Canvass activities – Vote Certified - December 6, 2016

November 6, 2016 Presidential General Election Results Certified

Santa Cruz County Clerk Gail L. Pellerin certified results of the November 8, 2016 Presidential General Election on Tuesday, December 6, 2016

The Elections Code requires the County Clerk to certify results by the 28th day after the election, which is December 6, 2016. A summary of the results as well as a precinct-by-precinct report are posted on the website at www.votescount.com and available at the Santa Cruz County Clerk/Elections Department.

November 8, 2016 Election Statistics

Voter Registration
(Record registration was in November 2012 with 158,641 voters)

157,204

Total Votes Cast:

132,165 – record number

Turnout Percentage:

84.07%

Total Precinct  Votes:

49,144

Total Vote-by-Mail Votes:

83,021 – record number

Total Vote-by-Mail Requests:

103,245

Total Provisional Ballots Counted:

6,309

Total Provisional Ballots Cast

7,867

Record turnout in a Presidential General –November 2008

86.70%%

     

For this election we mailed or emailed a Sample Ballot and Voter Information Guide to each of  our county’s 157,204 registered voters, offered voting in Santa Cruz and Watsonville for the 29 days before the election, opened for weekend voting before the election, managed voter registration for the county, conducted voter outreach, mailed a ballot to our 88,884 permanent vote-by-mail voters along with 14,361 other voters who requested a mail ballot, coordinated staffing of our 145 voting precincts, trained more than 1,000 poll workers, tested and secured voting equipment at each polling place, and audited and secured the votes after the election. It is a monumental task, and it could not be done without the Elections Department’s full-time, part-time, and Election Day poll workers, the assistance and support from other county departments, our City Clerks in Santa Cruz, Capitola, and Scotts Valley, and our Watsonville City Clerk and her staff who provided early voting during the 29 days before the election. Each of these individuals is passionate about our democratic process and committed to providing accessible, accurate, and transparent elections. Together they are an amazing Elections Team, and I am extremely grateful for their service.

I want to take this opportunity to also THANK YOU – the reporters, photographers, camera operators, editors, radio commentators – our local media experts, for the outstanding coverage you gave the November 2016 Election.

I also want to thank the candidates and campaigns for running professional campaigns and patiently waiting for these final results.

Pursuant to California Elections Code, within five (5) days after the completion of the official canvass, any voter may request a recount by filing a written request with the elections official and specifying which candidates and/or measures are to be recounted. "Completion of the canvass" is the day the elections official signs the certified Statement of Vote. Five days from today is Sunday, December 11, 2016.

The request for a recount may specify the order of the precincts for the recount, and the petitioning voter shall, before the start of each day's recount, deposit funds with the county elections official to cover costs.

December 2, 2016

We updated the vote totals today with an additionial 6,560 ballots. We had 5,158 full count provisionals. 1,115 partial counts, and 1,497 were not counted because voter eligiblity could not be verified. We also counted some remaining vote-by-mail ballots. 

Vote totals are NOT final.

We are still researching some outstanding ballots. We plan to audit/manually recount the close contests and including the Capitola Write-In candidate. 

We will certify by 5pm on Tuesday, December 6. 

Week of November 28, 2016

We are continuing our audits, manual recounts, and research of our provisional ballots. We have completed research on 5,192 provisional ballots. We estimate that we have another 2,408 ballots to research. Provisional ballots cast on paper that are partial counts because the voter did not vote in his/her home precinct need to be remade onto the correct ballot type. 

Our plan is to do another vote count update on Friday, December 2. 

The law gives us until December 6 to finalize the vote count and certify the election. 

Observers are always welcome. 

November 23, 2016

Today we added 195 vote-by-mail ballots to the vote count. Click here for a list of precincts that were counted 11/23.

We have completed the research on 3,045 provisonal ballots. We estimated that we have about 7,500 provisionals. We will continue to research provisionals this weekend and into next week. When we have completed all of the research on the provisonals, we will need to remake the partial counts and prepare the others for counting. 

The law gives us until December 6 to finalize the vote count and certify the election. 

Observers are always welcome. 

We will be closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving Day, and we will be closed on Friday.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

November 22, 2016

Today we added 3,508 vote-by-mail balltos to the vote count. Click here for a list of precincts that were counted 11/22.

We still have a few hundred vote-by-mail ballots to remake and add to the count. We will count these remaining vote-by-mail ballots tomorrow. 

We have started our research on the provisional ballots. We have completed the research on 1,878 provisonal ballots. We estimated that we have about 7,500 provisionals. We will continue to research provisionals tomorrow and into next week. When we have completed all of the research on the provisonals, we will need to remake the partial counts and prepare the others for counting. 

The law gives us until December 6 to finalize the vote count and certify the election. 

Observers are always welcome. 

November 21, 2016

Today we addedanother 4,065 vote-by-mail ballots to the vote count. Click here for a list of precincts that were counted 11/21.

We are NOT done with the vote-by-mail ballots. We still have approximately 3,800 vote-by-mail ballots to add to the count. Our plan is to count all outstanding vote-by-mail ballots tomorrow. 

We have started to research the approimately 7,500 provisional ballots cast in the November 8 election. I am not sure when those ballots will be ready to be added to the count. Some provisonal ballots are partial counts and need to be remade by the canvass boards. 

The law gives us until December 6 to finalize the vote count and certify the election. 

Observers are always welcome. 

November 18, 2016

Today we added another 7,209 vote-by-mail ballots to the vote count. Click here for a list of precicnts that were counted 11/18.

We are NOT done with the vote-by-mail ballots. We will do another upate of the vote totals on Monday, November 21, by 5pm. 

We are continuing with our 1% manual tally of the precincts and doing our manual recount of the touchscreen votes. We also have canvass boards who are duplicating ballots that were damaged or need to be remade to reflect voter intent. 

We plan to work this weekend, and we will hopefully begin researching and processing provisionals this weekend. 

Observers are always welcome.

November 17, 2016

Today we added another 10,551 vote-by-mail ballots to the vote count. Click here for a list of precincts that were counted 11/17.

We are NOT done with the vote-by-mail ballots. We will do another upate of the vote totals tomorrow, November 18, by 5pm. 

We are continuing with our 1% manual tally of the precincts. We also have canvass boards who are duplicating ballots that were damaged or need to be remade to reflect voter intent. 

We plan to work this weekend, and we will hopefully begin researching and processing provisionals this weekend or by Monday. 

Observers are always welcome.

November 16, 2016

Today we added another 9,541 vote-by-mail ballots to the vote count. Click here for the list of precincts counted 11/16.  

We are still processing outstanding vote-by-mail ballots. We also started the 1% manual tally of the precincts today. Click here for the list. 

November 15, 2016

We counted 7,167 of the outstanding 40,000+ vote-by-mail ballots yesterday. We attempted to include precincts from throughout the county. 

The precincts we counted and the total number of ballots from each are posted below. Note that precincts with small numbers of ballots are from the outstacks of vote-by-mail ballots counted election night. Outstacked ballots typically are ballots that have overvotes or other issues that need to be examined by the canvass board.

Precincts counted 11/15 

Additional Precincts counted 11/15

We are continuing to count outstanding vote-by-mail ballots today and will post updated totals by 5pm today. 

We have not started researching the 7500+ provisional ballots. We will begin those after we count all of the outstanding vote-by-mail ballots. 

Today is the last day a voter can file a signature if they failed to sign their vote-by-mail ballot. 

November 14, 2016

After working over the weekend, we are starting to process the outstanding vote-by-mail ballots. We will begin to update vote totals tomorrow, Tuesday, and will continue daily until the verified and qualified outstanding vote-by-mail ballots are processed. 

We are still working on resolving 4 trays of challenged ballots - ballots where signatures are missing or the signature does not compare. The law gives voters until November 16 to provide a signature to an unsigned ballot envelope. 

Today is the last day we can accept as good ballots that were postmarked on or before November 8.

The outstanding number of vote-by-mail ballots has been updated for today. These are NOT FINAL NUMBERS. Click here for the numbers of outstanding vote-by-mail ballots by district. 

We have completed tagging voter records of those who voted at the polls. 

We are continuing our audit of each polling place and resolving any discrepancy. 

Our Operations Center is sorting through all materials returned from the polls, and auditing the seals on the voting equipment. 

We still have 7500+ provisional ballots to research and determine qualifcation. 

The law gives us until December 6 to certify the election and provide a final vote count. 

November 10, 2016

We picked picked the precincts to be included in the 1% manual tally. Click here for the list. 

We are running vote-by-mail ballots through our ballot sorter and checking signatures with a human eye. We still need to run the ballots from the polls through the sorter along with the ballots from the drop boxes. We counted 39,691 vote-by-mail ballots Election Night, and I suspect we will add another 40,000+ to that total next week. 

We are auditing the polls and sorting through all boxes and materials that came back from the polls to make sure there are no live ballots left in containers. 

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the building is locked, but we will be here working. Signs will be posted at the front steps with a phone number to call to get entry into the building. 

November, 9 2016

On Election Night we counted 39,691 vote-by-mail ballots, and 43,239 ballots from the polls.

We have 10s of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots left to be counted. In addition, we have about 7,500 provisional ballots to be processed. We also have a 100s of ballots from the polls that need to be added to the count, plus 100s of ballot that need to be remade. 

We will post revised numbers of what is left to count by Friday.

​We plan to do an update to the vote count totals the week of November 14. There will not be another update this week.

Results are not final. There are thousands of ballots left to process and add to the count.

We have until December 6 to certify the election results. 

Observers are always welcome. We are open 8am to 5pm, Monday-Friday. Canvass activities are occurring at the Elections Office, 701 Ocean Street, 2nd Floor and the Operations Center, 2809 Mission St. Extension, Santa Cruz. We plan to work this Saturday and Sunday. If you want to observe activities, please call Tricia at 831-345-3688 or Gail at 408-316-9745.