Merced County election officials work to verify signatures, count ballots

According to the latest election results released Wednesday morning, the Merced County Elections has recorded 37,011 ballots cast, or 28.04% of the 132,016 registered voters in the county.

Election officials call that a “healthy” voter turnout, and they continue to count and record those votes.

At the Merced County Election Warehouse on Thursday, mail-in-ballots were undergoing signature verification before being run through tabulator machines. Only Merced County employees trained in signature verification are allowed to conduct the signature verification process, Melvin Leavey, Merced County registrar of voters said..

If it is found that a envelope’s signature does not match one of the signatures on file for that voter, the signature will be challenged, he said.. And once a signature is challenged, two additional election officials must unanimously agree that it is not a match. From there the signature will go to a member of the management team for a second review, before a third review by Levey or the assistant registrar of voters.

Levey said there could be multiple reasons why election officials challenge what is deemed to not match.

“There could be no signature at all on the envelope,” he said. “There could be a total mismatch where it just doesn’t look anything like the signatures that we have on file. It could be what we call a household mismatch, where you might see, a husband and wife have signed each other’s envelopes.”

The signatures on file that are compared to the signature on envelope may include signatures from previous times that person has voted, voter registration updates or the signatures of voters in the same household.

“If a signature is found to not pass those reviews, then the voter is contacted and they get the opportunity to cure their signature, cure their ballot,” Levey said.

That voter is given an opportunity to sign an affidavit stating that it is in fact their ballot.

“Once we receive that, it has to be received no later than 5 p.m. on Dec. 1. Then we can go ahead and actually make their ballot good, acceptable. And then we can open their ballot, and count their ballot,” Levey said.

The next update to voting results is expected to be released no later than 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 8.