County Begins 24-Hour Vote Count Operation For Nov. 2

Starting today, the Riverside County Registrar of Voters’ Office will go into 24-hour mode to process absentee ballots cast in the Nov. 2 general election.

Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore has predicted about half of the votes will be sent via mail. Under state law, vote counting can’t begin earlier than 11 days before an election.

Of the roughly 393,000 absentee ballots sent out so far to county residents, 35,000 have been returned to the registrar’s office. The deadline to request an absentee ballot is Monday.

“The advantage to the 24-hour operation is they’ll have the staff to handle the heavy flow of mail-in ballots,” said county Executive Office spokesman Ray Smith. “It’s a large task, and the goal is to count those ballots before the close of the polls on election day.”

The ballots have to be opened by hand, verified and then inserted into a high-speed scanner. Smith said the registrar’s staff will spend all of today “staging” the ballots that have been received, in preparation for processing.

The county has around 850,000 registered voters.

Dunmore said the first election results will be posted on the registrar’s website at about 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 by residents not listed on the registrar’s rolls — could take longer.

Twenty-four operations have been authorized until the vote tally is complete.

Riverside County was among the last to report its election returns to the California Secretary of State following the June 8 primary.

The matter was 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 had been disenfranchised, prompting a Riverside judge to order the votes to be tallied nearly a month after the primary.

According to Dunmore, temporary staffing has been increased “significantly.” She told City News Service last week that she expected to run $1.3 million over budget in the current fiscal year because of costs tied to the general election.

Those extra expenses include $550,000 in ballot printing costs and $800,000 in personnel and voter education campaign expenses, according to the registrar.

“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.”