Striving to make S.J.’s March primary smooth
LODI — The San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters Office has been spending the last week preparing for the March 3 primary by putting new technologies, methods and systems in place at various voting locations to ensure a fiasco similar to the Iowa caucus is avoided next Tuesday.
On Feb. 3, the Iowa caucus, an electoral event for members of the Democrat and Republic parties in that state, experienced delays in reporting official results, due to inconsistencies in three sets of results.
Election officials in Iowa attributed the inconsistencies to the failure of a new results reporting app used by the Democratic Party, the inability to load or download the app, or the app’s inability to function once downloaded.
The failure of the app to correctly count and calculate results was also blamed.
But Registrar of Voters Melinda Dubroff said San Joaquin County will not be experiencing anything close to what happened in Iowa. She’s also hoping no glitches or hang-ups occur between now and 8 p.m. Tuesday, when polls close.
“Iowa wasn’t conducting an election, and it wasn’t being conducted by an election administrator,” Dubroff said Wednesday. “Every situation like that is an opportunity for a lesson learned. In some cases, (Iowa) was about training, and launching a new technology without any training. It’s a lesson for us all to take stock and focus on training.”
Last year, Dubroff’s office purchased the Verity voting system, which is programmed with a much higher level of encrypted data to ensure voter privacy. Tuesday night will be the first time the system is used in the county for an election.
Dubroff and her staff conducted mock elections on the new system in December, learning what kinds of inappropriate markings or abnormalities on ballots might disrupt the counting progress.
She and her staff believe they have worked out all the kinks, but just to ensure there are no glitches Tuesday, her office has set up voting service centers at four locations across the county to act as one-stop shopping sites that allow residents to register to vote, as well as cast their provisional and mail-in ballots before March 3.
Lodi’s voter service center is located in Holz Hall at Hutchins Street Square, 125 S. Hutchins St. It opened on Monday, Dubroff said.
The voter service center is modeled after similar centers created by the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters during the last election, Dubroff said.
In that county, Dubroff said every resident receives a mail-in ballot, whether they requested one or not. They can then turn their ballot in at a polling place or a voter service center, of which Dubroff said there are “scores.”
“One of the things that other counties experienced in 2018 was the impact that voter service centers has on people who missed the registration deadline,” she said. “If you miss the deadline, you have to do it in person. That’s why we’re doing this sort of hybrid model. With one downtown office, who’s going to drive that far and find parking, go through the metal detector, to register to vote?”
The new Verity voting system is connected to the ROV’s voter registration database, so poll workers and those at the voting service center can check a resident’s eligibility in an instant, Dubroff said.
In preparation for the hordes of voters her office hopes to see on Tuesday, employees at the service center will have “poll pads” on hand. The poll pad is an electronic book that employees can use if there are long lines at the polls. Employees will be able to speak with those waiting in line to vote and check their eligibility, rather than have them wait to sign a book at a table like has been done in previous elections, she said.
If someone isn’t registered, they can step out of line and be served by another employee at the registration table.
“The more we can lighten the load at the polling places, the better,” Dubroff said. “Especially if someone has to register. That takes time, and if they can do it here, we can serve them more quickly.”
If a resident is not sure where they are supposed to go to cast a ballot, Dubroff said they can visit the voter service center and receive the proper ballot, as well as directions to their polling place.
She said the message her office wants residents to know, is that they can still register to vote, even on the day of the election.
“And they can do it in person at our office, or at a voter service center, or at a polling place,” she said. “The problem with going to a polling place is they only have the ballot specific to that precinct. If they come here, we can make sure that they’re enfranchised appropriately. So they get exactly what they’re eligible to vote on.”
There are 326,458 registered voters in San Joaquin County, according to the ROV’s website, and polls will close at 8 p.m. Tuesday night.
Dubroff said each polling place will have the right amount of paper ballots for that particular area, with an elections officer assigned to manage the goings-on.
Reserve ballots in case of emergencies or unforeseen circumstances will be stored at the voter service center, rather than the ballot warehouse at the Robert J. Cabral Agricultural Center in Stockton, she said.
If there’s any issue, like a polling place running out of ballots, we’ve got plenty of them here,” she said. “So an election officer doesn’t have to drive to the Stockton warehouse to get ballots. They’ll be right here. It’s really going to help us react quickly.”
Once the polls close, ballots at each polling place in Lodi, as well as the visitor service center, will be boxed up and taken to a receiving center, located at the Grape Festival Grounds. From there, the ballots will be loaded onto trucks and escorted to the Cabral Center in Stockton by a deputy from the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office.
As soon as ballots arrive at the warehouse, Dubroff’s staff will begin inspecting each one, scanning them and making sure they are eligible for counting.
Early election results from the provisional and mail-in ballots should be posted on the ROV’s website by 8:30 p.m. Dubroff said. The second round of results should be posted by 10 p.m.
After that, results will be updated every Tuesday and Thursday for the next month, she said. The entire certification process should take the 30 days given to registrars to count ballots, she said.
During the 2018 election, Dubroff said she wanted to get results out every hour, which was difficult with the technology she and her staff had been using for years. Because the Verity system is new, she said she doesn’t want to “overpromise” anything.
“I’m confident, but I’m not naive,” she said. “We have a lot of moving parts. I hope the public is patient when it comes to election results. We want to count every eligible ballot and not stop at a certain time.”