In Riverside County the Board of Supervisors voted to accept ballots that came in days late, days after the deadline. The firm paid to send the ballots got them to voters four days AFTER the election! Instead of calling for a new election, with an honest sending of ballots, the Board by a 4-1 vote declared honest elections are not needed in their County.
“After the law was signed, Spencer said she reached out to a company the county uses to print ballots and asked if it could print the 11,000 ballots that had to be mailed to Eastvale and Cathedral City voters under the new law. The vendor said yes, Spencer said.
“Unfortunately, the ballot printing vendor did not hand over those ballots to (the U.S. Postal Service) until March 1, which was the day before the election,” Spencer told supervisors.
She said her office believed the ballots would be mailed Feb. 26 or no later than Feb. 27.
Tadlock said he and his wife didn’t get their ballots until Saturday, March 6. While he was able to vote in person, Tadlock, who voted no on Measure A, said he’s heard from other Eastvale voters who got their ballots late and weren’t able to vote.
Measure A passed with roughly 82% of the 5,447 votes cast, while Measure B passed with 63% of 7,946 ballots cast.
Turnout for both March 2 elections was low, especially compared to last November. Just 14.7% of Eastvale’s roughly 36,000 registered voters cast ballots on the measure, compared to 85% who voted in the November election, which included two city council seats.
In Cathedral City, March 2 turnout was 30%, compared to 82% turnout in November.
Low turnout, Ballots late being sent, ballots received days after the deadline—why even bother with a vote? Corruption? You bet.
Despite 11,000 ballots mailed too late, Riverside County certifies Eastvale’s March 2 election
By Jeff Horseman, The Press-Enterprise, 3/24/21
Certifying election results is normally a routine affair for Riverside County supervisors.
But the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, March 23, heard calls for new elections in Eastvale and Cathedral City after roughly 11,000 ballots — 7,000 of them in Eastvale, according to numbers provided by the city manager — were mailed too late for voters to cast.
“Not sending 11,000 ballots according to state law I feel is a very big deal and absolutely had an effect” on the election, said Eastvale voter Sam Tadlock.
The board voted 4-1 to ratify the March 2 election results, which saw Measure A pass in Eastvale and Measure B approved in Cathedral City, a desert city. The Eastvale City Council was set to ratify the March 2 results Wednesday night, March 24.
Cities in Riverside County can call for special elections, with the county elections office mailing ballots and voter guides, running polling places, counting the votes and billing the cities for those tasks. Eastvale’s City Council proposed Measure A to raise the city’s spending limit, while Cathedral City leaders sought Measure B to uphold a law that phases out short-term rentals in their jurisdiction.
Riverside County Registrar of Voters Rebecca Spencer told supervisors Tuesday that voter information guides for the special elections were mailed to all registered voters in both cities by early February. In addition, 51,000 mail-in ballots were sent at the start of February to those who chose to vote by mail in every election, Spencer said.
To prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the polls, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature last year ordered that ballots be mailed to every voter in California, whether or not they were permanent vote-by-mail voters, for the Nov. 3 election.
When the voter guides went out, the Eastvale and Cathedral City special elections were not subject to that rule, Spencer said, adding that voter guides for “polling place” voters described how to request a mail-in ballot or where to vote in-person on March 2.
But on Feb. 19, Newsom signed a Senate bill requiring ballots to be mailed to all California voters for any election in 2021. The new law calls for mail-in ballots to be sent 29 days before an election. For Eastvale and Cathedral City, that meant ballots would had to have gone out by Feb. 1, Spencer said.
After the law was signed, Spencer said she reached out to a company the county uses to print ballots and asked if it could print the 11,000 ballots that had to be mailed to Eastvale and Cathedral City voters under the new law. The vendor said yes, Spencer said.
“Unfortunately, the ballot printing vendor did not hand over those ballots to (the U.S. Postal Service) until March 1, which was the day before the election,” Spencer told supervisors.
She said her office believed the ballots would be mailed Feb. 26 or no later than Feb. 27.
Tadlock said he and his wife didn’t get their ballots until Saturday, March 6. While he was able to vote in person, Tadlock, who voted no on Measure A, said he’s heard from other Eastvale voters who got their ballots late and weren’t able to vote.
Measure A passed with roughly 82% of the 5,447 votes cast, while Measure B passed with 63% of 7,946 ballots cast.
Turnout for both March 2 elections was low, especially compared to last November. Just 14.7% of Eastvale’s roughly 36,000 registered voters cast ballots on the measure, compared to 85% who voted in the November election, which included two city council seats.
In Cathedral City, March 2 turnout was 30%, compared to 82% turnout in November.
Speakers urged the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday not to certify the March results. Most were from Cathedral City, although the group include Eastvale resident Janet Herrera-Portillo.
“The bottom line is that the ballots were not sent out in a timely manner for the voters to be able to vote,” Herrera-Portillo said. “The votes of the special election should not be certified and the special election should have to be done over again in order to be done procedurally correct and (to) give each voter their right to cast their vote.”
Supervisor Jeff Hewitt, the lone vote against certification, argued that the November election gave voters the impression that they’d get a ballot in the mail for the March 2 elections.
“To me, listening to those (speakers) … there are definitely people who feel they have been disenfranchised,” he said.
Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, though, said that while what happened was unfortunate, no one in Eastvale or Cathedral City was denied the right to vote.
“I think the mistake is putting our trust in that particular vendor to deliver a product to the voters in a timely manner … I think you can make the argument we never should have mailed (the ballots) in the beginning,” he said.
“I get it. If I was a candidate on the ballot and this happened, I would be really upset. But that doesn’t mean I have the right to call for a new election when the state changed the game midway in the election process.”
Eastvale City Manager Bryan Jones on Wednesday said he didn’t see the need for a new election. Those who did not receive mail ballots in time had the opportunity to vote at four in-town polling places, he said, adding the city encouraged residents to vote by posting messages on social media and mailing election information to registered voters.
“We talked about (the election) in every council meeting from January to March,” he said. “There were signs about the election all over the city.”
About 29,000 of Eastvale’s 36,000 voters are already registered to vote by mail, Jones said via text. “So the only ones to receive the ballots late by the decision by the governor late in the election process was approximately 7,000, who still had access to 4 polling locations in the city on the day of the election.
