When a Los Angeles County resident mailed of their poll in 2020, it took a circuitous journey from Pomona to Downey to Santa Fe Springs.
However beginning with the March 5 main election, each poll shall be tabulated in a single place: the L.A. County Poll Processing Heart within the Metropolis of Business, a 24-hour secured facility that beforehand housed a Fry’s Electronics.
“It’s 144,000 sq. ft, and to the bare eye, it might look as if it is a massive room with numerous transferring folks in it,” mentioned Chief Deputy Jeramy Grey of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s workplace. “However while you look nearer, it’s much more than that.”
4 years in the past, L.A. County launched a brand new voting mannequin and began mailing ballots to each registered voter. County officers mentioned they discovered via that course of that they wanted an all-in-one facility to course of ballots. They used the outdated Fry’s constructing in 2022 for vote-by-mail operations and agreed it will function the best choice.
Staff inside L.A. County’s new poll processing heart.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Instances)
Officers mentioned the preliminary price was about $10 million, which included the preliminary hire and build-out of the power. Staff had just below a yr to finish development and get the power prepared for March.
The county has arrange stations throughout the power, the place staff are busy processing about 146,000 ballots already despatched in for the upcoming election.
On Saturday, L.A. County will open 119 vote facilities, open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. till election day, when their hours will broaden to 7 a.m. to eight p.m.
On election day, ballots will be delivered by sheriff’s deputies by automotive and about seven helicopters. Deputies may also convey ballots by boat from Santa Catalina Island.
Till then, most ballots will arrive on the processing heart both by U.S. Postal Service, often within the morning, or in batches from the 35 groups that decide up ballots from greater than 400 drop-off packing containers throughout the county.
Jeramy Grey, chief deputy of the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk on the opening of the brand new poll processing heart.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Instances)
All ballots are first sniffed by a canine member of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Division checking for any medication or harmful substances. There’s a rotating shift of 12 handlers and their canine.
If one of many canine catches a whiff of one thing, it is going to sit and never transfer, centered on the final space the place it observed the odor.
In November, election staff in California and at the least 4 different states acquired suspicious letters, some containing the highly effective narcotic fentanyl.
That’s simply one in all many safety issues that county election staff face.
“Over the previous six to eight years the character of safety round elections processes has develop into entrance and heart,” Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan mentioned Tuesday. He cited cybersecurity threats, nation-state actors who attempt to disrupt elections and “very aggressive” observers who’ve tried to assault or disrupt the method.
A number of the 1000’s of ballots which have already arrived within the March 5 main election.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Instances)
“Our perception is that we shouldn’t restrict the alternatives for folks to vote,” mentioned Logan, who has held his place since 2008. “We should always enhance the safety to make sure that they’ve that chance and that they know that we’re going to deal with their poll correctly.”
Vote-by-mail and drop-off ballots are sorted and despatched to automated signature recognition machines, the place poll envelopes are scanned and the machine takes pictures of the signature to match it with the voter’s report. Whether it is verified, the poll shall be saved till staff are able to course of it additional.
If the machines can not confirm the signatures, groups engaged on dozens of computer systems view the signatures facet by facet on their screens to match them. If this second step doesn’t present verification, staff can ask for assist from a group lead.
To open the poll envelopes, staff use massive, industrial letter-opening machines.
Subsequent, staff who take the ballots out of their envelopes decide whether or not envelopes are empty, whether or not ballots have to be remade, or whether or not ballots are clear for the following step.
If a poll is torn or maybe stained after a voter spilled espresso on it, it in all probability received’t undergo the tallying machine. By a three-level verification course of, staff within the “remake” space will remake the poll to match the voter’s decisions from the broken poll.
As soon as ballots are processed and ready, they’re able to be tallied.
The tally room within the processing heart is surrounded by home windows and is beneath 24/7 video surveillance.
Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Instances)
It has 20 scanners to tabulate ballots, all of which shall be operating on election evening. It’s open solely to a small variety of staff, who should use key playing cards to enter, making a log of who has gone inside.
“The actions on the scanners and the work that’s carried out in there may be all logged as nicely,” Logan mentioned.
A steel partition wraps across the tally room the place members of the general public can observe exercise within the tally room and elsewhere.
By election day, there shall be about 750 staff on the numerous stations throughout the huge constructing.
As soon as the election is licensed, ballots shall be shipped to county warehouses for the required retention interval of twenty-two months.
Anybody who desires to watch on the processing heart can go to the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s web site for instances and dates when the general public is allowed inside.
“It is extremely, very troublesome to design a facility that’s each extremely safe however but hyper accessible to the general public,” Grey mentioned. “And we needed to steadiness each on this facility.”
