[EL] Question for the list about tabulation of early in-person votes

[Mary Hill]

D.A.,

Sometimes we’re lucky if we get the ballots back from all the vote centers by midnight. Anyone who is in line by 8pm is allowed to vote. So in the past when voters haven’t left the vote center until 10-11pm, and then the Vote Center representatives start counting, reconciling, and packing ballots to handover to the couriers who drive the ballots to our Office. With the lines we’re going to have for 2020 General, and the fact that we’re going to be sending out less equipment due to COVID spacing, I foresee a ridiculously long night.

No matter how many times and ways we try and tell our voters that they can vote on Sunday or Monday before the election, everyone shows up on that Tuesday. Of our 33K or so in person votes (not counting dropped off vote by mail ballots), only 3K were cast during the entire early voting period.

The people who are working in ballot processing are shifted, so a fresher batch of folks come in later in the day to continue signature matching, processing, scanning, and tabulating the ballots. But the main election staff don’t get to go home until we’ve collected every ballot box (and scanned to confirm we have all of them) and all the drop boxes have been emptied (and then locked) by couriers. The only ballots that aren’t stored at our Election Office by Election Night/Morning are the ones that are in the process of being mailed. Otherwise you can’t ensure that you’ve gotten every eligible ballot.

Thankfully we’ve gotten some fantastic new scanning and processing equipment that has really sped up the ballot reconciliation process so in March we were generally keeping pace with the early votes dropped off until election day.

---
Mary Hill   [she/her]
Elections Specialist
• Office: (650) 655-6246
📱 Mobile: (650) 722-8100

[cid:image001.png at 01D677B3.185C93E0]

Registration & Elections Division
40 Tower Road, San Mateo 94402
http://www.smcacre.org/

Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 17:00:03 -0700
From: "D. A. Holtzman" <d at LAvoteFIRE.org<mailto:d at LAvoteFIRE.org>>
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] Question for the list about tabulation of early
in-person votes
Message-ID: <543523b2-2a7e-672e-f01c-60b055a44c23 at LAvoteFIRE.org<mailto:543523b2-2a7e-672e-f01c-60b055a44c23 at LAvoteFIRE.org>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"

Why not wait until the next morning, say at 10 O'clock, so everybody can
get some rest, start fresh, and focus well on the task at hand?

On 8/20/2020 11:08 AM, Mary Hill wrote:
>
> Dear Pamela,
>
> For my Vote Center county in CA, all votes are being processed as they
> come in. We have a few 30 day vote centers, so any votes received
> (whether early in-person or a Vote by Mail ballot) on E-20 will be
> processed well before Election Day. We do our best to keep up as best
> as we can with ballots We just don?t *tabulate* any of the votes
> (VBM/Early in-person votes/Etc) until 8pm Election Night. Once 8pm
> hits, all of our processed, scanned, and adjudicated ballot results
> are tabulated and we can start updating our live voter turnout site.
> (linked below)
>
> https://www.livevoterturnout.com/SanMateoCA/LiveResults/en/Index_3.html<https://www.livevoterturnout.com/SanMateoCA/LiveResults/en/Index_3.html>
>
> If anyone decides to ask for more information we can look into our
> Tenex ePollbook results to see how many early in-person votes we
> receive (in total, or per day), and I?m sure we have the same for VBM,
> that?s just not my department.
>
> Let me know if this helps!

---
Mary Hill   [she/her]
Elections Specialist
• Office: (650) 655-6246
📱 Mobile: (650) 722-8100

[cid:image001.png at 01D677B3.185C93E0]

Registration & Elections Division
40 Tower Road, San Mateo 94402
http://www.smcacre.org/

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