In Riverside County, 31 percent of ballots remain uncounted

By: CHRIS BAGLEY - Staff Writer | Wednesday, November 15, 2006 12:57 AM PST ∞

RIVERSIDE -- Riverside County elections officials said Tuesday they have yet to count an estimated 120,000 ballots, nearly double an earlier estimate and about one-third of the total votes cast in the Nov. 7 election.

The new estimate includes about 100,000 absentee ballots, about 15,000 provisional ballots and about 6,000 paper ballots that were cast at polling places by voters who were uncomfortable with electronic voting machines or who preferred not to deal with the long waits that built up as large numbers of commuters returned home to vote.

Most of those 100,000 ballots arrived by mail Nov. 6 and 7 or were dropped off at polling places on Election Day, Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore said Tuesday. About 61,000 absentee ballots had been counted before or on Election Day and were included in the tally posted after the polls closed, according to a report she filed with the California secretary of state's office.

Dunmore said she and her staff revised the initial estimate of uncounted absentee ballot after checking signatures on about half of the remaining absentee ballots. That process involves counting individual ballots, in contrast to the initial, eyeballed estimate.

Even before Tuesday, a half-dozen races around the county were considered too close to call, including a contested seat on the Menifee Union School District's board. The new estimate enlarged the question marks looming over those races, and some races that were considered decided could now conceivably tip into the hands of candidates who trail by hundreds of votes.

On Nov. 8, Dunmore said that only about 60,000 absentee ballots remained to be counted, an estimate based on a count of the bins that contained the mailed-in ballots. Her staff will begin counting the remaining votes Thursday; they expect to finish by Nov. 22, she said.

"Unconscionable," said Kim Joseph Cousins, candidate for the Lake Elsinore Unified School District and chief executive of the Lake Elsinore Valley Chamber of Commerce. "How could you possibly be a week out from the election and not even bother to count those absentee ballots? Did we schedule a Hawaiian vacation in here?"

The state's election code allows 28 days -- until Dec. 5 -- for a final count of all votes, Dunmore and county supervisors noted Tuesday. In the week since the election, Dunmore has said several times that a full and final count could take up the entire four weeks.

"All elections officials in California are caught in a dilemma that is speed versus accuracy," Dunmore said Tuesday.

Dunmore said she expects to know the number of uncounted ballots remaining in other precincts today or Thursday.

On Tuesday, county supervisors used phrases like "no excuse" and "frustration" and "concerned" to describe the delays.

"I'm very concerned," Fifth District Supervisor Marion Ashley said. "The registrar of voters prepared for it, but didn't prepare enough."

Delaying (the) result leads to cynicism by voters," Third District Supervisor Jeff Stone wrote in an e-mail message. "We obviously have more (tweaking) and oversight of the electronic voting processes."

Dunmore gave several compounding reasons for the delay in counting the remaining 31 percent of them. One was a large number of absentee ballots arriving on the day of the election. Cousins said he and his family members did not receive the absentee ballots mailed to them until one and two days before the election. To ensure that their votes be counted, they had to hand-deliver the ballots to the polling place, he said.

Also at fault were an unusually long ballot and printers that rendered electronic voting machines inoperable when they ran out of paper, Dunmore said. Voters backed up in lines of up to an hour. At some polling places, poll workers offered them paper ballots, resulting in an unusually large number of paper ballots that remained to be counted after Election Day, she said.

The process of sorting the uncounted absentee ballots into 600 different precincts has taken longer than expected, Dunmore said. The remaining ballots will be counted one precinct at a time, she said. She'll release final results Nov. 20, 21 or 22, instead of giving incremental updates, she said.

"It could give a false idea of how the votes are progressing," she said.

Delays in counting absentee ballots were a common problem this year, said Stephen Weir, president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials, which includes the registrar of voters or other chief elections official in each of California's 58 counties. In Contra Costa County, where Weir is clerk, 50,900 ballots remained to be counted as of Tuesday morning, according to a tally posted online by the California secretary of state.

Weir pointed to the statewide trend toward absentee voting in the last six years, when changes in California's election law have let any voter register as a permanent absentee, and thus automatically receive an absentee ballot in every election.

"The more that that happens, the more we're going to be unable to get final results on election night," he said.

Still, Riverside County's new estimate of 121,000 leaves it with more uncounted ballots than any other county in the state, according to a daily survey by the secretary of state's office.

The new estimate also leaves several races in Lake Elsinore and Murrieta looking close enough to change with the pending results.

And in Menifee Union School District, a race for two governing-board seats was already guaranteed to come down to the uncounted absentee ballots. Incumbent Robert O'Donnell won easily, but just four votes separate challenger John Denver from incumbent board president Rita Peters. Exactly 4,121 ballots -- with as many as 8,242 votes -- remain to be counted in that race, Dunmore said in response to an inquiry from The Californian.

"It's unsettling," Denver said Tuesday. "It seems like there's no certainty in this at all."

Other close races include:

With 6,857 votes already counted in the race for Lake Elsinore City Council, incumbents Daryl Hickman and Thomas Buckley lead third-place finisher Connie Soto by 313 votes and 227 votes, respectively.

Judy Guglielmana appears to have edged out incumbent Chris Hyland for the Division 3 seat on the board of Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District, by a margin of 1,191 votes to 993.

John Lloyd leads incumbent Kristine Anderson -- with 2,343 votes to Anderson's 2,098 -- for the Division 5 seat in that water district.

In the nine-way race for three seats on the Murrieta City Council, fourth-place finisher Dan Branstine and fifth-place finisher Randon Lane trail third-place finisher Kelly Bennett by 801 votes and 922 votes, respectively. A total of 33,862 votes have been counted.

-- Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2615, or cbagley@californian.com.

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