Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis is asking for patience as the process of counting hundreds of thousands of unprocessed ballots continues three days after the election.
As of Thursday evening, Dupuis’ office had counted 233,629 ballots, with an estimated 460,245 remaining, the largest percentage of outstanding ballots in the state.
On Friday, Dupuis said it will take a few weeks to work through those votes.
“It takes time to get the large number of mail-in ballots counted,” he said in an email.
“We understand the interest of the community to see results as quickly as possible,” Dupuis said. “We ask for their understanding as we process a very large number of Vote by Mail votes submitted on Election Day.”
This election cycle, 427,601 people in Alameda County cast ballots by mail on or before Tuesday, out of an estimated total of 693,874 ballots cast, according to a report on the California Secretary of State’s website.
It was the second-highest number of such ballots in the state, behind Los Angeles County, which had 790,000 votes out of an estimated 3.8 million.
“We will be working throughout the weekend and on Veterans Day to continue processing as many votes as possible,” Dupuis said.
County election officials have until Dec. 3 to report the official results to the California Secretary of State.
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office said Friday that they were not aware of any issues with the vote count in Alameda County and reminded people that the process takes time.
Still, criticism mounted from people eager to know the results of a number of high-profile elections, including attempts to overturn them Pamela Price, Alameda County District Attorney And Mayor Sheng Thao of Oaklandamong other competitions.
“I know everyone is anxious and frustrated with the counting of votes for Tuesday’s election in Alameda County,” said County Supervisor Keith Carson. “I share your dismay.”
“Months ago, I asked the clerk at public meetings if he had sufficient staff and resources to conduct the November election; his answer was ‘yes.’ Unfortunately, that appears not to be the case,” Carson said in a statement Friday press release.
This isn’t the first time Carson has publicly taken Dupuis to task. In July, Dupuis drew a heated response from the District 5 supervisor when he told the board that it was “technically not feasible to implement youth voting” in Oakland and Berkeley at that time, even after years of delays.
“We had eight years to prepare for this. I don’t accept that we’re not ready to implement this,” Carson said. ‘I wonder whether a department head who knew it was coming, tackled his job adequately in a fundamental way.’
Whatever issues stood in the way of the youth vote, which allows 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in school board elections in those two cities, appear to have been resolved when those ballots were included in the Nov. 5 election.
Carson is also urging Dupuis to release the “cast voting data” in an electronic format that allows for independent verification of vote tallies, instead of the PDF format he now uses.
In a memo to the board, Carson said Dupuis’ current process “effectively runs counter to the board’s intended purpose of facilitating accurate election oversight.” a PDF format.”
In that school board race, Dupuis endorsed the election in favor of Nick Resnick, but later said the voting machines had been misconfigured and that Mike Hutchinson had actually won. Hutchinson finished third in the certified results.
As for Tuesday’s election, the Coalition of Bay Area Election Officials, which represents several county registrars, sent out a news release Friday with the headline “Counting votes takes time,” which also urged people to be patient with the process, especially if it’s about the elections. count by post.
Even before such ballots are counted, every signature must be verified, the envelopes must be scanned and sorted, the ballots must be removed from the envelopes and organized for counting, even if the ballots continue to trickle in within seven days of the election.
“Counties across California have 28 days to certify the election,” said Lynda Roberts, Marin County’s registrar of voters. “Election agencies take many steps to ensure that ballots are counted correctly, that equipment counts correctly and that the integrity of the election is intact.”
A new set of votes was expected to be reported from Alameda County on Friday at 5 p.m.
