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00000177-1fcd-db48-a97f-dfcf929b0000 Note: This page is not being updated as of the first week of December, 2020.Welcome to KAZU's Election Coverage and Resource Page. Here you’ll find election results, helpful links and stories. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more information.ELECTIONS FROM NPR: Live 2020 Election Updates & ResultsPresidential | Senate | House | Gubernatorial | California LOCAL ELECTION RETURNS FROM COUNTY & STATE:Monterey | Santa Cruz | San Benito | CaliforniaCentral Coast Local November 2020 Election ResultsHELPFUL LINKS: CALIFORNIATrack your ballot MONTEREY COUNTYMonterey County Elections websitePhone: 831-796-1499Email: elections@co.monterey.ca.us SANTA CRUZ COUNTYSanta Cruz County Elections Department website Phone: 831-454-2060 Email: info@votescount.com SAN BENITO COUNTYSan Benito County ElectionsPhone: 831-636-4016Email: SBCVote@cosb.us KEY DEADLINES:November 3: Last day to vote!November 29: Deadline to cure a missing or non-comparing signature.December 1: Deadline to certify presidential contest.

Behind-The-Scenes Look At Vote Counting in Monterey County

Michelle Loxton
Poll workers seperate the mail-in-ballots from their envelopes. The signatures on the envelopes had just been authenticated by a machine, which is pictured in the background.

Preliminary election results are in, but there's still a lot of work to do before the results are certified. KAZU News got a behind-the-scenes look at the vote counting process.

Around midday on Super Tuesday, officials at the Monterey County Elections Office in Salinas were hard at work counting votes. 

They do get help from a lot of high-tech machines, which inspired an ecological metaphor.

“Well, the ballots going through the mail processing system... they looklike salmon traveling upstream, as you can see,” said Claudio Valenzuela, the registrar of voters for Monterey County.  

Credit Michelle Loxton
Polls workers get ballots ready to feed them through the scanners. The scanners will record the votes. They can process up to 90 cards for minute.

Valenzuela was describing the machine that checks the signatures on the vote-by-mail ballot envelopes against signatures already stored on file. 

He's also excited about some other machines the elections office is using this year to help count the votes. 

“You see the tabulation room… there's eight scanners. These are brand new scanners. They're capable of scanning about 80 to 90 cards per minute,” said Valenzuela.

The public can observe the entire counting process. It’s all happening in glass-paneled rooms for transparency.

Credit Michelle Loxton
Ballots arrive in sealed boxes from precincts.

Ballots have been arriving from the mailman, from precincts throughout the county, and from just down the hallway, where there’s a polling station.

Tuesday’s results are preliminary. Local election offices have until the end of the month to certify them.

From 2019 to 2021 Michelle Loxton worked at KAZU as an All Things Considered host and reporter. During that time she reported on a variety of topics from the coronavirus pandemic, the opioid epidemic and local elections. Loxton was part of the news team that won a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for the continued coverage of the four major wildfires that engulfed California’s Central Coast in 2020.
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