Imperial County closer to processing all ballots

The Imperial County Registrar of Voters is getting closer to processing all of the ballots from the California primary election.

Officials will issue another “Unofficial Election Results” update on the Registrar’s website at www.co.imperial.ca.us for the June 5, 2018 Primary Election.

The unofficial update includes all polling place voters and vote-by-mail ballots received up until the close of Election Day. This is not a final tally of all ballots. As of Monday afternoon, there are approximately 1,000 unprocessed ballots. Included in this figure are 975 provisional ballots, 14 conditional voter registration ballots, and 9 ballots that require further review due to damage.

Additionally, any ballots deposited to outside counties and received at the Imperial County Registrar’s office no later than Wednesday, June 13, 2018, at 5 p.m. are still unprocessed. After Monday, the Registrar’s office will not post the next unofficial results update until all of the provisional ballots are tallied. This is expected to occur in about a week.

Provisional ballots are counted after all voter rosters are reviewed and the voter’s history is applied to the voter’s record. The procedure for tallying provisional ballots is just as lengthy as processing voteby-mail ballots, but require some additional steps to take.

This process includes:

— Staff members work one precinct at a time and one provisional envelope at a time;

— Each voter of a provisional ballot must be located on the Election Management System (EMS) identified by name, address and/or birthdate. Updates to changed addresses are made at this time;

— Signatures are validated through the EMS; and

— Provisional ballots are cross referenced to precinct voter rosters to ensure multiple ballots were not cast.

With a larger than normal two-page ballot, the process to count each ballot has taken an unexpected longer amount of time compared to recent past elections. The next update is expected by Friday, June 15th at 5 p.m. The Registrar’s staff will continue to work diligently to complete the election canvassing process and update the public of results in a timely manner. The Registrar’s office wishes to thank the public for their patience as they continue to conduct canvassing for this election. For further information, contact the Registrar of Voters’ office at (442) 265-1060.