How Ventura County Counts Your Vote

Lightly edited from the automatic captions for readability. The captions garbled a number of local names and terms, and those have been corrected. Where the audio was not clear enough to be sure, the text says so. Audience questions are marked Q, and are condensed where several people spoke at once. A few personal names that added nothing have been left out.

0:04 I figured I’d start with just some quick facts on your handout. Everybody’s got one? Okay, great. The blue bar across the top is the number of registered voters we have as of today. It’s always going to be a snapshot. People ask me, “How many registered voters do we have in the county?” And I say, “Over half a million,” because it varies from day to day. New people get registered, people pass away, people move into the county, people move out of the county. So it’s always going to be a fluid number. And you can see the breakdown by party in those different numbers.

0:47 So we’ve got an election on November 3rd coming up, in case you haven’t heard. Seventy-something days, I believe. What’s on the ballot? We’re going to have the runoff contests, the top two finishers from all of the congressional offices on the federal level. You’ll see one of those depending on where you reside. The state offices: governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state. I’m not going to go through all of them, but we’ve got the state assembly, three different districts, again depending on where you reside in the county. And then we have the runoff for the county superintendent of schools office, the top two finishers in November from the June primary.

1:31 Then we’ve got local offices, lots and lots of local offices. Twenty-one judicial seats. And what’s interesting about those is that they appear on the ballot as a yes/no question. They’re not running against other candidates for that seat. Then we have the city councils, the school districts and the special districts, and then 86 candidates across the county who were the sole candidate for their office, and those lucky dogs get to be appointed in lieu of election. So their office won’t appear on the ballot. I was never so lucky, but maybe someday.

2:16 And then we’ll have 14 state propositions. You will all see all 14 of those, and seven local ballot measures, which you may or may not see depending again on where you reside, because it’ll be for a school district or for a special district or a city. Any questions on what’s on the ballot?

2:38 Okay, moving on. Our election timeline. We just completed the candidate nomination period, which ran through August the 7th, and the extension for seats with a non-eligible incumbent ran for an extra five days through August the 12th. You’ve probably already gotten your what we call the 90-day voter notification postcard. Looks like this.

3:04 This is good confirmation that your registration is good. I know a lot of people have been hearing on national news that in other states people are getting kicked off of the voter rolls or whatever. California will never do that. If you’re being removed or inactivated for some reason, you’re going to receive notification from our office that lets you know of that fact. So don’t ever worry, especially if you get one of these. If you’re getting mail from our office, you’re good to go.

3:40 This details your vote by mail and voting in person options. We are required to send these out because of the Voter’s Choice Act, of which we’re an active participant. About half of California’s 58 counties are Voter’s Choice Act counties at this point. And you’ll be receiving another voter notification postcard about 60 days ahead of the election, so early September. You’ll notice they’re a little different from what we’ve sent in the past. We went a little bigger, because we figure if we’re spending the money but nobody’s reading it, then it’s a waste. So spend a little more, make it more likely to be read, and get more for your money. That was the thinking behind this.

4:32 Coming up, there’s a write-in nomination period for anybody who missed the regular candidacy period, beginning September 7th. If anyone really wants to run for an office but they missed that August 7th cutoff, they can always run as a write-in, but it’s a little harder because they’re not on the ballot, they’re not in the voter guide. They’ve got to do all their own publicity.

5:02 Mid-September is the pre-election logic and accuracy testing. We call that process PreLAT, as an acronym. People want to know how you know that the tabulation equipment is functioning properly. Well, this is how we know. We test it before the election to make sure. We have a test deck of ballots and we run it through. We know what the results are supposed to be, and looking at the results from the tabulators, it matches with what the result is supposed to be from that test deck.

5:48 We’re also testing the laptops and printers before they’re deployed to the vote centers, not only to ensure their accurate function, but to ensure that they’re even functioning, period. Because we’ve got 50-something vote centers all throughout the county. We don’t want to have to keep running back and forth to different locations resupplying equipment. So we want to make sure everything is functioning before it even gets to the vote center.

6:11 The ballot marking touchscreens, if you’ve ever gone to a vote center, you’re familiar with those things. Everybody thinks that they’re voting electronically. They’re not. It is merely a touchscreen that, after you choose your options on your ballot, you print a ballot. Every ballot that is cast in Ventura, in the entire state of California, is a hard copy paper ballot. But the reason we’re required to have at least three ADA touchscreens at each vote center is because they’re there to assist voters with disabilities. They can put on some earphones and hear the ballot read to them. They can make the screen brighter. They can make the size bigger. They can do all kinds of different things to help them fill out that ballot independently.

7:14 Does anybody have any questions about the pre-election testing of the equipment? It’s a thorough process. We test every piece of equipment before it’s deployed.

7:36 Q: Do other states do this pre-election testing like California does?

7:46 I don’t know. The interesting conundrum with the fact that the Constitution leaves administration of elections up to the states is that every state is doing things slightly differently. I believe that California has the best system, the most thorough system, the most secure system, because of all the, I mean, it creates a lot of extra work for me and my team, but the result is the sound integrity of the process, which is what everybody seems to be concerned about. So I don’t know what other states do, and I know it varies from state to state, but I would assume so.

8:46 Q: I’ve attended some Board of Supervisors meetings over the years, and often there was a very loud contingent on the docket about election integrity or fraud. Are you dealing with people on a regular basis who are up in arms about the election?

9:11 Okay. I’m going to take that question and pertain it to the equipment part of it, because they don’t trust the tabulation machines. Yes, there are some people who want to see elections in a whole different light. The reason the equipment is trustworthy is because it’s tested on the federal level and on the state level. And then the state of California goes even further and only permits certain vendors. So I can’t just Google search ballot tabulation and buy whatever is cheapest on eBay.

9:56 The Secretary of State certifies particular vendors and then particular products of that vendor. That’s why it was hard for me to answer the question about what happens in other states, because we use Liberty Vote, formerly known as Dominion Voting Systems. Not every product that Liberty Vote produces is certified for use in the state of California. Once it passes all of those rigorous standards at the federal and the state level, then we are permitted to enter into an agreement with the company for that use. But then we’re still testing before, and as I’ll explain as we go through the timeline, testing after the election as well. So there are before and after checks to make sure that everything is working as it should.

11:02 So I mentioned the voter notification postcards. The next set of mail that you’re going to start receiving is the state voter information guide, which you’re familiar with, one per household no matter how many voters. But then you’ll also get the county voter information guide, one per each voter, because this has your sample ballot that people are going to want to mark privately and do their notations on, without having to share it with their entire household. Those will be arriving in mid-September.

11:41 Then the fun begins October 5th, when the ballots go out in the mail, the ballot drop boxes are unlocked and opened for people to deposit their ballots, 40 across the county. And then early early voting begins at the county government center on Monday, October 5th. So say you’re going to be out of the country for most of October. You can always come down to our office. If you don’t want to use your vote by mail ballot, if you want to go in person, a lot of people still like to go in person, you can come to the government center and vote in person there early beginning October 5th.

12:22 Q: With the ballot drop, we have one at our city hall. Does somebody pick them up and take them to the government center? Because I’m avoiding the post office.

12:43 Right. As the card explains, you’ve got three options. You can mail it back, and I encourage everybody to mail it as early as possible. I’ll get into that later. Take it to a drop box until 8:00 on election night. Or you can take it to a vote center and drop it off there. But yes, somebody from the government center picks them up.

13:06 Q: And takes them, and I hope it’s not somebody who’s going to throw them all away. I mean, I am totally paranoid.

13:20 One of the nice things about how elections are conducted these days, particularly under the Voter’s Choice Act model, is that in the past under polling places we just kind of grabbed whoever we could find, put them through half a day of training, plugged them in on election day, and then they were done. Now, because people are working at least five days of service, we have to go through the entire hiring process to bring them in. So that’s submitting an application, coming in for an interview, going through the background check, onboarding, orientation, the whole nine, because they’re being entrusted with a bit more responsibility.

14:09 And that background check, the ability to do that background check, should really give people a lot of comfort in knowing who’s working the election. Now, it doesn’t mean that we don’t kick people out. It’s kind of a one strike rule around there, depending on the severity of the sin. But if you walk in on the first day and you’re screaming a bunch of political stuff, it’s like, “Yeah, I’m sorry. You’re going to need to leave. Don’t come back. Turn in your badge. You’re done.”

14:46 Everybody works in teams of two whenever there’s any ballot handling. No one is allowed, not even me, to be alone with the ballots at all, ever. So we send them out in pairs. Once they leave our office, they have to do their pickups from their route and report straight back to the government center. No stopping for food, no stopping for the bathroom, no stopping for anything, because not one person can be alone with the ballots and they can’t leave the ballots alone. So they have to move about their route in pairs.

15:36 Q: Has there ever been a problem with somebody trying to steal ballots from the pickup people?

15:43 Not that I’ve heard. I’ve heard that people are watching them, and sometimes people will harass them, take pictures of them, which is weird. But I haven’t heard that anyone has actually interfered. They would be foolish to do so, because it’s actually a felony to interfere with the voting process.

16:08 Q: They’ve got lawlessness. The ICE people don’t care. They’re dogs. They’re awful people. So what happens if they’re watching? Because we’ve had ICE here and they terrorize the people doing the pickups. Are these people going to be trained in self-defense or something? We’re in a bad place.

16:34 They do have the ability to call on law enforcement if someone’s being a problem. We do train them, especially on election night. We’ve got some training that dictates you’re expected to answer questions in as brief and matter of fact a manner as possible. But then if someone is persisting to obstruct or whatever, call 911 and get to safety.

17:20 I’m basically just focused on keeping Ventura County safe.

17:26 I’m sure the secretaries of state get together, because they’re the statewide administrators for their elections, and then they tell us at the county level what to do. So maybe they’re working out something. I don’t know.

17:42 Q: What percentage of people are actually walking in and voting?

17:48 It’s low. It’s about 10% that vote in person. Most people are voting by mail because it’s convenient and it’s easy and they can take their time and they don’t have to go anywhere.

18:02 Q: The drop boxes are fabulous, and ours is right next to the police station. And if you’re on BallotTrax, you get a confirmation. It’s pretty idiot proof if you follow up. Given the concern that’s been expressed about the post office, why aren’t the boxes kind of the go-to way to go? For me it’s the same as driving to the post office.

18:33 They are. There are still some people who mail. In past elections we received more that way. In June, we don’t have it broken out by mail versus drop box, but 91% of ballots came back utilizing that vote by mail ballot. In the past most of them have come back by mail. People are starting to see that the mail service has slowed down, and so more people are utilizing the drop boxes.

19:18 Q: Are you suggesting mail, or the box, over in person? Do they start counting earlier?

19:29 I wouldn’t necessarily recommend one over the other. Even if you’re voting in person, we offer up to 10 days of early voting at the vote centers, and yet everybody waits until election day, and then the lines are long, and then they want to complain about having to stand in line. And it’s like, you had 10 days. You didn’t even have to come down here. You could have used your mail.

20:09 So that’s why I try to encourage people to vote early, whatever method they’re choosing. But back to your point about BallotTrax, I discovered something really cool that I didn’t even know last election. Just for fun, even though I hadn’t voted in person in probably almost 20 years, I decided to take my two youngest to vote in person, and it turns out you get a BallotTrax notification if you’re signed up and you vote in person. I didn’t know that. I thought it was only when you send it by mail or through the drop box. It was the coolest thing. So I would encourage everybody, regardless of what method you use to vote, to also sign up for BallotTrax.

21:19 Q: It looks like the US Postal Service is going to be okay between now and election day. But is there any plan if the federal government blocks the postal service somehow?

21:36 That would be for the Secretary of State to decide. I have heard that they were contemplating using FedEx or UPS, that type of delivery service, but I don’t know how far they’ve gotten into that. I think they were just exploring it as a possibility. They haven’t told us to do this, and we have to get that direction from the Secretary of State’s office.

22:10 Q: Are the ballots printed ahead of time? Are they printing now?

22:12 Yeah, we’re in the process of printing now. And I’m going to encourage people to use a drop box. If you can take it to the mailbox, you can take it to a drop box. That cuts out a step in the chain, rather than having the post office handling it and then our office handling it. It’s almost like delivering it directly to the government center if you take it to a drop box. So I would encourage that.

22:53 And if you don’t receive your ballot within a week, call us. I believe we include that information on the card.

23:33 Okay. I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I do want to get to some questions at the end. The voter registration deadline is October 19th. If someone changes address, that’s the latest date that we can mail them a ballot. But if you register after that, you just have to go to a vote center or to our office at the government center to do that. And you can register all the way up to election day.

23:56 Our 11-day vote centers open October 24th. It’s a Saturday, 9 to 5 daily, allowing for 10 days of early voting. We have 11 of those that open, basically one in each city. I guess there’s two in Oxnard. I think that’s why there’s 11 even though there’s 10 cities. October 31st is when 42 additional sites open.

24:27 Q: Where are the vote centers to register? Do you have to go to Ventura to the government center to register?

24:43 I guess I should explain vote centers. You can visit any location in Ventura County. So you live in Ojai but you work in Port Hueneme, you work at the Navy base, you can visit any vote center along that route. Or your parents live in Moorpark, you can go vote in Moorpark. You can go to any vote center.

25:00 Q: How do I tell them to find one on the website?

25:11 On the back we’ve got Vote.VenturaCounty.gov. I didn’t even turn it over. That information will also be provided within your ballot package in your voter guide.

25:45 November 3rd, election day. Just because it’s called election day doesn’t mean you have to wait until that day to vote. You can vote early. I encourage you to vote early. You’ll make your life easier that way. All 53 vote centers are open beginning at 7:00 a.m. At 8:00 p.m. is when they technically close, but if someone is in line by 8:00, one of our workers will stand behind the last person in that line at 8:00 p.m., turn away everybody who comes up after that, but everyone who’s in line by that 8:00 p.m. cutoff will be served before the location closes. And then the drop boxes are also locked at 8:00 p.m. sharp. Not 8:01, not 8:00 and 5 seconds. 8:00. They lock it up. People come walking up at 8:00 and it’s like, I’m sorry, you’re too late.

26:44 And then on election night is when we will begin posting results. The first results should go up by 8:30. We had a little bit of a hiccup this last time, so we’re giving ranges now rather than specific times. The first results will be posted between 8:30 and 9:00. The first update will be from 10:30 to 11. We’re shooting for that earlier time, but we’re giving ourselves a 30 minute buffer. Second update, 12:30 a.m., and then whatever time we finish is when the final result will be posted that night.

27:24 Q: Are votes counted only starting election night, or if ballots have been received earlier, is tabulating happening then?

27:32 That’s a great question. As vote by mail ballots are returned, we are able to begin processing them. The envelope doesn’t even get opened unless that signature is a match. Then it gets opened and flattened and batched, and we begin running batches about a week after we first mail the ballots. However, the data is merely being compiled in the tabulation server. The way I typically explain it is, imagine a huge jar of jelly beans and they’re all mixed up, all the different colors. Those colors won’t get sorted as votes until after 8:00 p.m. on election night. So I could look at it and say, “Oh yeah, I see a lot of yellow jelly beans in there.” But that doesn’t mean that we’re going to know who’s winning.

28:28 Q: About signatures. Which version of my signature is it being compared against?

28:35 The first one that comes up is your most recent registration. However, if somebody can’t look at that and go, “that’s a clear match,” we can pull up your signature history. All of the vote by mail ballots that you’ve returned and all of the registration signatures that you’ve used come up in your history. In fact, let me show you how this works.

29:04 This is mine, and I’m happy to pass this around. You can see how consistent my signature has been over the years. These are my registration signatures, and then these are my vote by mail ballot signatures. Now, suppose my daughter goes off to college and I decide, “Oh, I know how she would vote,” and I try to forge her signature. Well, we can pull up all of the household signatures. So this is my family. And we can compare how the signature is going to look. And so if we see that it says one name, but it looks like this, something fishy is happening.

30:06 It’s helpful because of the popularity of vote by mail. This process is obviously much slower than tabulating a live ballot from the vote center. However, this is the more secure way to go, because there’s actual verification that’s happening. And because we’re allowed to get started, there’s some people who say, “Well, you shouldn’t touch any ballots until election day.” Well, then have fun sitting around for another eight weeks waiting for your election results, because we were able to get started right away with that processing. It’s a tedious process. Two points of verification, by both the mail sorter machine and a human verifier.

30:56 Q: That’s fascinating, because I’m thinking I registered 35 years ago. My signature is kind of similar, but it’s probably not the same.

31:04 Right. I had a friend who had a stroke a couple years ago, and his ballot did get rejected because it was like, “Hey, this doesn’t look like your signature.” Well, his whole right side is paralyzed. So we sent him the cure letter saying there’s a problem with your signature, and he’s re-registered with his new signature, from how he signs with his left hand. And so that’s how we handle signatures degrading over the years, either due to age or medical condition or, you know, chainsaw accident, whatever, anything that might cause your signature to be different. But then we’re also able to pull up your history and compare.

32:02 Q: But that’s good to know, that you would cure it. Not every signature that didn’t match gets thrown away?

32:11 No, no, no, no. Every signature that’s either missing or not matching, we send the voter a cure letter. And if someone is impersonating that person, they typically get this letter and go, “What do you mean I voted? I didn’t.” But the ballot is held until that signature is cured.

32:42 Q: Can people volunteer to help cure ballots?

32:47 We don’t organize any curing campaigns. That’s usually a candidate or a party or an organization like this one. What they would do is come in and purchase the cure list, and then they’ll usually purchase a registered voter list too, and find out who from the cure list are the ones that they want to get cured, if you know what I’m saying without me actually saying it. And then they’ll organize those things. But our involvement is limited to mailing a letter. Sometimes as the date gets closer, we’ll follow up with a phone call. But we find that a lot of people, especially once the poll results are posted and it’s pretty clear how the race is going to go, people aren’t super motivated to cure their signatures.

34:03 Q: What’s your sense of how many illegal voters there are? Anybody voting who shouldn’t be, non-matching signature, voter impersonation.

34:36 I’m sorry, I thought you were referring to non-citizens. For non-citizens, people attest to their citizenship status when they register, and then we do verify their identity. We’ll see what happens after November. But as far as attempts at multiple votes, casting multiple ballots or impersonating another voter, all of our checks and balances, in fact, okay, I bring my visual aids with me everywhere I go.

35:20 So when we look up a voter in our system, we see this section right here. Green light shows the person hasn’t voted yet, no ballot received yet for this voter. Once we receive either your mail ballot, or you’ve gone in person to vote, your vote record changes to a red light.

35:46 And the beauty of the technological capabilities of this vote center model is that, in the old days you had this big thick voter roll, this directory of voters, and you had to flip through the pages and mark it down. Versus this is an electronic process that’s updated in real time, not only in the county but throughout the state, in our database. So if somebody tries to vote in LA County and then comes up here and tries to vote, red light. If somebody votes in Ojai and then tries to vote in Moorpark, red light. If someone votes and then sends their mail ballot in, even though it doesn’t come in for a couple days, they’ve already got a red light because they’ve voted in person.

36:46 And the contrary. If they cast a mail ballot, and this happens sometimes, folks get so excited when they get their ballot, they send it back right away, and then as the election date gets closer they start hearing about “we’ve got to vote, we’ve got to vote,” forgetting that they’ve already cast their ballot. And so when they come in and the person says, “Well, it shows here that we’ve already received a ballot for you,” rather than getting into any fights, we’ll issue a provisional ballot. But it’s still red light. And then that ballot isn’t counted unless and until we figure out why this person has a red light. And then we usually find out that they already voted weeks ago and they forgot.

37:29 Q: Is that communicated, through some kind of advertising campaign, to counter all the misinformation about fraudulent ballots?

37:50 Yeah. So the election education series that I gave in 2023 and 2024 ahead of the March primary, I did go into this. I don’t know that I had this actual screenshot, but I did explain how a voter’s record is locked once they’ve already voted, and any subsequent ballots after that would subject them to investigation and possible referral to the district attorney’s office for voter fraud.

38:40 Once your ballot goes in that bag, it’s anonymous. Once your signature is verified on your vote by mail ballot, it’s put into a hopper, it goes through our envelope slicers, and you just pull out the ballot. Ballot goes this way, envelope goes that way, and no one knows.

39:15 There’s a lot of buyer’s remorse when it comes to elections. People recognize that the June primary had a lot of people sitting on their ballots until late in the process, because they were waiting to see what other skeletons were going to pop out of whoever’s closet.

39:52 Okay, after election day. Throughout the canvass, we are posting updates twice a week along with the estimated number of ballots remaining. Now, I want to remind people that this is an estimate, meaning we have hundreds of mail trays that appear to be full and we’re just kind of guessing. This tray holds 250 ballots, there’s 35 of them, and that’s the number that we produce. We kind of overshot it a little bit in the primary by a few thousand. So then as it got closer, people were saying, “How come you said that there were 35,000 left and now there’s only 4,000 left, but you haven’t tabulated 31,000?” Well, that early estimate was a little too generous. So take that with a little bit of grace.

40:59 The provisional ballots that I mentioned earlier, that’s issued to someone that’s already shown to have voted or is a late registrant. We’re reconciling those in that post-election day period. Contacting vote by mail ballot signatures for curing, we are required to send the notice by November the 17th, and the cure must be received by November the 25th. Any questions on that?

41:33 Postmarks. November 10th is the last day to receive vote by mail ballots postmarked by election day. Ahead of the primary election, the post office started saying that they’re not going to affix a postmark at the post office anymore. Or maybe they had stopped that practice already but they hadn’t really told anyone. Now it’s once it hits their processing center, that’s where the postmark is going to be applied, and that could take anywhere from a couple days to a week. So we’re advising people, if you have not mailed it before a week ahead of the election, go ahead and use a drop box or take it to a vote center. And we’ve seen the drop boxes get more use because of that change in postal practices.

42:41 November 16th is our first ballot counting deadline. All regular ballots must be counted by that date. So the vote by mail ballots that are signature verified, no problems, no cures required, and the ballots cast at the vote center, no provisionals or anything required, those all have to be counted by November 16th, 13 days after the election. Anything after that is going to be cures, provisionals, conditional voter registration, those kinds of problematic ones that we have to apply a little more attention to.

43:26 The 1% manual tally audit is the post-election verification that I mentioned. It’s the post-election counterpart to PreLAT. That’s where we take 1% of the ballots that were cast by election day, and we bring in a whole group of people like you all. We put them in groups of three. Two people are hand tabulating. One person is the reader. It’s a long, tedious, mind-numbing process that sometimes results in people getting into fights. I mean, “I said Smith, not Johnson.” Emotions run high because they’re tired. It’s a tiring, tedious process. But we grind through that in about a week, sometimes a week and a half. And so that is how we are ensuring after election day that our results are still good.

44:48 Q: You said 1%. Is that considered statistically representative?

44:51 That’s what the law requires. I’ve been asked why don’t you do 5%, why don’t you do 10%. Well, that’s just five times more of the pain.

45:37 Q: The signature’s already gone off with the envelope, so what are you checking?

45:48 The actual ballots. Who voted for what. In the polling place days the ballots used to be segregated by precinct. Now, because people can vote anywhere, and we’ve got a jumble of vote by mail ballots that come in from everywhere, the batches are ballots from all over the county. A batch has about 100 to 200 ballots in it, and they have these tabulation sheets with every contest in the entire county on it. You take the ballot and they read through each and every contest and then they mark it. So when people say we should have 100% hand counting, I’m just like, you have no idea what you’re asking for.

46:42 Q: Do you have enough volunteers to help with all this, or are you in need of people?

46:55 Jumping down to the bottom of the page, you see the call for election workers needed, and we do have the application live on our website. We’re happy to take folks that are interested. It’s hard work. It’s long work. We pay well. We do pay well. But it’s demanding work, especially election day. That’s what separates the men from the boys, as they say, because it’s tough work on election day.

47:27 Q: Do you usually run short of volunteers?

47:30 Not volunteers. They’re hired, screened workers. We could always use more. We hire six to 700 folks. But it’s short term. Some folks are working as little as five days. Some are working a couple of months, the ones that are working in the office. So the assignments will vary.

48:00 Q: On the 1% sample, you compare the percentages of that 1% to the percentages of the total?

48:11 It’s 1% of the batches tabulated through the end of election night. So we’ll have tabulated two or three thousand batches by the end of election night, and 1% of those batches is what’s hand tabulated.

48:41 Q: You’re comparing two counts of the same votes?

48:48 Comparing the results from the machine to the human verifiers. As a batch is tabulated, all the ballots in that batch are segregated, so they’re kept in individual boxes. And then when you run a report from the tabulation equipment, it’ll tell you, in batch number 213, these are the results that we got. So then we’ve got the human count of the same batch.

49:28 Q: I’ve had to interact with your office on several occasions with mortgages and things like that, on the recorder side. The people who work with you are so great and so happy, and I can see why, if you’re one of the bosses.

49:54 Thank you. I try to encourage them to be nice. It’s funny, because we either hire nice people, or the ones that have been around a long time who have gotten a little sour and jaded, we’ve converted them. They’ve become nice. Because we know that we’re providing a service here. Any other questions on the 1% manual tally?

50:22 Q: It isn’t about the 1%, it’s about who you employ to run the election. I have heard that an organization can volunteer to run a polling place if they get trained. Do you still do that?

50:44 That’s the old adopt-a-poll program. It’s just gotten harder because of the vote center model. Years ago in this county, sure. But currently, no.

51:12 Q: On that 1% of the ballots that you look at, you need to remind people that the ballots can be four or five pages with multiple races.

51:26 1% of the batches.

51:40 Q: What is a batch? What is it made up of?

51:49 For the vote center ballots, each day’s and location’s ballots are an individual batch. They’re kept together by themselves. But then vote by mail, that will fill up the box. Until your box gets full, a couple hundred. That’s a batch.

52:07 Q: So when they do 1%, it’s not just one ballot. It’s every single race on that ballot.

52:20 Oh yeah. The whole ballot. It may be right for the governor’s race, but it may fall off for the county supervisor race, and then they’ve got a headache that they have to work on. So it may not always be perfect, but that’s the idea, to try to figure out how close we are and how accurate it is. And if it’s not exactly correct, they run it again. If they’re off by one, that’s where the fights come in, because they go through this whole box of 200 ballots and then they’re like, “What do you mean you only have 45 Smith? I have 46.” It’s a whole thing.

53:11 It’s not fun. I bring them snacks to try to make it a little less painful. Any other questions on the 1% manual tally?

53:21 Okay, I will move on to the certification. That’s the finish line. We have a 30-day deadline by state law, which would be December the 3rd. We are going to be certifying, and this is my first time announcing this, I’m so excited, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, November 25th. That’s going to be the date that we certify. Literally three weeks and one day after election day, because that is the last day that the cures can be received. So whatever cures we receive by 5:00 p.m., we’ll process those, and then however late we have to stay to finish that off, we’re staying. If it’s 8:00, 9:00, midnight, whatever, we’re going to post our final final results and certify that day. And then we’re going to enjoy our Thanksgiving weekend. Hopefully nobody has any travel plans, because they won’t be leaving till Thursday.

54:26 And then the state’s certification deadline is December the 11th. I believe they take that full time.

54:34 If anybody wants a recount, they’ve got five days within certification to request that. The problem with recounts is that they’re not automatic. So it doesn’t matter if a race is within five votes of each other or a certain percentage or whatever. If you don’t trust our results, you’re going to pay to have us rerun it. And it’s costly.

55:07 Here’s the reason why it’s costly. Because of the vote center model, all of the ballots are mixed up. So it’s not like I can just say, “Okay, well the Ojai mayor wants to request a recount,” and go to these boxes and pull those ballots. Ojai is going to be mixed up in a number of batches. So that’s more staff, more time, more labor, more work. They can request either a retabulation, electronic, or they can request just to sit down and hand tabulate them, which I think I would have people quit over. But they have to fund it. The person requesting it has to fund it. Now, in the event that the result is overturned in their favor, then we refund them. But I stand by my numbers.

56:08 Q: Does it have to be requested by the candidate, or could any voter request a recount on, say, the mayor’s race?

56:20 Any voter that’s willing to pay for it. But they’ve got to pay for it.

56:26 Q: How expensive is it?

56:31 What was the Ojai one? I’ll look it up before I leave.

56:48 Okay. And then, as I mentioned, shortly after certification is where we will conduct investigations of attempts of fraud. And that’s, like I mentioned, impersonation, forgery, or multiple voting. We reach out to the voter and we say, “Hey voter, looks like you tried to vote twice. Care to explain yourself?” A lot of times it’s an innocent mistake. Sometimes people will say, “Oh yeah, I was just testing you to see what happened.” Oh, well, you’re going to find out what happens when I refer you to the district attorney’s office. So voter fraud is a felony. We will refer cases to the district attorney’s office. It’s his discretion whether to pursue them or not, but we’ve done our part at least.

58:08 There was an individual who decided to play with us by registering cats. Not only did he attempt to register multiple cats, but he went to the Board of Supervisors meeting and announced that he hadn’t gotten caught yet. What he failed to realize is that that registration was held in pending and was never going to be finalized until that person’s identification was verified.

59:24 December 21st, 2022, we announced the results of the Ojai mayoral recount. It was a dead even vote count, and the cost was $28,500. And that was a small election. About 3,600 votes were cast.

59:56 Q: Are you at all worried about ICE showing up on Halloween?

1:00:10 I don’t think they will, but we have incorporated in our training how to handle that. I know there was an incident in the primary at a Simi Valley location. Somewhat coincidental, because they weren’t going there because it was a vote center. They were pursuing somebody and happened to end up in the vicinity of a vote center in the course of this pursuit. And as he was standing around, the ICE agent standing around filling out paperwork, just lingering just a little too long, the people managing that facility went out and told him he had to leave, and he left. So thankfully he complied. No big deal.

1:01:06 I do know that there are some groups that are mobilizing to be watchers of the vote centers. So that brings me some comfort, and they’re in communication with me.

1:01:37 The League of Women Voters is great about monitoring the inside of the location, but I believe that there are other groups intending to monitor the outside as well.

1:01:49 Q: So they’re talking to your office, so you’re aware?

1:01:53 Yes, we have a hotline. It’s down here in red, for people to call, and when we’re made aware of a situation, we are all over it.

1:02:05 Speaking of those resources, if you need to reach us, we’ve got the hotline 800 number. We’ve got our email, our website for plenty of information, a plethora of information. Follow us on social media to get the latest updates. And then as was mentioned earlier, BallotTrax is great for signing up and getting those notifications of your ballot.

1:02:29 Q: Are you expecting a big turnout this year? Did you get new registrations?

1:02:34 We always get new registrations. Here’s our turnout history. You can see it’s as low as 47% and as high as 70%. So it just depends on how motivated voters are. I wish everybody would vote. Midterms matter.

1:02:55 So I just want to impart some key messages, and then I’ll take additional questions if you have them. As I already stated, please vote early. Avoid the lines. Avoid a late postmark. Avoid forgetting. People actually forget. And who knows, you have a flood in your house, you have a flat tire, anything could come up. Don’t wait until the last minute. Just get it over with and then you don’t have to think about it anymore.

1:03:25 And if you need to register, please register now. Don’t wait until late registration, but you’re certainly able to do that as well. Get your information from accurate sources. I don’t know how to tell you guys, but a lot of people will watch stuff that isn’t exactly accurate. I would encourage you to trust the Secretary of State’s office of this state, the county elections office of this county, or you can call us if you ever have any questions. Any questions, any problem, please contact us. Griping on social media fixes nothing.

1:04:11 I can’t tell you how many friends of mine I see post on social media saying, “I didn’t get my ballot.” And I’m like, “Did you call?” Why do people feel the need to go on social media and do that? I just don’t understand.

1:04:28 And then, if you see something, say something. You see somebody hanging around a ballot box too long, you see somebody passing out literature, anything, contact us. We may or may not be able to do something, because we’re not exactly an enforcement agency, but we can look into it, and if it’s within our authority we can definitely address it, or we can contact the people who can.

1:04:50 And then again, please vote. Encourage those around you to vote in every election. And if you would want to be part of this, we’d love to have you join our team as an election worker. Thank you.