Santa Clara County’s gaffe-plagued elections office has made one mistake too many for state officials. An Assembly committee Wednesday approved an audit of Santa Clara County’s Registrar of Voters office requested by Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, who cited a litany of errors since 2010 from erroneous ballots to counting mishaps that could raise doubts about the validity of election results. “It’s not uncommon for administrative mistakes to be made, but the frequency of these mistakes is of particular concern,” said Low, chair of the Assembly Elections and Redistricting Committee. “And I don’t know of any other county having such issues.”
Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Shannon Bushey said that she’s all ears if the audit — expected to take about five months — approved by the Assembly’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee results in productive insights. But she said her office has implemented various measures in the wake of past mistakes and “we continue to do our best to look at ways to improve all of our processes.
“There are unique situations, hundreds if not thousands of situations in which something could be programmed wrong, the wrong document could be submitted for processing — there are so many avenues of something going wrong,” Bushey said. “And we have had some things slip through in the past.”
The call for a state review comes after a county auditor recommended a move toward holding elections entirely by mail as soon as possible. The state has been pushing for that after Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation last fall allowing the change.
Full Article: Santa Clara County: Election error audit in the works.