Riverside County Board Chairman ‘Embarassed’ By Vote Count

Riverside County Board of Supervisors Chairman Marion Ashley said today he was “embarrassed” and “very unhappy” that the county Registrar of Voters’ Office was late in releasing initial results from the general election.

The first Internet posting on the registrar’s website was after 9 p.m. Tuesday, and there was no indication of how many precincts were reporting.

Ashley told City News Service that while he understood the reasons for the delay — a software glitch combined with last-minute voters holding up operations — he felt it reflected badly on the registrar, Barbara Dunmore.

“This is not a good thing for Barbara,” Ashley said. “She’s very diligent, very intelligent. You couldn’t ask for anybody to try harder. But this didn’t work out. Obviously, it doesn’t look good for her.”

According to Ashley, the board will discuss the matter at the start of its regular meeting Tuesday and ask Dunmore to explain what went wrong, as well as seek an explanation from county Executive Officer Bill Luna.

Ashley said he would like to have a franker talk with colleagues during the closed session portion of Tuesday’s meeting, but wasn’t sure whether that could happen because this is a personnel issue, and the registrar and her staff fall under the immediate supervision of the Executive Office, not the board.

County spokesman Ray Smith said “a steady stream” of voters lined up Tuesday to cast or drop off ballots at the registrar’s headquarters at 2724 Gateway Drive in Riverside. By 8 p.m., when polls closed, several dozen voters were still in line, waiting to cast ballots.

“We couldn’t release results until after the last person in line finished (voting),” Smith said, citing California law.

By 8:45 p.m., the registrar’s office was prepared to post the results of 200,000 mail-in ballots that had been tallied, along with the initial results of precinct counts. But according to Smith, an unexplained coding error listed the number of precincts reporting as zero.

Smith said county staff tried unsuccessfully to fix the problem for another 20 minutes, at which point Dunmore decided to go ahead and release the results despite the error.

There was no updated tally until 11:20 p.m.

“The votes were counted in a timely manner, but they weren’t released in a timely manner,” said Ashley. “That’s what’s frustrating — they weren’t rolled out as promised.”

Dunmore told City News Service last month that the first results would be posted on-line at 8:15 p.m. According to the California Secretary of State’s website, of the state’s 58 counties, Riverside County was next-to-last in reporting its initial results, followed only by Ventura County.

“I feel embarrassed because we said the process would work, and here it is, we didn’t get it out,” Ashley said. “It’s embarrassing. We’re the only county not reporting results. It’s not good. I’m very unhappy about that.”

The registrar’s office was also among the last to report results following the June 8 primary. The registrar came under fire for failing to tally about 40 percent of the votes cast until four days after that election. According to Smith, nearly 78,000 provisional and absentee ballots have yet to be processed in the current election.

Provisional ballots are requested by voters whose names don’t show up on the registration rolls and require extra vetting.

Smith said the tally should be finished Saturday. The registrar has 28 days to certify an election.

The Registrar of Voters’ Office has been the subject of three reviews over the last four years. Problems in the June election led to calls for Dunmore’s ouster. However, the board determined that staffing shortages due to budget cuts and a communication breakdown with the postal service precipitated unforeseeable challenges.

The supervisors allocated $650,000 for new equipment, including two additional high-speed ballot scanners, and authorized Dunmore to increase temporary staffing to shift to 24-hour operations a week before and after the election.

Supervisor John Benoit said he looked forward to asking Dunmore next week about “what went wrong this time.”

“This is a very public thing,” he told City News Service. “A lot of people see this as a symbol of how the county operates. We’ve fallen on our face a couple of times, and we need to do what we can to fix it.”