On Sunday evening, San Luis Obispo resident Gene Nelson dropped off his mail-in ballot at the SLO County Government Building, but the state of the collection box filled him with mixed emotions.
The mailbox was almost overflowing with ballots, he said.
“It was definitely at the top,” Nelson said. “I had to insert my ballot paper carefully. It was hard to get it in because there were so many ballots.”
On one hand, it encouraged him to see how many people cared about the election, but on the other hand, the mailbox raised concerns about the security of his ballot while he cast his vote.
There were so many ballots in the mailbox that he could have taken his ballot out right away, he said.
“That certainly concerns me because a bad actor could steal ballots,” he said.
This was Sunday around 6:30 p.m., Nelson said. The coffin was not emptied until the next morning.
The county empties the box daily except on Sundays, which is more often than necessary, county clerk’s office public information officer Erin Clausen told The Tribune. Their office must empty the collection boxes every 48 to 72 hours, she said.
San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano told The Tribune that the ballot box at the government center was emptied Saturday and again early Monday morning when staff arrived and saw it was full. It was replaced with a larger collection box, Cano said.
“There is a whole chain of command that goes into removing the ballots from the ballot boxes, including documentation,” Cano said. “The ballots are then transported in dual custody to the election center where they are processed by election staff.”
Nelson has signed up with Ballotrax to receive updates on when his ballot will be received and counted, but Cano said ballots returned after Saturday won’t be tabulated until after Election Day.
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How many ballots has the county received?
Nearly 82,000 ballots had been cast in SLO County as of Monday morning, according to a report from the California Secretary of State’s Office. That represents about 44% of all registered voters in the county, out of a total of 184,510.
Of those ballots, 20,733 were collected from drop boxes, 7,907 were delivered to an election center, 52,830 were mailed and 259 were faxed.
“Anecdotally, we have had a very steady stream of voters all day, both at the election counter and at the Government Center drop box,” Clausen said Monday.
Collection teams of two election officials from the clerk’s office will collect ballots from drop boxes throughout the county every day, including at the county election center until 8 p.m. on Election Day.
Teams of two from the office also collect mail-in ballots from the San Luis Obispo Post Office, once a day at a set time and twice on Election Day.
“Our collection teams are busy collecting mailboxes across the province, and the post office collection this morning brought in quite a few,” Clausen said.
Mail-in ballots received after Saturday will be counted after all in-person voting votes on Election Day and will likely not be included in the initial results on Election Night.
