductions that hampered the vote tally.

The matter was further complicated by the misplacement of 12,563 mail-in ballots, which ended up on a crate in a Moreno Valley postal station on election night.

The affected voters sued, arguing they were disenfranchised, prompting a judge to order the votes tallied nearly a month after the primary.

In July, the Board of Supervisors authorized the purchase of two new high-speed ballot scanners, a ballot extracting machine and a mail-sorting unit — at a total cost of $650,000. Luna also vowed to ensure the Registrar of Voters’ Office had adequate staffing in the next election.

Dunmore said she didn’t have time to solicit bids on the ballot scanners, so her office is renting them for around $25,000.

She said temporary staffing has been increased “significantly,” and estimated that she would run $1.3 million over budget in the current fiscal year because of costs tied to the general election.

“All of our work is in an effort to improve and conduct a smooth election,” Dunmore said. “That’s what we’ve planned for, and that’s what we’re looking forward to doing.”

Unlike in June, the November ballot for Riverside County voters is smaller, making it easier to process, according to the registrar. She added that, thanks to increased staffing, ballots will be retrieved from the county’s 20 collection sites and delivered faster to the central tabulating room in Riverside.

The county and U.S. Postal Service reached an agreement in August to iron out the chain-of-custody issues that cropped up in June and led to the ballots being temporarily lost.

According to Dunmore, registrar’s staff will double- and triple-check postal service sites for any late-arriving ballots on election day.

“We don’t anticipate any ballots being left anywhere come the close of the polls on election night,” she said.

Two civic groups — the Democrats of the Desert and the Palm Springs Lincoln Club — along with Assemblyman Jeff Miller, R-Corona, called for Dunmore’s ouster following the June 8 primary snafu.

Complaints were also lodged by a number of politicians, including Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Palm Springs, and Assemblyman Manuel Perez, D-Coachella.

Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster, however, defended Dunmore, pointing out that the post office was chiefly to blame for the missing ballots. He also dismissed the idea that the public should be entitled to “quick results.”

“Wanting to have immediate gratification for an election night party is not the purpose of what Miss Dunmore does,” he said.