Around 1,500 vote-by-mail ballots from other California counties ended up in the hands of Contra Costa election workers this month, potentially slowing the already snail-like pace of ballot counting seen in some counties.
The out-of-county ballots “did not come come to us from the USPS,” said Dawn Kruger, the county’s elections spokesperson. Rather, individual voters with ballots from Alameda County, San Fransisco, and even Sacramento decided to drop them off at one of Contra Costa’s 44 early voting ballot drop boxes as well as polling locations.
“The exact motivation for this type of voting behavior may never be fully realized. What is for certain is that California Elections Code requires each county to accept a mail ballot via drop boxes or at a polling place from any county in California,” Kruger said. “It’s then up to us to stamp the envelope as received timely and forward to the appropriate county no later than eight days after the election.”
When asked for a break down of how many ballots there were and where they came from, the elections office was unable to provide a straight answer saying, “we don’t track specific numbers as these are not our voter ballots, we just redirect them once we do receive them so they go to the correct county and can be counted.”
Kruger added that they also do not track all of the counties these ballots belong to.
While many races in Contra Costa County had apparent clear winners the morning after the election, others remain tight, even after the elections office released an update two days earlier than expected.
As over Nov. 16, 55% of Contra Costa ballots have been counted. Last week, the elections office said it had over 105,000 unprocessed ballots but now say all vote-by-mail ballots have been counted. There are still 1,800 provisional and 4,000 “other” ballots that need to be processed.
The neck-and-neck San Ramon Valley Unified School District board race between Michelle Peterson and Jesse VanZee shows a less than 2% gap in votes, with VanZee ahead. Additional results will be posted each Friday afternoon up until the election is certified on December 2.
To ensure that your vote is counted, election workers verify the signatures on the outside of absentee ballot envelopes. The signature on the envelope must match the signature on file; this confirms your identity and also ensures that you didn’t vote at a polling place.
During the election, we received ballots from voters in California’s other counties. All of these ballots are forwarded to their respective counties for processing to ensure all eligible votes are counted.#CoCoVote #BayAreaVotes #VoteCA #TrustedInfo2022 pic.twitter.com/GBfwnAQ0Ot
— Contra Costa Elections (@cocoelections) November 15, 2022
Hits: 0
