2 weeks Ago By Fresno Bee
Election workers for Fresno County scrambled to recover materials from a ballot drop-off box in southeast Fresno on Thursday after someone discovered that a key to the box had been left in the lock earlier in the day. James Kus, Fresno County Clerk / Registrar of Voters, reported that the ballot box at Fancher Creek Elementary School had been left unsecured by workers tasked with collecting ballots from the boxes after the latest collection at 10 a.m.
Thursday. Someone from the public found the key still in the lock and took it to the school office. School officials notified the clerk/registrar’s Elections Division at about 5:30 p.
m. “This is the first time that a ballot drop box has been left unsecured by Election staff members due to human error since 2019,” Kus told The Fresno Bee on Friday. He added that one of the team members behind the error had been reassigned to other duties, while the other opted to step away from the job rather than be reassigned.
The two are among between 60 and 70 extra-help workers hired through the county’s human-resources process to augment the Elections Division staff of about 30 people for the election season. Most of those extra-help workers are paid at minimum wage. Kus said that when election workers went to the school to retrieve the box and secure it, it held about 50 ballot envelopes.
None of those ballot envelopes – each of which bears the voter’s name and has a bar code specific to that voter – appear to have been tampered with. “All of those were signed and still sealed,” he added. “They’re all in good shape and they’re secure, and we’ll review the signatures on each one, just like we do with every ballot that’s returned.
” After that is done, those votes will be counted like every other ballot. But, he added, any voter who dropped off their ballot at the Fancher Creek location on Thursday can contact the Elections Division at a toll-free number, 844-977-8683, to verify that their ballot has been received by the department. “We can check the list and verify that we have it,” Kus said.
A new box with a new locking mechanism has already been installed at the school. “We were fortunate to have a couple of boxes in reserve,” Kus said. The keys used for Fresno County’s ballot boxes are of a design unique to the county that cannot be duplicated by standard key equipment at a hardware store.
But, Kus said, each key is capable of operating all of the county’s boxes. The human error, he added, prompted the department to immediately look at strengthening its processes for the ballot drop boxes. “The team did everything properly, they collected the ballots and locked it back up, but they just left the key in the lock,” he said.
In a written statement, the county noted that two-person teams are tasked with serving the 67 drop boxes that are scattered throughout Fresno County: 36 in Fresno, eight in Clovis, and 23 in communities across the county. “Each team is responsible for a chain of custody recording when, where and how many ballots are retrieved from each ballot drop box, and when and to whom the envelopes are delivered at the County Elections warehouse.” Drop-box teams are being required to get additional training on box security, and teams started using photographs to ensure that boxes are locked and keys accounted before leaving a box location, starting on Friday.
“While this is an unfortunate human error, it will lead to us having drop boxes that are more secure moving forward,” Kus told The Bee. As of Thursday, the Elections Division had received more than 27,000 ballots through the drop-off boxes, along with almost 54,000 ballots returned so far by voters through the U.S.
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