10.30.2020 FB Live Briefing Special Voter Episode.1PM

The County of Santa Clara
October 30, 2020
Live Stream - Briefing from Registrar of Voters
1:00 PM

[Music]

hello and welcome to facebook live we are in the field today here at the registrar of voters office on berger drive in san jose where it's e minus four this is election land where everything kind of revolves around the date of an election and e minus four means it's four days till e-day that's deadline day so we're here today with shannon boucher registrar of voters from santa clara county is going to walk us through the final stretch here thanks for being with us shannon oh thanks for coming out so we can share more voting information with our community fantastic so before we get going a word about the face coverings often we do not wear them on facebook live to better facilitate understanding also because it is a public spot you may be hearing some background noise during the broadcast so last time we checked in it was the first week of the month the vote by meal balance had just gone out and you had just opened your doors to live voting there was a line at the door that day and since then i'm sure you've seen more and more people come in tell us a little bit about what you have seen since then and what's going on right now sure i i'm so happy we have had such a huge increase in early voting i mean we are at historic levels in santa clara county of the number of ballots that have already been returned with over several hundred thousand ballots here already so it's been really great to see voters coming down going ahead and casting their ballot and as far as our office you know we're all working seven days a week here to is we're coming up to this home stretch of the election and one of the things that we're doing is working on the vote by mail processing with all of these you know ballots that are coming in so early so with that i just want to remind our voters that you know the ballots will all come in we will handle and count every single ballot so they come in we have 250 foot sorting machines here in our office where we sort the ballots and at the same time know that you sort the envelopes it takes an image of the outside of the envelope with the voter's signature so we then staff are sitting at other computers we'll look at the scanned image from the envelope with the scan image of the voter signature that's on record and we'll compare it so we don't use machines or computers we use staff to we'll look at that themselves so then if the ballot is determined to be valid it's sent off for a very technical term called opening and flattening where the ballot is taken out and flattened and prepped and all ready to go into another secured room where the ballots are scanned so it's been very busy here uh as we're leading up to this election yeah i took a peek behind the scenes there and it sure is bustling back there now i'm i'm told there's also some exciting news about tomorrow what's uh what's super special about october 31st this year well i guess we have two things for tomorrow i mean you have it's halloween but that's a great way to remember what's actually happening as far as our vote centers so we're going to open 100 vote centers throughout santa clara county starting on saturday halloween for four straight days through election day and the hours of operation for you know saturday sunday and monday are going to be from nine to five and then on election day it is 7 a.m to 8 p.m so really excited to see the more voting opportunities open for our voters so these vote centers these are the new polling places but it's not exactly the same can you kind of tell people a little bit about what vote centers are are they they're not all in the same locations that people might remember their polling place being in that's correct and vote centers in my eyes provide so many more options and are better for our voters in santa clara county because last year our board of supervisors authorized our county to move to the voters choice act voting model and with that model we implemented in march so some of our voters may be aware some may be their first time experiencing it this november election but it's a much more modern system and the benefit is our vote centers have replaced polling places at a polling place before you had to go to your one assigned polling place it was our office or that one polling place now voters have can still come to our office but even better is any one of the 100 vote centers that are open throughout the county so voters have so many more options because we're going to actually just print the ballot out for your specific residents in the language you request when you go to a vote center so and i want to remind voters that the list of these vote centers you can get at sccvote.org or you can look in your vote by mail packet that we mail to you as there's a listing in there so they're all going to open for on halloween right so there's a lot more services offered i understand at these uh at these vote centers and at polling places kind of pulling place on steroids is what i've heard said yeah you're correct so as i was saying we can print ballots out on demand so we have a total of 14 languages that we produce voting information and or ballots in so they can go to a vote center and get a facsimile or a regular ballot in one of those languages and we have the new voting equipment too with touch screen accessible machines that kind of like using an atm with the touch screen and voters can increase the text size they can use an audio ballot if they want to be able to hear the ballot there's just so many more things that we can do at these vote centers with our new equipment so and that does include though actually going to a vote center and being able to register and vote on the same day tell us more about that i mean i know a registration deadline the official registration deadline passed about a week a week or two ago but we're not saying you snooze you lose it's too late you're saying that people can still register to vote and cast the ballot that is correct so you may have heard that the voter registration deadline was october 19th and that was correct if you wanted to have a ballot mailed to you but it's not too late like you said starting on october 20th through election day people can use conditional voter registration we call it cvr and with this conditional registration it allows you to go to any vote center and register and vote at the same time but the difference is they'll have you put that ballot into an envelope where you fill out your information as your registration and then it'll come back to our office and we will enter your registration information and then we'll be able to count your ballot so it you know takes a little bit longer to get counted because we count those after all the vote by mail belt but all the ballots are counted you know in the canvas period after the election so no it's not too late go to a vote center and you can register and vote tell us a little bit more about this uh the results and when they'll come in uh you mentioned that you will be processing the ballots and then 8 p.m election night you pull a trigger and boom you know some results will be available now what results are those that come out first thing sure when our computer system releases the election results to us at 8pm on election night what you're seeing there is our vote by mail the early voting returns so all the hundreds of thousands you know ballots that we're going to have before election day whatever we have processed and signature checked and validated are going to be able to be in the 8pm election night results so you know it may we may have everything up through the weekend or the day before so within a day or two of election day would be included in those results and then over the course of election night overnight that's when you start to see kind of the results from the in-person vote center voting is that right sure yeah so like i said eight o'clock we release the early results we've processed up until that time and then about every hour on average about every hour we're going to be doing an update on our website so we can keep the voters and the public and the media who are looking at a result let them get updates as we go through election night so this election night count at eight o'clock is that early returns but then as we go we are receiving vote totals and counts from all of our vote centers so in the past when we had precincts and the different voting system we had a central count location all ballots had to come back to our office to be run through the scanners so it took a while so you know we were here 24 hours and we for example in 2018 we didn't get done until about two in the afternoon the next day from election night results just from the precincts well now with our new more modern system we have vote center level tabulation so when a voter goes to a vote center they are going to actually put their ballot into a scanner at the vote center that will cast it and drop it into a secure bucket and then all they have to do at the end of election night is take the cartridge out in teams of two and bring those back to our office and we upload it we were actually done in this last election in five hours by one in the morning so i mean it was a dramatic increase in election night results getting done faster and when can we expect final results when will we know who won well we don't call an election the registrar voters when you hear reports in the media or in the news even from election night on through the 30 days that we are counting ballots and processing we just provide the results we don't say who a winner is we don't say who a loser is we just give the numbers other people like to make predictions maybe of who they believe is going to win based on numbers we put out but we will you know do daily updates where we're counting we will provide an information about how many ballots that we expect that we still have but as i mentioned the canvas period we have 30 days to do the final results that is december 3rd because we need to count the you know could we could get 200 000 ballots election week alone takes time to process those and we have audits and we have testing and we do manual recounts so we have a lot of procedures a lot of checks and balances that we need to go over all of the results and all the ballots and all the envelopes so you know just really want to also tell voters we count every ballot here so whether you vote a conditional voter registration a provisional ballot a regular ballot a mailing ballot every single one will be reviewed and processed we never stop counting until we are done within that 30-day legal frame all right um you know it really is an understatement to say that covid19 has changed the way we do things and that includes voting but it's very important for people to still do this democratic duty and it can be done safely now you know being e minus four do you have a recommendation for how people should vote should they come and vote in person is there still time to vote by mail should they fill out their ballots put in the envelope and bring it down i mean what do you think people should do right now well they still have several options you know we have been saying the safest way to vote is to vote by mail vote from your own residence and return that ballot and so a voter can return their ballot with the post office with the postage paid envelope that we provide so you don't have to worry about stamps

or you can skip the post office if for any reason you're worried about that because i've been hearing things about that in the media don't worry just drop your ballot off at any one of our vote centers which is a hundred of them you have a hundred drop-offs located throughout the county so for those four days there's like 200 locations that you could go drop off your ballot so there still a lot of options and we still do though understand that there are people who want in-person voting so it's not too late to get out and vote at the vote centers for those four days but i do want to say i would recommend if you're going to a vote center try to go early because you know most people who tend to vote will want to come in on election day not realizing that you know we've had vote centers open for four days out in the community that they could have gone to so there may be longer lines on election day so that's all i just want to encourage the the voters that you know they're going to start opening on halloween and you could avoid um potential of longer lines on election day if you go early so before we let you get back into your final four day stretch here is there anything else you'd like to tell santa clara county yes thank you i just want to tell our voters how proud i am of you and how proud i am that you've been sending in your votes and voting early you know we had this isn't a historic election we two weeks ago we surpassed one million registered voters that is awesome that is wonderful that you're getting out and getting registered and now we're having early returns for his historic amounts of people voting early and i really hope my next historic moment will be that we had the highest turnout ever in santa clara county but that's up to you the voters who need to get out and cast your vote you know it is part of democracy it is how you have your voice heard by getting out and vote if you don't vote you're letting someone else make your decisions for you right you're not you're not expressing how you feel through the vote so i just again want to say how much i appreciate and i am so happy and thankful that our voters in santa clara county have been getting out and having their voices heard for november 3rd yeah well thank you shannon for coming down to be with us again one more time uh on here on facebook live and um please thank your office staff for us for all the hard work they're doing in this historic election well thank you thanks for coming down that's going to conclude this episode of facebook live we do have spanish language broadcasts on mondays and wednesdays vietnamese on thursdays thanks for tuning in and everyone stay safe out there and take care