One Week After Elections Some Races Too Close To Call

Steven HernandezArturo AvilesJesse VillarrealLupe Rodriguez

Results in some of the local races from the November 2 election are changing, and some are still too close to call.

The race for the second Coachella City Council seat is still up for grabs.

Steven Hernandez is in the lead for the first seat.

Jesse Villarreal and Arturo Aviles are neck-and-neck for the second seat.

As the ballot counting continues, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors will address the slow elections count at its meeting on Tuesday in Riverside.

Riverside County Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore was scheduled to be there at the beginning of the meeting.

Ahead of the meeting, she released an open letter on the Registrar?s website defending the way the election was executed.

Read Barbara Dunmore’s Open Letter On Nov. 2 Elections

She said her office went “above and beyond” what was required to serve the county’s voters and ensure the election was carried out “with the utmost integrity and in accordance with all laws.”

“Tuesday’s election was well-executed,” she said. “All polls opened on time to serve a higher-than-projected turnout, sufficient ballots were available, and extra poll workers meant assistance was readily available … Despite a smooth, trouble-free voting day, attention has been focused on the 45- minute delay of the initial election night results.”

The registrar reiterated the reasons county officials cited last week for the delay — mainly that a line of last-minute voters at the registrar’s headquarters on Gateway Drive in Riverside prevented the closing of polls and posting results at 8:15 p.m., and a software glitch caused another postponement.

The first returns, comprised mostly of absentee ballots tallied in the days leading up to the election, did not appear on the registrar’s website until shortly after 9 p.m. There were no further updates for another two hours and 20 minutes.

“Candidates want to know where they stand on election night and media representatives want to be the first to report the results of winners and losers,” Dunmore said. “But state and federal laws provide for an electoral process that allows voters to cast a secret ballot, free from intimidation, and absent outside influence in the polling place.”

The registrar praised the work of 3,000 poll workers and her staff, including dozens of temporary employees hired specifically to expedite the vote tabulation process.

Dunmore said no effort was spared to make sure anyone who wanted to vote had an opportunity.

“Election day is voters’ day, the day freedom is preserved through participation in our electoral system,” she stated.

She stood by her office’s mission statement that voters’ “can be assured our electoral process is conducted professionally … and administered timely, responsively and with integrity.”

Last week, Board of Supervisors Chairman Marion Ashley told City News Service he was “very unhappy” with the late publication of initial ballot returns.

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

The supervisor said he was “embarrassed” because after foul-ups in the June 8 primary, the county allocated resources — including $650,000 for new vote-counting equipment — to prevent hang-ups.

“We said the process would work, and here it is, we didn’t get it out,” Ashley said.

Supervisor John Benoit agreed with Ashley that Dunmore needed to be asked pointed questions about “what went wrong this time.”

“This is a very public thing,” he told CNS. “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.”

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.

More than 40 percent of ballots were not counted until four days after the primary, and because of a communication breakdown between the postal service and registrar’s office, more than 12,500 absentee ballots went uncounted, leading to a lawsuit against the county.

Some 464,372 ballots were cast in the Nov. 2 general election in Riverside County, representing roughly 54 percent of registered voters. About 31 percent of registered voters participated in the June election.

According to Dunmore, 28,800 provisional ballots — requested by voters who didn’t receive ballots or whose names didn’t appear on registration rolls at polling stations — have yet to be counted. The registrar has 28 days to certify the results of an election.