How the LA County Registrar verifies vote-by-mail ballots (and why it takes so long)
Inside the converted Fry's Electronics warehouse, pallets of verified vote-by-mail ballots are ready to be shipped from the city of Industry to Downey to be counted. However, in order to get to this final step these ballots go through quite the journey.
The key for Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan and his county employees is to make sure every vote is counted with integrity and in a timely way, however, the vote-by-mail process is much more tedious and arduous than counting a ballot in person.
"The day after the election, last Wednesday, we were hit with a million pieces of mail that had to be processed," said Logan. " [These] were valid ballots to be included in this election."
Once the pallets arrive, the ballots get sent through a machine that verifies each signature. If the machine can't read it or there is no signature, it must be verified by a clerk.
"California election law requires us to reach out to the voter, give the voter an opportunity to cure that, or to correct that, by updating their signature or signing the blank ballot before it can be processed," said Logan.
After these initial steps, another machine opens the envelopes allowing each ballot to be examined by hand to ensure voters filled them out correctly.
The good ones are dropped in a green boxed and moved across the room to be double check by another employee.
Mistakes like double voting or ballot smears and stains that the counting machine can't read are put into a yellow box where another person will fill out a new ballot. These employees strictly follow what the voter intended to fill out on their ballot.
In the final step, verified ballots are boxed up and shipped off to be counted. Logan said the long process is not unusual nor unique to L.A. County or the state.
A big reason why is that a valid ballot can still be accepted up to a week after the election if it is postmarked before or on Election Day.
"In a series of contests that are this close, it's in those contests where it's most important to ensure that every valid vote is counted before you certify those election results," said Logan.
The Registrar said that it received another 3,000 pieces of mail today and expects to release another update on Tuesday.