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SLO County election’s office one of the slowest in the state

November 25, 2024

SLO County Clerk Recorder Elaina Cano

By KAREN VELIE

The San Luis Obispo County election’s office led the state Friday in uncounted ballots with 24,846 still to count. After working on Saturday, SLO County is now ranked twelfth with 6,274 left to count.

At the end of the 2022 ballot count, SLO County was the second slowest in the state.

In an opinion piece in the Tribune, SLO County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano says the lengthy canvas is “a testament to the meticulous and essential work happening behind the scenes.” Cano also notes that “the volume of mail-in and provisional ballots is higher than ever before.”

Some SLO County residents are pushing for people to vote at the polls, with ballots tabulated on election night as time consuming signature matches are not required.

However, with a reconfiguration of polling locations, many rural voters found it difficult to vote at the polls.

For example, for some Creston residents who had voted for decades at the polling site in Creston, they arrived to learn their polling place had been changed and was about a 30-minute drive away, taking them past two other polling places. In Templeton, some residents were directed to a polling place in San Miguel.

As a result, a larger than normal amount of residents decided to vote provisionally at polling places other than their own or to drop off their ballots, which would then require a signature match.

California county elections officials have 30 days to count every valid ballot and conduct a required post-election audit. State law requires elections officials to report final official results for presidential electors to the Secretary of State by Dec. 3, 2024, and all other contests by Dec. 6, 2024.

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I figured that the expensive deployment of election and counting machines would have some value, like faster results and/or more accurate results. Could someone remind me again why we use voting machines insread if just counting simple paper ballots?? It sounds like most of the ballots are paper these days, according to the elections office. Why use both papr and machines?


Dirk


1

So how much additional money is spent on this process that seems to catch the clerks office by surprise every election?


19

In today’s world, it must be feasible (possibly even easy) to have a computer verify signatures and kick out any it finds suspicious for human review. I would expect this to substantially reduce the time for signature verification which seems to be the time consuming part of counting ballots. After all, facial recognition software is amazingly reliable. How hard can it be to recognize a simple signature?


22

Youtube : “The Smart People”, Dean Martin and Goldie Hawn. You will get the best skit on the issue we have.


-6

One of my late father’s favorite sayings was “Slow and steady wins the race.” He built a multi-million dollar ag business adhering to that philosophy. Too bad we all have ADD now and want everything yesterday.


-35

Adam:


“Slow and steady wins the race.” may apply to some things in life – its not applicable here. Giving the election office this much time invites the potential for election fraud. Once they have most of the final numbers on election night, they could then potentially know how much they need to add, delete or switch to affect someone’s desired change. All of this should be completed within a day to reduce the chances fir game playing.


4

I agree, but unfortunately in the last few cycles, talk like that can sometimes get one labeled as an “election denier.”


1

This is true. They prefer that we self-censor. But its the price we pay for trying to fight fraud.


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