Take A Look Behind The Scenes At The ROV’s Office Ahead Of The Election

Election Day is eight days away, but the Riverside County Registrar of Voters (ROV) has been accepting ballots since Oct. 7.

“We’re still waiting for the big push,” Elizabeth Florer, public information officer, said. “We still have only gotten small, small, small, so we know the big push is coming.”

But what actually happens after a vote-by-mail ballot is returned to the ROV, either through the United States Postal Service or a ballot drop box? That’s the question the department is hoping to answer this election cycle with public tours of the facility every Tuesday and Thursday at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. through Nov. 5 and a livestream on the department’s website. 

The office will also be posting daily update videos on its Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram platforms.

“And why did I create this? To allow the community to be able to witness first hand what it is this office does [and to] take out the mystery from the wonderful work we do,” Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco said. “But, also, it provides an opportunity for the public to submit any comments and or questions to us directly so that we can address those for them, again, making sure that everything is transparent.”

And, last week, members of the media got a chance to take the tour to see firsthand what happens to vote-by-mail ballots once they’re received by the ROV, a process that, after the ballots are taken from a secured storage room, starts with the hand sorting to ensure the envelopes can be read by a sorting machine.

“Everything has to be sorted out so that we can see, are there any that were undeliverable, are there any that are spoiled, are there any that don’t have a signature at all,” Florer said. “So all of those get put in their own separate categories so that we can deal with them accordingly.”

Once the envelopes have been checked, they’re loaded into a sorting machine that takes a photo of the envelope for ROV staff to verify the signature. Once the signature is verified, the machine then sorts the envelopes by precinct. If a signature is challenged during the initial scan, a reviewer will then get the physical envelope to take a second look.

“There is [a Secretary of State] training that’s mandated for each and every single person that does signature verification, and so they do have to process through all of that training,” Florer said. “There’s about 52 of us that also went through forensic training so that we could be an additional review on top.”

If the signature cannot be verified after a third review, or if a person failed to sign the outer envelope at all, a cure letter is sent to the voter to ensure the veracity of the ballot. Voters who receive cure letters will have until Dec. 1 to respond in order for their vote to count.

“After [an envelope has] been signature verified and it’s been marked as good, you voted,” Florer said. “So you can’t get another ballot, and any other ballot that may have subsequently been mailed to you because you requested it will be voided.”

Once the signature has been verified, either through the initial sorting process or through the review process, the ballots are then separated from the envelope, flattened and prepared for scanning.

“Scanning just takes an image of the ballot, so you’re taking an image of the ballot to be sent to the tabulating server and the machine for them to be able to extract all of those votes and tabulate,” Florer said. “No counting will be done until Election Day.”

If there is something wrong with the ballot that would prevent it from being scanned, the ballot is then sent for duplication where a team of ROV employees will copy over the ballot onto a new ballot that can then be scanned and ultimately counted.

Issues that would prevent the ballot from being counted include things like rips, tears, stains, water damage, filling out the ballot with red ink and marking a vote with a check or a circle instead of filling in the bubble.

The goal, Florer said, is for ROV workers to fill out the duplicate ballot as the voter intended. 

“What will happen is one person will have the actual ballot and this person over here is going to mark the intent of the voter,” she said. “Then they will switch with their partner, and their partner will again confirm that we have marked only the intent of the voter.”

But, in some cases, that’s just not possible, and there’s no way to go back to the voter at this stage and ask since the voter’s identity has been completely separated from the individual ballot. In those cases, Florer said the ballot will still be filled out, but the races in which the voter’s intent was not clear will just be left blank.

Once the ballots are ready, they will be scanned and saved on a local network server, which is not connected to the internet, until Election Day when they will be counted.

“The only internet connection in any of our voting processes is at the registration table at a vote center,” Florer said. “And that’s because we must look up your voter registration and make sure that you’re able to vote and you get the proper ballot. Anything else is absolutely not connected to the internet.”

Voters have until Nov. 5 to return their vote-by-mail ballots. Ballots can be dropped off at more than 100 locations throughout the county. They can also be sent to the ROV’s office through the United States Postal Service, but must be postmarked no later than Nov. 5 and must make it to the ROV’s office within seven days of Election Day.

For those who prefer to vote in person, 20 vote centers opened this past weekend with 120 more set to open this coming Saturday. Those vote centers will remain open through Election Day. Hours and locations can be found here on the ROV’s website.

“We are encouraging the community to vote early, so that, again, it prevents them from showing up during the busy period on Election Day where we may anticipate lines may start forming,” said Tinoco, who noted that the department expects to certify the election Dec. 3.