State controller's race shows flaws in quirky vote-count process A month after election, system's foibles revealed by tight controller's race

It finally looks like top vote-getter Ashley Swearengin will face Betty Yee for state controller. It finally looks like top vote-getter Ashley Swearengin will face Betty Yee for state controller. Photo: Ashley Swearengin Campaign, For State Controller 2014 Photo: Ashley Swearengin Campaign, For State Controller 2014 Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close State controller's race shows flaws in quirky vote-count process 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

It's the first week of July, and do you know who your state controller candidates are?

Well yes, finally, at least assuming Democratic Assemblyman John Pérez doesn't decide to see if a recount can uncover the 482 votes it will take to squeeze by Betty Yee, a Board of Equalization member from San Francisco, into second place and a spot on the November ballot. But the monthlong vote count was not only a high school civics reminder that every vote really does count, but also a warning of how fragile - and jury-rigged - California's system of tallying and reporting votes can be.

Perhaps the biggest danger is that there's nothing under current law that would prevent a gubernatorial - or even, in theory, a presidential - election from being thrown into the same limbo that the controller's race was.

Although the secretary of state is responsible for running statewide elections and reporting the final results, the office is at the mercy of the registrars of each of California's 58 counties, local officials who often have their own ideas of how best to conduct their elections.

The state sets the basic rules, including hours for the polls on election day, who can vote and deadlines for getting the votes counted. And on July 11, the state takes the reports of all the counties and comes out with its official Statement of Vote, certifying the count and the results.

Getting there, though, is not half the fun.

As a sign of just how little power the state has over county voting officials, there's the "unprocessed ballot status" report on the secretary of state's website. That's where Californians can see how the count is progressing for the ballots that weren't tallied on election day.

There is an increasing number of such ballots, as more and more people vote by mail but don't get around to it in time for their ballots to be processed with those cast on election day. This year, there were nearly 1 million late vote-by-mail, provisional, damaged and otherwise uncounted ballots left after the polls closed June 3, more than 22 percent of the 4.2 million total votes cast.

Spread across the state, that's more than enough votes to change any number of close races, as the controller candidates found out.

"County election offices are just overwhelmed by the huge number of (mail) ballots," said Allan Hoffenblum, a former GOP consultant who now publishes the California Target Book, a nonpartisan service that analyzes state and federal races in the state. "And it's only going to get worse."

So how does the secretary of state provide the latest information on the ongoing vote count, which conceivably could change the future of California? By relying on what state officials admit are "unofficial" county updates.

"This information is voluntarily reported by county election officials and may not be complete," says the disclaimer to the status report.

Local variances

How and when each county reports its votes depends entirely on local election officials. San Francisco, for example, begins counting its unprocessed ballots a day or two after the election and sends updates to the secretary of state's office at the end of each day of counting.

"Our goal is to have everything that comes in on election day done by (the following) Friday," said John Arntz, San Francisco's elections chief. "We're getting pretty good at that."

Other counties, however, don't report any numbers until their count is complete.

"Some county election offices are technically proficient and willing to work with the state," Hoffenblum said. "Others really don't care."

The idiosyncrasies of the individual counties don't matter much when statewide elections are decided by 100,000 votes or more, as is usually the case. But in a historically tight battle like the one for controller, everything changes.

That's why Californians were left waiting for Lake County, with just 33,987 of the state's 17.7 million registered voters, to finish its count so they could know who would face Republican Ashley Swearengin, the first-place finisher, in the fall race for state controller.

Lake County didn't even begin counting its 6,000 or so unprocessed ballots until a couple of weeks after the election. And the only reason the state was finally able to put the complete Lake County results up on Monday - 27 days after the election - was because someone in the secretary of state's office grabbed them off the county's website. Registrar Diane Fridley didn't send the results to the state until after the county's Board of Supervisors certified the election results Tuesday evening.

System's glitches

Fridley admitted there were problems. She was out on medical leave until after the election, her office has only a couple of full-time employees, and not all the temporary workers typically called in for elections were available.

But she insisted that despite the eagerness of the state and its voters to get accurate election results as quickly as possible, she had no need to provide partial information. The only date she had to consider, Fridley said, was the July 4 deadline for providing her county's certified vote totals to the state.

"The important thing is that we meet that deadline," she said. "Other counties may report sooner, but we meet that deadline."

But a long-count election, with results of races left hanging for weeks, takes a toll on the state and its voters.

"We live in an era of instant communication, yet we're telling people it takes this long to count the votes?" said Darry Sragow, a former Democratic strategist who now teaches a class in election law at the University of Southern California. "Voter confidence is critical, and none of these things encourage participation in the system."

It's one thing when the election is a down-ballot primary race for state controller, an office many voters can't describe with candidates they don't recognize. But transfer that 481-vote margin Yee has over Pérez to a general election race for governor, and the uproar would be deafening if one or two counties waited nearly a month before announcing a count that would decide who led California for the next four years.

As election officials in Florida discovered in 2000, the most important element of any election is the trust of the voters that the count is fair and honest. A delayed count, for whatever reason, can erode that trust.

Not inspiring confidence

"When vote takes as long as this has and turns on how the vote went in Lake County, it doesn't inspire confidence in marginal voters," Sragow said.

The question, though, is whether people and politicians are concerned enough to make changes.

"The whole point is that county registrars are following the law ... but the laws are outdated," Hoffenblum said. "If the Legislature wants them to hurry, they're going to have to change the laws."