With the help of our new Pitney Bowes ReliaVote system at elections headquarters, we can now process 24,000 Vote by Mail ballot envelopes per hour. That’s pretty speedy.
The machine sorts envelopes by precinct to ready them for vote counting, and siphons out envelopes that have been marked as containing a spoiled ballot. By February’s presidential primary, we’ll also be able to use the machine’s digital imaging technology to check up to four ballot envelope signatures at a time.
We’ve blogged about the ReliaVote previously, but it’s tough to convey just how mighty and speedy it is. So here’s a quick live action video we made to drive the impact home. (This video is posted on YouTube, which requires Adobe Flash Player to view. If you don’t have it, you can download it for free.)
Election Day is around the corner, and we’re busy making sure your ballot envelope is ready for counting!
Every day at Elections headquarters on Tower Road, Vote by Mail ballots are being delivered by the bin from the U.S. Postal Service. As of today, more than 17,000 have arrived to be counted, sorted and signature-checked in preparation for the vote.
The busiest days for Vote by Mail ballot arrivals are Tuesdays, a likely result of people taking the time to vote and mail their ballot over the weekend. According to Lupe Sanchez, who oversees ballot processing, the Elections Office received nearly 4,300 ballots last Tuesday. Mondays are also busy, with about 3,400 ballots last Monday and nearly 2,500 today, but the volume typically tapers off by the end of the week. Just 1,800 ballots arrived on Friday.
According to California Elections Code, Vote by Mail ballots can not be opened or counted until seven days prior to Election Day. Until then, they’re held in a vaulted room. But there is still plenty to do, as each ballot must be counted, de-flapped (a fancy term for removing the extra envelope flap that covers your signature), sorted by precinct and the signature on the envelope checked against the voter’s registration form to ensure authenticity. (By the way, the Pitney Bowes Relia-Vote system we blogged about earlier will automate many of these processes).
So, with all these Vote by Mail ballots, where’s yours?
Maybe you’ve already returned your Vote by Mail ballot, so for that, we thank you. Or maybe you haven’t gotten around to it yet, in which case we encourage you to do so. Remember, your ballot must be received by the Elections Office no later than Election Day to be counted; postmarks are not accepted.
This serves as your friendly reminder that the deadline to register to vote – or re-register if your name, address or party affiliation has changed – to participate in the Nov. 6 election is Monday (Oct. 22). A postmark is acceptable.
If you’ve never voted before, consider this a rallying cry to participate in your democracy. The Nov. 6 election is local, so registering to vote will give you the opportunity to have your say on the issues and people that affect your community’s quality of life.
You are eligible to vote if you are:
· a U.S. citizen,
· a San Mateo County resident,
· at least 18 years old on Election Day,
· not in prison or on parole for the conviction of a felony, and
· you have not been judged by a court to be mentally incompetent to register and vote.
If you’re already registered to vote, remember that you must complete a new voter registration form if you changed your name, moved or have affiliated with a different political party. Voters who have been on the county’s registration roster who move or change their names after Monday may still vote at polls with a provisional ballot.
Some San Mateo County residents may have received a surprise in their mailbox over these last couple of days: a letter informing them that Election Day polling places in their precinct were going the way of the dinosaur, accompanied by a Vote By Mail ballot and a postage-paid envelope.
Huh?
If you got this letter, we’ll offer a full explanation here. And even if you didn’t, read on, as it’s important to know how elections are changing around you.
In order to know that we are conducting elections that comply with new standards and laws, the Elections Office conducted a review of every polling place and precinct boundary earlier this year. Some polling places were moved, some were combined with others and some were decommissioned altogether. As a result of this review, 56 of the county’s 563 precincts were designated as all mail ballot precincts.
Voters in those precincts will join more than 137,000 voters in San Mateo County who are already voluntarily registered to Vote By Mail. They represent almost 40 percent of registered voters. About half of all votes cast in the two major elections in 2006 were from Vote By Mail ballots.
There’s a new toy at Tower Road with plenty of assembly required.
It’s got more bells and whistles than Hammacher Schlemmer’s Robby the Robot, and costs about, oh, ten times as much. Truth be told, it probably has more brains than Robby, too.
Thirty eight feet long and weighing more than 3,700 pounds, it’s a lean, mean, mail ballot processing and sorting machine! Requiring at least a week and a team of experts to get set up in the Elections Office warehouse, the Pitney Bowes Relia-Vote system is not your grandma’s mail machine.
As more voters choose to Vote by Mail, our Elections brains are banking that this will be a worthwhile investment to save money, prevent errors and speed up processing time. And speedy it is: the Olympus II single-tier sorter, which is part of the Relia-Vote system, can process 24,000 mail ballot envelopes in an hour.
“If we have 80,000 pieces returned, we’ll be done Jack Flash,” said Narda Garcia, a supervisor in the Elections Office who is overseeing the implementation of the machine. “This was a process that was an extremely laborious process. We had all hands on deck.”
Sample Ballots for the Nov. 6 Consolidated Municipal, School and Special District Election are headed for your mailbox pronto. The first of them arrived in mailboxes Friday and Saturday, with delivery continuing through this week and next.
Overall, 310,000 ballots in 42 different ballot styles – as an election in Burlingame will have different races than an election in Half Moon Bay – are being sent to San Mateo County voters.
Aren’t sure what a Sample Ballot is? It is just what it sounds like: A sample of what your actual ballot will be. Practice your vote, take notes, make mistakes or even doodle if you’re so inclined. Take your Sample Ballot with you to the polls on Election Day as your guide for casting your votes on the eSlate, or use it as a rough draft from which to complete your official Vote by Mail ballot (on which, sorry to say, doodles are not allowed). Using your Sample Ballot will make your vote go faster and avoid mistakes when they count.
According to 
This serves as your friendly reminder that the deadline to register to vote – or re-register if your name, address or party affiliation has changed – to participate in the Nov. 6 election is Monday (Oct. 22). A postmark is acceptable.
Some 
As more voters choose to Vote by Mail, our Elections brains are banking that this will be a worthwhile investment to save money, prevent errors and speed up processing time. And speedy it is: the 
Overall, 310,000 ballots in 42 different ballot styles – as an election in Burlingame will have different races than an election in Half Moon Bay – are being sent to San Mateo County voters.