KPIX Vote Smart: Early Ballots Already In Hands Of Contra Costa Country Election Workers

MARTINEZ (KPIX) - For voters in Contra Costa County who submitted their ballots last week, those pages could already be in the hands of election workers.

"We're starting a soft start today on what we call the extraction process, which is removing the cards from the envelopes," says Contra Costa Assistant Registrar of Voters Scott Konopasek.

One-by-one, they are extracted by hand and inspected page by page. All of these ballots have already been verified as coming from registered voters, and with the correct signatures. This afternoon they're getting prepared for the machines that will count them.

"So as long as they are not ripped, or stained," explains Chandra Ocasio with Contra Costa Elections Services. "There's no tape to stop it from running through the machine. It's not filled out in red, orange, pink ink, it's good to go."

These pages will actually start getting scanned by the ballot counting machines early next week. That does not mean the county is counting up the votes. There's another word for that.

"Tabulation is when you add up everything that you scan and produce a report," Konopasek says. "And that's at 8 p.m., on Tuesday."

Thirteen days out and ballots are now stacked to the ceiling here and more continue to pour in.

"Yeah, the elections department was going to be really busy and stuff," said voter Nick Dragisich. "So we decided to get our ballots in early to help the county out too."

The result is a tremendous workload getting spread out over several weeks, and the possibility that the workload on election night might be historically small.

"After today, we will be over 35 or 36 percent," Konopasek says of turnout so far. "Over one third of our voters have already returned their ballots to us, and it's gone through at least the first step of processing."