LA County Primary Results Are All But In … Except For Ballots That Need To Be ‘Cured’

It’s been two weeks since the primary election, and a large majority of the votes have been counted. 

But it doesn’t mean the end just yet. As our colleagues noted, the pace of the vote count has now entered a much slower, final stretch because many of the remaining ballots require extra effort to verify.

One of those extra efforts is called “curing.”

What is curing? Does it relate to ham?

No it does not. And yes, bad joke, but we hope you chuckled.

The Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters is in the process of verifying thousands of vote-by-mail ballot signatures that didn’t match signatures on file, a process called curing that will last until the end of the month. A registrar spokesperson said there were an estimated 4,000 ballots to be cured as of March 14.

When vote-by-mail ballots arrive at the registrar’s office, they are processed through an automatic signature recognition device. If there is no signature on the outside envelope or the signature doesn’t match the one on record for that voter, the ballot is pulled for human review, according to Michael Sanchez, senior information specialist at the registrar’s office.

“By state law, we are required to compare the signatures on the return envelopes to those signatures on that voter registration record,” Sanchez told LAist.

If registrar officials determine that the signatures still don’t match, or there is none, they notify the voter by mail. If they have an email and phone record, they reach out that way, too.

“The corrective action is for that voter to fill out and sign the notice that was mailed to them and return it to our office,” Sanchez said.

The deadline for the voter to return the notice is March 27.

“I think the process of..asking that voter to act one more time in returning that notice is what can be the more challenging component here,” Sanchez said.

The registrar has counted more than 1.6 million votes. That’s nearly 29% of registered voters.

As of March 14th, it had another estimated 8,200 to count.