LAKEPORT, Calif. – While the primary election is over, the Lake County Registrar of Voters Office is continuing the necessary work to finalize and certify the June 5 election results.
Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley said she has until July 3 to certify the election, but hopes to be finished by the end of this month.
She said Thursday that her office has a lot of vote by mail ballots turned in at precincts as well as provisional ballots still to process. Fridley expected to have tallies on those votes by Friday.
Among the issues that arose during this year’s primary, Fridley said her office received some complaints from county residents who were unhappy about precinct adjustments that resulted from last year’s redistricting process.
She estimated that there are probably 1,000 voters now receiving their ballots by mail rather than having a precinct to vote at due to the changes.
Part of her job during certification is to check the write-in candidates for president and U.S. senator. At this point, those are the only contests that have qualified write-in candidates, she said.
In local supervisorial races and the judicial race – in the latter there were 26 write-ins reported in the initial tally – there are no qualified write-in candidates, Fridley said.
Individuals who want to appear as a write-in candidate must follow a process, which Fridley said includes collecting signatures, filing a statement of write-in candidacy and being qualified to run for the office.
“They they could have their name written on the ballot,” she said. “We could count those.”
But her office doesn’t track unqualified write-ins, she said.
As part of the certification process, Fridley’s office will conduct a public manual tally of a minimum 1 percent of randomly selected precincts for the June 5 presidential primary.
That manual tally will take place beginning at 8 a.m. Thursday, June 14, at the Registrar of Voters Office, located in Room 209 on the second floor of the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport.
The selection of the precinct – or precincts – to be included in the manual tally will be randomly chosen on June 14 before the tally begins, Fridley reported.
Fridley said observers are invited to view the manual tally of the ballots, but shall not interfere with the election process.
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