When the election ended Tuesday night and the semi-official results for all precincts posted early Wednesday, Contra Costa County still had more than 100,000 uncounted ballots to sift through before they can certify the election.
County Clerk Steve Weir said his election office had received 82,271 vote-by-mail ballots since Saturday afternoon as well as 23,692 provisional ballots. That's 105,963 ballots that were not counted as of Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.
Weir said there were more vote-by-mail ballots turned in at the polls than they expected. This is also the highest total ever for provisional ballots in Contra Costa County.
The ballots may not all be counted until the middle of next week.
That could leave several close elections in doubt until then. Those involving El Cerrito and Kensington were not close.
One of them is Measure D, the $260 million school bond in the San Ramon Valley. Right now, the measure has 55.19 percent of the vote with 55 percent needed for passage.
It's not known how many uncounted ballots are from Alamo, Danville and San Ramon.
The voter turnout right now for Contra Costa County is 60 percent. The late ballots are expected to raise that to 80 percent.
The county has until Dec. 4 under state law to certify the election.
I did drop my mail-in ballot off at the polling station per protocol, so this was not late as this option was offered to me. Clearly, the county elections office was ill-prepared to do their job. Why didn't they contract with someone or did they? Are county employees getting paid OT as a result of this? There is even talk that they could be working on Thanksgiving. Does this mean that they will get paid Holiday time? If so, the handling of this will be both costly and untimely.
http://www.cocovote.us/content.aspx?id=153