New Riverside County registrar of voters seeks to upgrade balloting procedures

Riverside County’s new registrar wants to expand her office’s electronic voting system. Kari Verjil is asking county officials to spend nearly half-a-million dollars on new ballot tabulation machines that could speed up election night returns.

Riverside County was the last county in the state to post election night returns in the June primary election last year. That led to an internal review and the dismissal of registrar Barbara Dunmore.

Her successor, Kari Verjil, says she wants to speed counting with the addition of at least four new ballot scanners, at a cost of about $100,000 each. Verjil says she wants them in place in time for next year’s presidential election.

“I would like to get those additional Optech scanners not only for election night processes but to help us with the vote–by-mail processing. They're used for both types of ballots. Lead time to build those machines is approximately six months.”

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Most county supervisors had already tentatively agreed to spend more on new vote tabulation machines and other improvements.

Supervisor John Benoit isn’t so sure and questioned the need to spend $400,000 on machines, "in the best of circumstances, that will accelerate the counting of the votes on election night by a few hours."

Benoit says,that’s a lot to spend when the county faces a significant budget gap. Verjil confirmed that even with new tabulation machines, the county – with so many polling places spread out over such a wide area – could still be among the last in the state to report election night results.