Hundreds of thousands of ballots in Alameda Co. still uncounted; patience urged

Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis is asking for patience as the process to count hundreds of thousands of unprocessed ballots continues three days after the election.
As of Thursday evening, Dupuis’ office had counted 233,629 ballots, with an estimated 460,245 remaining, the largest percentage of outstanding ballots in the state.
On Friday, Dupuis said it will take a couple of weeks to work through those votes.
“It takes time to get the large number of Vote by Mail ballots staged for counting,” he said in an email.
“We understand the community’s interest in seeing the results as soon as possible,” Dupuis said. “We ask for their understanding as we process a very large number of Vote by Mail votes that were turned in on Election Day.”
This election cycle, 427,601 people in Alameda County cast vote-by-mail ballots on or before Tuesday, out of an estimated total of 693,874 ballots cast, according to a report posted on the California Secretary of State’s website.
It was the second-highest number of such ballots in the state, behind Los Angeles County, which had 790,000 out of an estimated 3.8 million total votes.
“We will be working through the weekend and on Veterans Day to continue to process as many votes as possible,” Dupuis said.
County elections officials have until Dec. 3 to report official results to the California Secretary of State.
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office said Friday they weren’t aware of any problems with Alameda County’s vote count and reminded people that the process takes time.
Still, criticism was mounting from people eager to learn the results of several high-profile elections, including efforts to recall Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, among other contests.
“I know everyone is anxious and frustrated by the vote count process for Tuesday’s election in Alameda County,” said county Supervisor Keith Carson. “I share your dismay.”
“Months ago, in public meetings, I asked the Registrar if he had a sufficient workforce and resources in order to carry out the November elections; his response was ‘yes.’ Unfortunately, that appears not to be the case,” Carson said in a news release Friday.
This isn’t the first time Carson has publicly taken Dupuis to task. In July, Dupuis drew a heated response from the District 5 supervisor when he told the board that it wasn’t “technically feasible to implement youth voting” in Oakland and Berkeley at that time, even after years of delays.
“We had eight years to prepare for this. I don’t accept the fact that we’re not ready to implement this,” Carson said. “I question whether or not, you know, a department head that knew it was coming, you know, adequately is addressing their job in a fundamental way.”
Whatever issues were standing in the way of the youth vote, whereby 16- and 17-year-olds can cast ballots in school board elections in those two cities, appear to have been solved as those ballots were included in the Nov. 5 election.
Carson is also pushing for Dupuis to release the “cast vote records” in an electronic format that allows for independent verification of the vote tallies, instead of the PDF format he uses now.
In a memo to the board, Carson said Dupuis’ current process “effectively counters the Board’s intended goal of facilitating accurate election oversight. Essential retallying and error-checking—like that which revealed errors in the 2022 Oakland school board election—would be hindered by a PDF format.”
In that school board race, Dupuis certified the election in favor of Nick Resnick but later said the voting machines were configured incorrectly and that Mike Hutchinson really won. Hutchinson finished third in the certified results.
As for Tuesday’s election, the Coalition of Bay Area Election Officials representing several county registrars sent out a news release Friday with the headline “Counting Votes Takes Time” that also urged people to be patient with the process, particularly when it comes to the vote-by-mail count.
Even before such ballots are counted, each signature must be verified, the envelopes must be scanned and sorted, the ballots removed from the envelopes and organized for counting, even as ballots continue to trickle in during a seven-day window following the election.
“Counties across California have 28 days to certify the election,” said Marin County Registrar of Voters Lynda Roberts. “Elections offices take many steps to ensure that ballots are counted properly, that the equipment is counting correctly, and that the integrity of the election is intact.”
Another batch of votes was expected to be reported out of Alameda County at 5 p.m. Friday.