Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder-Elections

January 15, 2008

Contact:
Warren Slocum, Chief Elections Officer
Phone: (650) 363-4988 E-mail: wslocum@smcare.org

Aternate:
David Tom, Elections Manager
Phone: (650) 312-5222 E-mail: dtom@smcare.org

Track and Confirm Your Vote by Mail Ballot
Use www.shapethefuture.org to verify receipt of your ballot for Feb. 5 Presidential Primary

Redwood City, CA –With early voting underway and ballots hitting mailboxes for the Feb. 5 Presidential Primary, San Mateo County Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum is reminding voters who vote by mail – or who are thinking about signing up – that the peace of mind that their vote has been received by the elections office is just a click away.

Available online at www.shapethefuture.org, Track & Confirm allows Vote by Mail voters to see when their ballot was initially mailed to them and when their voted ballot was received by the Elections Office. Voters can access the information by inputting three simple pieces of data - the number of their residential address, their zip code and their date of birth.

Track & Confirm works just like the barcode scanning systems used by UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service. Each voter’s return envelope for his or her Vote by Mail ballot has a unique barcode associated with his or her voter registration file. The barcodes are scanned when ballots are sent from and received by the Elections Office, and the data is uploaded to Track & Confirm. Updates are posted daily and available after 9 p.m.

Once an envelope’s barcode has been scanned and the voter’s signature on the flap verified, the envelope and ballot are separated. At this point, the ballot can no longer be tracked back to the voter, maintaining secrecy as required by law.

Slocum implemented Track & Confirm in 2005 after a focus group of Vote by Mail voters revealed that, for as much as they love Vote by Mail, they were never absolutely sure that their ballot was received at the Elections Office by Election Day.

“The focus group was the motivation to provide this service,” Slocum said. “FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service all offer their customers a package tracking system, and we simply used that model. We believe we were the first county in America to apply the idea to an election service for voters. It was simple enough, and there is no reason not to provide Vote by Mail voters the option to go online to track and confirm that we received their voted ballot.”

In 2007, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill requiring elections offices in California to provide this service by March of 2008.

“I’m heartened to know that this service will be made available to all California voters very soon,” Slocum said. “The ‘Track & Confirm’ program may one day be able to provide voters across the nation with an additional layer of transparency to ensure accurate, fair elections.”

Vote by Mail ballots must be received by the Elections Office at 8 p.m. on Election Day (Feb. 5). Postmarks are not accepted. If you are running short on time, you may drop off your Vote by Mail ballot at the Elections Office at 40 Tower Road in San Mateo or 555 County Center in Redwood City or at any Election Day polling place.

The popularity of Vote by Mail in San Mateo County continues to increase, with 39 percent of registered voters (more than 137,000) signed up to be permanent Vote by Mail voters. Jan. 29 is the last day to sign up to Vote by Mail for the Feb. 5 Presidential Primary. Voters may sign up by mailing in the card on the back cover of their Sample Ballot & Official Voter Information Guide or online at www.shapethefuture.org.

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