Not Quite Final Afterall

How awkward it is for the Registrar of Voters in Riverside County, who, after posting the results of the primary election Tuesday, then discovered somewhere between 100 and 105 thousand uncounted ballots! The number of uncounted ballots exceeds the total number of counted ballots, which means the final outcomes of the election have not been determined in spite of the published and celebrated results.

Oops doesn't seem quite strong enough to cover the mistake. What makes this mistake even worse is that no one caught it until a news reporter for a local station did some quick math and thought wow, this is the lowest voter turn-out ever. He called the Registrar's Office for comment the morning after the election. Personnel at that office did the math and agreed that the totals were less than half of the lowest voter turn-out on record, and sounded the alert.

What has not been counted is all of the ballots submitted by the voters who mailed their ballots directly, as well as those ballots hand-delivered on or before election day. These "absentee" ballots were found stored in boxes, ready to be counted, but simply over-looked in the pressure to get the totals published as soon as possible. It seems that no one said, hm, these totals are really low; or wow, we finished counting really early; or hey, are we sure we counted all the ballots? No red flags, no warning bells, no gut instinct activated anyone to make sure all the ballots were counted and the job was done.

So, all of the election results hang in the balance as the total number of ballots not counted exceeds the number of ballots used to determine the published results of Tuesday's election. The incumbent DA, for example, was ousted -- or was he? Several local tax measures hang in the balance, funding sources that can make -- or break -- local communities.

This is a huge mistake, one that should not have been made. Blaming the media pressure to publish the winners/losers on the 11 o'clock network news is not a strong rebuttal argument for the failure to get the job done right the first time.

UPDATING: The Registrar explained that her office received approximately 130,000 absentee ballots from the US Postal Service between Monday and Tuesday (election day). Although the staff began counting the absentee ballots, they stopped Tuesday evening to prepare for the influx of ballots from the polling places. The reported election results were based on "100% of precincts" reporting, which gave the false impression to the media/public that those election results were final, when, in fact, they are not. As a matter of fact, it is now estimated that counting the 100,000+ remaining ballots will not be finished until sometime tomorrow (Friday). Therefore, the preliminary election results are subject to change based on the sheer volume of uncounted ballots that may affect the reported election results.