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

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

One Percent Manual Tally of April 8 Special Congressional Open Primary to Commence on April 11
Part of the Official Canvass, transparent process to ensure accuracy of vote begins April 11

Redwood City, CA – On Friday, April 11 at 8:30 a.m., the San Mateo County Elections Office will begin its one percent manual tally of votes cast in the April 8 Special Congressional Open Primary Election, which will ensure the accuracy of the vote before certifying election results.

The manual tally, which will be held at the Elections Office at 40 Tower Road in San Mateo, is required by California law, is usually conducted during the 28 days following an election. The manual tally is but one part of the Official Canvass of the Vote, which begins after the polls close on Election Day.

“During the canvass, we verify that the votes cast by voters in an election and represented by the semi-official results that are posted online are, in fact, accurate. Official election results will not be reported to the Secretary of State for certification until the results of this process are completed and we have confirmed the outcomes of the contests on the ballot,” said San Mateo County Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum. “The canvass is the least understood, most important and least visible part of the elections process even though observers are welcome to be present during the entire canvass.”

Precincts selected for the manual tally are determined randomly using three ten-sided dice to roll numbers that represent digits in precinct numbers. Because there is but one contest in this Special Congressional Open Primary Election, the number of precincts that will be part of the is a simple matter of choosing one percent of precincts in San Mateo County’s 12th Congressional District, or four precincts.

If a precinct is selected, every vote cast in that precinct is tallied, whether it was cast via eSlate electronic voting machine at the polls, paper ballot, Vote by Mail ballot, provisional ballot or early voting at a universal voting center. Elections officials will work in teams of four, called a precinct board, to manually read, call out, record and tally votes.

New rules from the Secretary of State that went into effect in the February Presidential Primary further require a ten percent manual tally in any races where the winning margin of difference is less than one half of one percent. The additional ten percent manual recount rule will not apply in this election because the outcome of the race was decided by a significantly higher margin.

The one percent manual tally is just one part of the Official Canvass of the Vote, which has eight components. Every ballot and vote that wasn’t counted on Election Night is processed, including Vote by Mail ballots received the day before or on Election Day, and provisional ballots. Ballot numbers and signatures on voter rosters are reconciled with the number of votes cast, and precinct supplies are inspected. For a complete explanation of the requirements of the canvass, visit http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_oc.htm.

Once the manual tally is completed and the results are verified, Chief Elections Officer Slocum will make them public. Anyone interested in reviewing the outcome of this election on a precinct/jurisdictional basis will be able to find and download these results; they will be posted on www.shapethefuture.org once the results have been certified.