Request Mail-In Ballot By Today At 5

Riverside County residents who want to vote by mail in the Nov. 2 election have until 5 p.m. today to request an absentee ballot.

Applications must be received by the county Registrar of Voters’ Office by the deadline to qualify for a vote-by-mail ballot.

“To ensure requests are received … voters should deliver requests in person to the registrar’s office at 2724 Gateway Drive (in Riverside),” Executive Office spokesman Ray Smith said.

Applications, which are located on the back of sample ballots, can also be faxed to the registrar at (951) 486-7272, according to Smith.

Voters can check to confirm their applications have been processed by logging onto the registrar’s Web site at www.voteinfo.net.

Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore has predicted about half of the votes cast in the general election will be sent via mail. In the June primary, nearly two-thirds of votes were absentee, and in the November 2008 election, 41 percent of votes were mailed.

Of the roughly 397,000 absentee ballots sent to county residents so far, 93,373 have been returned to the registrar’s office. There are more than 850,000 registered voters in the county.

On Friday, the registrar’s office switched to 24-hour operations to stay ahead in the processing of absentee ballots, which have to be opened by hand, verified and then inserted into a high-speed scanner.

Dunmore said the vote-by-mail election results will be posted on the registrar’s website by 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.

Riverside County was among the last to report its election returns to the California Secretary of State following the June 8 primary, leading several civic groups and at least one elected official to call for Dunmore’s resignation.

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.

Dunmore said the county and U.S. Postal Service reached an agreement in August to prevent ballots from falling through the cracks.

According to the registrar, temporary staffing has been increased “significantly.” She expected to run $1.3 million over budget in the current fiscal year because of costs tied to the general election.