As in 2008, voting officials tabulate high number in 2012

By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

What if you go to the polls, but your name isn’t on the rolls? What if Solano County Registrar of Voters contends it sent you a vote-by-mail ballot, but you never received it, or lost it?

What if you want to vote at another precinct than your own on Election Day?

Provisional ballots can take care of that.

Jeff Aberbach, inspector of Precinct 21010, stayed busy during Tuesday’s election, walking voters through the procedure to cast provisional ballots.

They began by signing a roster. They completed forms. They were invited to fill in a voter registration application, in case the problem that led to their casting a provisional ballot could be averted in the next election.

Then they marked a two-sided ballot at voter stalls. They returned to Aberbach’s table, where they slipped their folded ballot into an envelope the inspector sealed while they watched. He dropped each envelope into a suitcase-shaped ballot box.

Before the voters left with their “I voted” sticker, they also were given an ID number they will use in 30 days to tell whether their provisional ballot was counted.

That’s because those ballots get examined by the Solano County Registrar of Voters to make sure the votes have been cast legitimately.

In the 2010 election, Aberbach said, the county registrar didn’t send enough provisional ballots, and his precinct quickly ran out.

This year, he was handed 100, but at the rate he was going through those ballots Tuesday, that might not have been enough, either.

No matter, he said. If necessary, a precinct can substitute regular ballots for the slimmer, folded provisional ones, so long as their provisional status is clearly indicated.

“We just grab a stack of ballots,” he said. “We’ll never run out.”

If a vote-by-mail ballot was lost or didn’t arrive, the person cast a provisional ballot. If no vote-by-mail ballot shows up at the Registrar of Voters Office in Fairfield, then the person’s provisional ballot counts.

Some voters wanted to vote in another precinct in Solano County rather than their own. Those people got provisional ballots as well.

Sometimes voters’ names didn’t show up on the precinct rolls, Aberbach said. “There can be any number of glitches. Maybe there were transposed letters.”

Aberbach didn’t worry about the cause of the glitches. His job was to give each person a chance to vote before they leave his poll site.

The ballots were taken to the county seat, where employees in the Registrar of Voters Office will examine each of them and determine whether they will count.

“We give them the opportunity to cast their votes before they leave,” he said.

One new development employed for the first time in Benicia and other Solano cities this election was to place a vote-by-mail drop box in the City Clerk’s office of Benicia City Hall, 250 East L St.

“People loved it,” Clerk Lisa Wolfe said.

“A lot of ballots were dropped off. People are using it.”

A bonus is that ballots from the city’s various precincts also were brought to City Hall during election day. They were sealed in a vault until taken to Fairfield.

Registrar of Voters employees picked up the first batch early Tuesday afternoon, so counting of ballots began even before polls closed at 8 p.m.

Wolfe said the new procedure is expected to be kept in place in future elections. “I think it’s a hit,” she said.

Visit www.solanocounty.com/depts/rov/ for details on county election results.