Contact:
Warren Slocum
Chief Elections Officer & Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder
Phone: (650) 363-4988 Fax: (650) 363-1903 E-mail: wslocum@smcare.org

lternate:
David Tom
Phone: 650.312.5301 Fax: 650.312.5348 E-mai:l dtom@smcare.org

County to Begin the 1% Manual Recount of Election Results
Transparent Process Shaped by distinguished computer science professionals from Stanford and Berkeley Universities to Start Wednesday, November 22

(Redwood City, CA)  Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum announced today that the required Manual Recount of the vote results from at least five precincts from the November Gubernatorial Election will begin on Wednesday, November 22nd at 8:30 a.m.

The California Election Code requires that all counties complete a Canvass of the Votes which is a process that ensures the accuracy of the vote count and must be completed prior to the final certification of official results. Slocum explained, “The Canvass is the least understood, most important part of the elections process. During the Canvass, we verify that the votes cast by voters in an election are correct and that there are no anomalies within the system.  Official election results will not be certified until the results of this process are completed and confirm the outcomes of the contests on the ballot.”  The Canvass of votes must be completed within a 28-day period following an election and it includes these activities:

San Mateo County will include paper ballots cast at the precincts, the paper trail ballots cast on the electronic eSlate voting devices and absentee ballots in its 1% Manual Recount.  In addition to the one percent manual recount, the election office will also count additional races not included in the initial group of randomly selected precincts.

San Mateo County will include absentee ballots in this process, Slocum said. While this has not historically been a requirement of the Canvass, it was passed into law this year and becomes effective for all elections beginning in 2007. We decided to get a head start on that process because “San Mateo County is aiming for the gold standard in the Manual Recount Process,” said Slocum. “We are establishing practices that will assure voters and election officials of the integrity of the vote.”

This transparent process will take place at the Elections Office located at 40 Tower Road in San Mateo. “The first step will be the random selection of precincts that will undergo the manual recount process,” Slocum explained.  This process will be accomplished by members of the public actually rolling three dice – red, white and blue. The dice are 10 sided. Once a dice is rolled the result will correspond to a precinct number. Then that precinct will be officially included in the Manual Recount.

Manual Recount Boards are constituted and included 4 people per board as prescribed by law. One person calls out the vote and the others transcribe.

There are 518 precincts in San Mateo County.  It is anticipated that the Precinct Boards that conduct the 1% Manual Recount will begin their work on Wednesday afternoon, break for Thanksgiving, and resume on the Saturday, November 25th.  The process is expected to take 5 to 6 days to complete.  The work of the Precinct Boards is conducted in a transparent process, open to the public.  To enhance this experience, we have installed a webcam for viewing on the Internet for further transparency - http://www.shapethefuture.org/elections/results/nov2006/webcam.html

San Mateo County Election officials have been working with members of ACCURATE, a multi-university voting research center, to create a more trustworthy audit process of Election Day results. ACCURATE is an acronym for “A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections.”

Dr. David Dill, a computer scientist at Stanford University and key participant in the ACCURATE project funded by the National Science foundation, and PhD. candidate from Berkeley, Joe Hall, have been working with Slocum and his staff to develop a set of operating principles and guidelines for the Canvass of Vote process that hopefully can be adopted into California law in the coming legislative session in time for the 2008 presidential election cycle.