County Clerk Joe Paul Gonzalez updated supervisors Tuesday and told them his elections office would count an additional 3,000 ballots later Tuesday and another 1,400 by Friday.
As of Tuesday morning, the elections office still had 5,385 ballots to count, while the current results reflected 7,357 votes so far.
Gonzalez told board members there are another 633 “challenge” ballots that take more time than others.
“We have to verify, for example, why a signature has changed,” he said. “Why is there a different address on the envelope?”
Then there is a mandatory 1 percent manual recount to accomplish, he said.
Gonzalez expects the counting and canvass to be done and ready for the board’s June 26 meeting. The elections office gets 30 days by law to finish that process.
Gonzalez also commented on new counting equipment the elections office used this year. He said the bottleneck wasn’t the system, but that the county lacks an automated system to check signatures. He hopes to purchase such equipment before the November election.
-Kollin Kosmicki
