By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
County Clerk Generosa “Janie” Ramon said she had cautioned voters and candidates to expect a slightly longer-than-usual wait for election returns.
In recent elections over the past few years, the results of early voting had been announced shortly – five minutes to 30 minutes – after the polls closed at 7 p.m. on Election Day, but Ramon said she knew results would take longer in the 2022 General Election.
The 830 Times spoke to Ramon about the delays on Thursday.
“I knew I was going to get that question, but sometimes people need to listen,” Ramon said.
“I was doing radio interviews, radio ads, both for the (county clerk’s) office and for my campaign, and on various occasions, I told them, ‘This is not going to be an election where you’re going to get results at 7 o’clock (as soon as the polls close).
“We had five write-ins on the ballot. In order for those write-ins to be official, each one has to be looked at separately. They cannot be tabulated by the machine,” Ramon said.
Ramon said she had experienced assistance in dealing with the write-in ballots cast in the election.
“I think I’m very lucky that Jovita Aguero, who is a Republican, is charged with that. She has been the central counting station judge for years. The central counting station is the body that accepts all the ballot boxes coming in on Election Day, makes sure that we have keys for the building, the voted ballots, the supplies, if they had any provisional ballots at their location, if they had any problems, specific problems with the machines or people or anything,” Ramon said.
“She gets help from my staff here when those things come in, so each judge comes in, and before bringing all their stuff in, the alternate judge of each location is charged with bringing in the final tally from each machine, the memory sticks from each machine and they are put in banker’s bags that are sealed with numbers and receipts. All that chain of custody has to happen before they get here.
“And then they turn them over to Jovita, and she verifies everything. She has a checklist she uses for each polling location, and she checks. Did they give me the keys? Yes. Did they give me the box? Yes. Where are the ballots? Where is Ballot Box 3? Where is Ballot Box 4?
“Once she clears them, she will turn over the information from that machine to the tabulators, and the tabulators are taking that information and feeding it into the computer, and again, we had poll watchers. This time we had four, and each polling location had poll watchers,” Ramon said.
“Before, I could do early voting and spit it out and have the results at 7:05. The problem this time was that some of the people who voted early also voted for one of the write-ins, so I can’t tally that and put it out because then the write-in candidates will be sitting there saying, ‘Well, you reported results, but they didn’t include my numbers.’ We had to wait, and I was trying to get people ready (for the delay),” Ramon said.
She said she understands the frustration, though.
“Candidates worked really hard. They were really putting out their information, getting their people to block walk, getting people out to vote for them, and they’re anxious to get the results. They want to know, and they’re entitled to know, but they’re entitled to know accurate information, not inaccurate information,” Ramon said.
Ramon also said the voter turnout in this election is higher than it has been.
“Typically in a general election, the biggest chunk of that comes out in early voting, because they get two weeks. They know they have two weeks, so people procrastinate and they put it off. But then you have those voters that say Election Day is Election Day. I won’t vote early because I want to know my vote is the one that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, and they’re entitled to that,” she said.
“I predicted between 5,000 and 6,000 would come out in early voting, and we had almost 7,000. I was happy about that because the county is responsible for the early voting part. It’s our responsibility to put it on, making sure everything is done, everything is working, everything is functioning. The county is responsible,” she said.
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