Canvass Activities - Monday, March 30, 4pm

We added an additional 86 ballots to the vote count today. 

We are doing our final audits and verification of the vote totals. I will certify the votes by 5pm, Wednesday, April 1. 

Thank you all for your patience as we work through the final hours of this canvass. If you have any questions, please contact Gail Pellerin at 831-454-2419 or gail.pellerin@santacruzcounty.us. 

As always, all of our processes are open to the public for observation. If you'd like to observe our work, please call me to set up a time, or just come to our office at 701 Ocean Street., Room 310. We will be closed Tuesday for the Ceasar Chavez holiday and will be open on Wednesday, April 1 from 8am to 5pm. Please be advised that we are adhering to the 6-foot space requirement between people during our canvass. 

March 27, 4:30pm

Today we added an additional 3,476 ballots to the vote count. 

We are still adjucating less than 50 ballots. We will certify the vote and make it final on Monday, March 30. 

There is one close contest, Measure S - San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District bond. It requires 55% to pass. We have elevated the audit of that contest, and did a manual recount of the entire contest.  

If you have any questions, please contact Gail Pellerin at 831-454-2419 or 408-316-9745. Thank you. 

March 20, 4pm

Today we added 4,118 ballots to the vote count. 

We are still adjuicating the same day voter registration ballots, and we have some outstanding provisional ballots to reconcile. The deadline for voters to cure a signature is Friday,March 27.

We will be here next week to continue our ballot processing and audits. 

Checks to poll workers and facilities will be mailed next week. 

Our plan is to have a final vote count by Friday, March 27. 

Thank you for your patience. Stay healthy!

Tuesday, March 17, 5pm

We are continuing to audit our results and process ballots in this new environment. We estimate that there are approximately 7,200 ballots that remain uncounted. Most of those will be added to the count. Some will be challenged for a variety of reasons: signatures, registration issues, etc. 

We plan to do an update to our vote count on Friday, March 20.

In the meantime, we have begun the manual recount of the contests to verify the results. We have submitted our payroll for the polls, and checks will be mailed later this week.  

Thursday, March 12, 5pm

Today we added an additional 895 ballots. We are continuing to process and research the same day and provisonal ballots. We are also tagging voter records if they voted in this election and auditing each polling place. We will NOT do another update until next week - most likely Friday, March 20. 

If you want to observe activities, please come to our office during regular business hours or for after hours call Tricia at 831-345-3688 or Gail at 408-316-9745. 

Wednesday, March 11, 4:45pm

Today we added an additional 1708 ballots to the total. 1679 were vote-by-mail and 29 were from the polls, precinct 20320. The ballots were cast on the ICX tablet and the poll workers put them in an envelope instead of the ballot transportation box as instructed. 

We are doing our audit of the precincts this week and adding in the new registrations for our Same Day voters. We will begin our processing of the Same Day ballots next week, along with our Provisional ballots.

We will add an additional 500 or so Vote-by-Mail ballots to our count tomorrow. We anticipate adding in some of the Same Day and Provisionals on Friday, March 20. 

Here are our estimated numbers: 

• 750 Vote-by-Mail ballots (includes ballots that have been challenged for signature issues)
• 2,870 Provisional ballots
• 2,840 Same Day Voter Registration ballots

5,960 = Total 

Tuesday, March 10, 5pm

The estimated number of unprocessed Vote-by-Mail (VBM) ballots posted yesterday did NOT include the thousands of VBM ballots that were challenged due to signature comparison on the first round. All of these ballots get at least three checks from staff. Today we cleared about 1500 of the challenged VBM ballots. We have an additional 525 challenges to review. We have sent letters to 93 voters for signatures that do not compare and we have sent letters to 157 voters for no signature. 

We added 7,150 VBM ballots to the count today.

We will continue to process VBM ballots tomorrow. Right now we estimate that there are an additional 4,100 VBM ballots to review. Many voters were sent a letter if they failed to sign their VBM ballot envelope or if their signature on their VBM ballot does not compare to the signature we have on file for them. Voters have until March 27 to cure their signatures. 

We will do another update to the vote count tomorrow before 5pm. 

If you want to observe activities, please come to our office during regular business hours or for after hours call Tricia at 831-345-3688 or Gail at 408-316-9745. 

Monday, March 9, 4:45pm

We posted an update to the vote results on Monday, March 9. We added an additional 18,535 vote-by-mail ballots to the count. 

We submitted our unprocessed ballort report to the Secretary of State as follows:

• 5,630 Vote-by-Mail ballots
• 2,870 Provisional ballots
• 2,840 Same Day Voter Registration ballots
• 250 Other ballots

11,590 Total number of unprocessed ballots.

Our plan is to do another vote count update tomorrow, Tuesday, March 10 before 5pm.

If you want to observe activities, please come to our office during regular business hours or for after hours call Tricia at 831-345-3688 or Gail at 408-316-9745. 

Friday, March 6, 5pm

Today we added 11,844 vote-by-mail ballots to the vote count.  

We will continue to process vote-by-mail ballots this weekend, with plans to do another vote count update on Monday, March 9, by 5pm. 

If you want to observe activities, please come to our office during regular business hours or for after hours call Tricia at 831-345-3688 or Gail at 408-316-9745.

Thursday, March 5, 2020 1:45pm

We submitted our unprocessed ballot report to the Secretary of State with our estimates of outstanding ballots: 

38,000: Vote-by-Mail
2,870: Provisionals
2,840: Same Day VR
250: Other

43,960: Total ESTIMATED number of outstanding ballots

We also did our random draw of the precincts for our 1% manual hand count to verify the results from the ballot scanners. See table below.

We are continuing to prepare the vote-by-mail ballots to be counted. We will do an update to the vote count totals tomorrow, Friday, March 6 in the afternoon. 

If you want to observe activities, please come to our office during regular business hours or for after hours call Tricia at 831-345-3688 or Gail at 408-316-9745.

Precincts selected in the random draw:

Wednesday, March 4, 2020, 2am

On Election Night we counted 28,093 ballots from the polls and 27,401 vote-by-mail ballots: total of 55,494 ballots. 

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

We have 10s of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots left to be counted. In addition, we have thousands of same day voter registration and provisional ballots to be processed.

We hope to post a better estimate of how many ballots are left to be counted by Friday.

​We plan to do an update to the vote count totals by Friday.

We have until March 31 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, Room 310 and the Operations Center, 2809 Mission St. Extension, Santa Cruz. We may work on the weekends as well.

Our canvass schedule will be posted on this website. If you want to observe activities, please call Tricia at 831-345-3688 or Gail at 408-316-9745.