By Gail Murray

The November 2018 election voter turnout of 68% was one of the largest in Contra Costa County, according to Joe Canciamilla, County Clerk and Registrar of Voters. Canciamilla was the featured speaker at the League’s Election Wrap-Up held January 12 at the Contra Costa Water District.

 Elections are no longer only Election Day occurrences.  Elections have become month-long events because of the large increase in mail ballots, said Canciamillia.  One reason is that 70% of the voter returns are by mail or dropped off instead of from voters filling out ballots at polling sites.  There is an initial bounce when the ballots are first mailed out, but a huge number of returns are submitted at the end.

 “People are waiting later to make their decisions," Canciamilla said.  “On Election Day, 38,000 of the mail ballots were dropped off.”

Each mail-in ballot has to be opened by hand and the signature has to be verified. Then the ballot is put through one of the new, high-speed scanning machines—the first in the nation-- before it can be counted. Votes at polling places are automatically scanned onto memory cards and brought to the registrar’s office that night.  Provisional ballots—ballots from those who registered on Election Day or which raise some question—take more time to verify.  For example, about 1,000 people wrote on their ballot—comments, arrows showing the box where they meant to vote, etc.  These require an adjudicator to look at them and determine their validity.  9,800 ballots were questioned, but only 200 were ultimately disqualified. No ballots are automatically tossed out.  For all these reasons and other complications, it takes at least a week to get final results, and for some cases longer.

 Canciamilla is exploring doing away with polling places and converting to a complete Vote by Mail election, as has already occurred in Oregon and Washington.  He finds it more and more difficult to find polling places and, for the recent election, he needed to have 1,000 people on Election Day at the polls.  Although other states’ experiences have not reduced the cost or increased the response rate, Vote by Mail would reduce the cumbersome processing of many different types of ballots.  The County would pay the postage. Voters who are concerned about their ballot getting lost in the mail would still have the option of depositing their ballot at election drop boxes located conveniently around the county.

 In response to audience questions, Canciamilla provided the following nuggets about our elections:

• Contra Costa has 850,00 eligible voters, but about 30-40% don’t actually register.
• The November ballot was six pages, which resulted in a huge number of blanks on the ballots. To help combat voters’ lack of information about such large ballots, the League plays an important role in helping voters understand the issues.
• The County keeps the voting rolls accurate by purging people who have died when the Registrar is notified of deaths by the social security administration and the vital records site.
• All California ballots are paper.  Even on electronic voting machines at polling places, a paper ballot is created.
• The DMV Motor Voter registration continues to frustrate voters and Canciamilla’s staff because of glitches in the system that haven’t been corrected, causing provisional ballots that require scrutiny.
• Although a voter’s signature may change with age, usually something in the signature still matches the original on file when adjudicators examine and verify it.
• The move to more district elections increases the number of ballots to be counted.  For example, the precincts drawn for the Martinez school district and the Martinez city council elections were not the same.  Because districts are smaller, it will lead to more close races.

Co-President Martha Goralka closed the meeting by encouraging members to contact her with suggestions about how the League can improve its efforts during election periods.