Modesto, CA - June 7, 2018 Lee Lundrigan, Stanislaus County Registrar of Voters / County Clerk / Recorder has released the daily Stanislaus County Elections Update.

Today the Elections Office continued with the canvass process of the Statewide Direct Primary Election. On Election Day Stanislaus County Registrar of Voters Lee Lundrigan reported her office had counted 46,195 ballots for the June 5, 2018 Statewide Direct Primary Election. The unofficial Election Day result may be viewed at the stanvote.com website and includes ballots voted at the polls and vote by mail (VBM) ballots received and processed as of last week.

Stanislaus voters received two ballot cards to contain all the races and propositions for this election. Together both cards create 'one' complete ballot. However, one voted ballot consisting of two ballot cards has doubled the amount of voting materials to prepare and count through the high speed scanners thus increasing the amount of work and time required to canvass the election.

Approximately 38,800 VBM ballots remain to be processed and counted. VBM ballot processing includes:

• checking the signature on each VBM envelope against the signature located on the original affidavit of registration;
• signature verification:
• sorting the VBM envelopes into one of the 327 precincts in which they would have voted had they not voted by mail;
• opening and flattening 2 ballot cards for each of the 38,800 VBM ballots;
• processing each of the VBM cards through the high speed ballot scanning equipment to tabulate them;

Today a random 1% of the precincts was selected to be manually tallied and balanced against the computer counts to verify the accuracy of the election tally system. This process is required by law. The office will begin work on the 1% hand tally of the vote next week. The hand review of ballots to identify qualified write-in candidates for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, United States Senator, State Senate Member District 12, State Assembly Member District 21 and Superintendent of Public Instruction is underway. Certified write-in candidates include:

Approximately 3,000 provisional ballots require examination. This process will begin following the scanning and uploading of voter signatures located on the rosters from the 145 polling locations. These signatures and those on the VBM ballots must be reviewed to determine who has voted prior to processing the provisionally voted ballots.

California law now extends the time period VBM ballots must be accepted beyond Election Day and will increase the number of ballots to be processed. Elections Code § 3020 ("Postmark Plus 3") extends the dates VBM ballots are timely received from 8 p.m. on Election Day for three additional days. Nearly 3,600 of these timely mailed VBM ballots were received today and yesterday. They are included in the VBM count and must still be processed and counted.

California Election Code § 3019 now requires each Registrar of Voters (ROV) office to allow eight days after an election for voters who have not signed their VBM envelopes to come into the office to sign them or submit an Unsigned Ballot Envelope Statement. The election cannot be certified until this time limit is met. ROV Lee Lundrigan's office will contact each of these voters and advise them they have eight days, until Wed., June 13, 2018, to sign their envelopes. Over 348 of these unsigned ballot envelopes remain.

The canvass will continue until complete. The office will be closed Wed., July 4, 2018 in observance of the 4th of July and the canvass will re-commence on Thurs., July 5, 2018. California law requires certification of this election to be on or before Thurs., July 5, 2018, which is 30 days following Election Day.