The California Post visited the county’s 144,000-square-foot ballot processing facility on Thursday, and what they found has concerned many. The NY Post reporters saw dozens of vacant workstations as the vote-count totals sprawled throughout California and Los Angeles. The growing pressure to process the hundreds of thousands of remaining ballots seemed to be at odds with the scene at the warehouse. Just 77,521 more ballots have been processed since the June 2 election night, according to county officials’ announcement on Wednesday night. However, an estimated 713,180 ballots remain unprocessed.
However, a lot of the facility seemed understaffed when The Post visited. Workstations in rows were vacant. There were several empty chair sections. About 25 bins of ballots appeared ready for processing in one area where election workers review ballots that scanners are unable to automatically read. However, no employees were seated at nearby desks, according to the NY Post reporters. The Post reporters saw roughly 75 workers in another area where they prepare ballots for counting and open envelopes, even though the space could hold more than twice that number.
Election Officials Propose Solutions
CA governor frontrunner Steve Hilton said Thursday he would urge Governor Gavin Newsom to create an Emergency Election Count Accelerator Corps, mobilizing state personnel and rapid response teams to assist counties struggling with major ballot-counting backlogs.
