Lawsuit filed over late-arriving ballots in Riverside County

Riverside County’s next DA in question: Click below to watch video report.

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Election news headline from the County of Riverside:

Riverside County confirms that legal action has been initiated to determine the fate of approximately 12,500 ballots the Registrar of Voters received June 9, too late to be counted in the previous day’s election. Under state law, ballots cannot be counted unless they are received by the Registrar of Voters’ on by 8:00 p.m. on election night.

County officials were notified Wednesday that the local Democratic Central Committee and several voters who argue their ballots should be counted filed a petition in Riverside County Superior Court.

“It’s certainly welcome because this gives a judge the opportunity to decide if there is any way at all these ballots can be counted, and our highest priority is counting every valid ballot in every election,” county Executive Officer Bill Luna
said. In fact, the county counsel’s office assisted in filing documents in an effort to expedite a court hearing, Luna said.

The late-arriving ballots were sent to a post office in Moreno Valley where the Registrar of Voters’ staff has never collected mail during regular daily operations or on Election Day. The registrar’s office collected the ballots June 9, after postal officials forwarded them that morning to a post office in Riverside where the registrar’s staff only picks up daily mail.

Though not required by law, the registrar’s office for years has made a special trip each election night to the main postal distribution center in Redlands to gather ballots before the ballot-receipt deadline.

Postal officials said during a meeting last week with county officials that the late ballots had been sorted by around 8:30 a.m. on June 8 but were not transported that morning with other daily mail to the Riverside post office where the registrar’s staff makes daily pickups. Dallas Keck, the postal service district manager for the area that covers Riverside and Moreno Valley, said during the meeting it appeared that an unidentified “change of process” by the postal service had delayed transport of those ballots until the next day.

Keck told county officials that the registrar’s office and the postal service could have communicated better during the period leading to the election. Both sides agreed to quickly develop protocols to prevent any problems with ballot delivery in the future.

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