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After every significant election, the OC Registrar of Voters keeps track of “What’s Left to Count?”  These reports break down ballots into different types and indicate how many have been counted (which in some categories is an estimate) and how many have not.

To the best of my knowledge, they don’t keep an archive of these daily (perhaps not most weekends) reports — so I try to remember to do it here, copying over the contents of their “Total Ballots Left to Count?” page.

A REMINDER!  My commentary will go above the double line; the counts themselves will be shown below it.  Each are in chronological order.

March 5:

• We mourn the loss of the venerable Election Day Paper Ballot.  My guess is that we’ll see it again if we ever have voting lines like they did in Los Angeles this week.  (Are people still in line?)
• The “Provisionals Left to Count” section is screwed up.  (As I believe that the ROV’s office does follow my reports, it will likely soon be fixed.)
  • First, the first line should omit the word “left”
  • Second, I’m wondering whether Provisionals are now covered under “Conditional Voter Registrations.”
  • Third and way more important than the other two combined: the text refers to “Total estimated number of ballots from Drop Boxes” — which doesn’t match its header.
• It may be that “Provisionals” is no longer a category, in which event they just need to change the header.  Or it may be that they do want separate listings for Provisionals (separate from “CVRs,” discussed above) and Drop Boxes, in which event this will take a little more coding.
• This is probably a good moment for me to reiterate my tremendous respect for the OC ROV’s office — I’ve only had a serious disagreement with them once — and this is said to inform not to shame.  They have a huge task for the next month, and one need only look north and west to see how easily and massively it can be screwed up.  From what I can tell so far, Vote Centers have been a hit.  (I’d still like to hear from those least likely to have transportation, though.)
• You can see from the figures that they have basically been working on two things for the past three days: Vote-by-Mail Ballots and Conditional Voter Registrations.
  • Vote-by-Mail ballots are an issue because so many people waited — as, among Democrats, they damn well should have because the results were changing so quickly towards the end — to vote.  (How many Steyer, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg ballots were cast in vain, given that their choices had dropped out by Election Day? I thought that it was safe to vote by Leap Day — and I wan’t cautious enough!) So they have to work on those from the start.  And, yes, ny guess is that it will likely take almost the full allotted month.)
  • Conditional Voter Registrations are at issue because they now have to notify voters whose votes might not otherwise be counted for various reasons. (I’m not sure of what all the reasons might be and how hard they are to investigate, and perhaps rebut — but I’m guessing that a functioning Democratic Party would tell voters that they should contact them before giving up on getting their vote counted.  I’d be blasting this message far and wide if I were Chair (rather than banished.)  As it is, I’ll just note that I do Election Law work and you can contact me for a free consultation.  (Leave a comment with a fake name, if you wish, but a correct email address.)

March 6:

OK — the total number of ballots appears to be set! (Unless they didn’t update all that were received in today’s mail, that is.)

That number jumped today from 190,120 to 224,576.

The total number counted rose from 51,062 to 96,709.

The total number left to count fell from 139,058 to 127,867 as a function of those two changes above — but it’s all downhill from here!  (That’s presuming no newly discovered ballots.  One thing I’m eager to learn is whether the new system will lower, raise, or not affect the predominance of this embarrassing and dispiriting problem.  People make honest mistakes, but they are painful.

They finished counting almost all of the regular Vote By Mail ballots by today.  (Neal Kelley likes to leave some of each type of ballot around until the end, probably for a sound reason, perhaps for a superstitious or aesthetic reason, and possibly just to drive me nuts.)  At any rate, there are 694 left our of the original 73,373.

What did they count today?  Aside from all but the pulp on the bottom of the pitcher of early VBMs, they polished off most of the Later But Eligible VBMs, completing 23,647 of 36,271.  Good show, folks!

They did not complete any additional Conditional Voter Registrations, which suggests that I was wrong about my belief that these had to be a priority.

We can now see that the two biggest categories remaining are the Vote-by-Mail Returned at Polling Places Left to Count, which I henceforth dub “BRAPPs” (“B” for Ballot), of which there are 72,089, and Ballots From Drop Boxes, which I hereby dub “DROPPIES,” (because “DROPPINGS” would be too unkind and DROP BOXERS too unseemly) of which there are 32,689.

Vern asked somewhere how long we expect the counting to take?  The Conditional Voter Registrations (which I continue to believe refers to “provisional ballots”) is the wild card, but if they keep at the pace of about 48,000 per day — and, again, Kelley could either increase or decrease or reassign staff as needed — then my guess is that they could finish all but the CVRs in three full days (I don’t know whether there will be a full or partial day of work either day this weekend) but my guess is that it will take five more days, excluding weekend work, as more people get put onto CVRs.  There are fewer than 9,800 CVRs left, so by the time everything else is done we’ll probably have few undecided races — although as I recall CDRs skew a little left and a little weird, and a lot end up being not-counted.

A final note:  both problems in the odd reporting of the “Ballots from Drop Boxes” count, which had previously been misnamed, has been entirely fixed.  I presume that this would have happened even without my raising the alarm — but I felt the need to do it, just in case, so that I understood what was going on!

March 7:

We saw a big increase on Saturday in the number of ballots cast in all categories, which went from 224,576 to 281,323.  Where did they come from?  Let’s find out!

• VBMs arriving no later than Election Day? No change.
• Droppies? Aha!  Dropbox contents rose from 32,689 to 69,794!  But that doesn’t account for the entire rise in total ballots.
• VBMs Returned at Polls?  Rose from 72,089 to 91,707.
• Late but Eligible VBMs?  Rose from 36,271 to 36,295,
• Provisionals?  Stayed stable.

So my guess is that, with most people out of the office for the weekend, a specially trained crew checked to make sure that all ballots had been properly recorded, and perhaps took some envelopes of their boxes to count the envelopes for the first time.  (If you’ve ever watched the counting, the spaces used are vast.)  They found 24 late VBS that happened been logged.  No big deal.  They calculated that there were about 20,000 more VBMs returned at the polls than they’d previously cataloged.  (This does not require opening the envelopes to see the ballots.)  And they opened up some drop boxes to see how many envelopes were inside.

The first Saturday after voting would be a good time to assess what the actual total number of ballots were.  (This translates to 39.3% turnout for the primary, which so far as I can recall is quite high.  But I will eventually check.)  So my guess is that there are no more boxes to open to catalog their contents — but of course there might be.

What got counted?

This is also interesting.

• VBMs arriving no later than Election Day? No change.
• Droppies? 45,747 of the 69,794 were counted today.
• VBMs Returned at Polls?  None have been counted.
• Late but Eligible VBMs?  Uncounted fell from 12,624 to 648.
• Provisionals/Conditionals?  Counted rose from 383 to 1,141.

So, today saw about 2/3 of the Droppies counted, almost all of the rest of the Late-but-Eligibles, and 1/9 of the Provisionals, leaving only 9,013.  Another day like today would finish off the Droppies and maybe half of the VBMs Returned at Polls.  The question is how long those provisionals will take if everyone can be thrown at them — and I do not know the answer to that.

March 9:

The total number of post-election ballots to be counted rose from 281,323 to  291,823 — an increase in 10,500. (This is explained below.)  Total left to count is now 102,610.

Whence came the increase?

• VBMs arriving no later than Election Day? No change.
• Droppies? Only 539 of the 69,794 are left uncounted.
• VBMs Returned at Polling Places (BRAPPs)?  None of the 91,707 have yet been counted.
• Duplicated Ballots? This is a category (for this election) that just enters our report today.  As I recall, these are ballots that are in some way damaged to the extent that they can’t be run through a scanner, so the votes have to be manually transferred to new ones that can be machine counted.  (And I’m assured that, yes, the quality assurance on this process is meticulous.)  This was the new 10,500 ballots, which some ROV employees have apparently been doing in the background, outside of the sensor range of these reports.  All but 495 of these were counted today.
• Late but Eligible VBMs?  Uncounted still at 648 out of 36,295,
• Provisionals/Conditionals?  Counted rose to 1,627 of the 10,154 originals, leaving 8,527.

In sum, today’s results represent another good-sized quaff of DROPPIES, the usual trickle of conditional registrations, and a whole lot of damaged ballots duplicated so as to be scannable.  Aside from the trickle of provisionals — which I’m guessing will be far smaller than the number supposedly left, because the original total number is not going down, so the ones that can’t be verified are presumably being left until they end, when they will be “counted” by being disqualified and removed from the total — this election will ultimately come come to BRAPPs.  But past history with BRAPPs would not be a good indicator of how they will look this year, because it was so very much easier to vote early — and the ones who waiting to bring their ballots to the polling place would have been (1) people who like the ambiance of a voting center, (2) people who really are that disorganized … and (3) Democrats waiting to see the late trends in the Presidential race.  We can gauge the number in the third category by checking to see how these late results affect the Presidential totals: I’d expect to see a proportional drop in Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Steyer votes and — most likely — a surge in votes for Biden.  (Then again, I know that lots of us Bernie voters are in that second category.)

In any event, what I care about is how this category of votes will affect AD-72.  Democrats for Tyler Diep?  I tend to doubt it…

March 10:

Everything except BRAPPs and Conditionals (fine, I’ll stop calling them “provisionals”) are at the “Neal Kelley’s pulp left in the glass” stage where they can be finished in a matter of hours, if not minutes.)  Today was mostly all BRAPPs — “[VBM] Ballots Returned at Polling Places” along with the daily trickle of provisionals.  Some races can’t be called without provisionals — Central Committee Members, mostly — but everything else will be pretty much done when the BRAPPs are done.  The closest race — Diedre Nguyen’s catching up with Tyler Diep in AD-72 — will very likely flip tomorrow.

Here are the particulars:

Uncounted BRAPPS fell by 25,278, from 91,707 to 66,429.

Uncounted Conditionals fell from 8.527 to 7,844, a reduction of 683.  At that rate, it will take 11½ more days to finish.  Of course, we might expect staffing to increase once the other ballots have finished.

One more thing: “Duplicated Ballots Left to Count,” plural.

Martch 11:

They are really picking up steam now.  The “pulp numbers ( small amount of ballots left) for BABES, for “(VBM) Ballots Arrived By Election (Day)” (694), DROPPIES of (ballots retrieved from Drop Boxes) (539), DUPES, for “Duplications and substitutions for damaged ballots” (495), and LAMES (“Late Arriving Mail that is Eligible)” (648) haven’t changed since they reached those low levels.

Now we’re down to the BRAPPS, for “Ballots Returned at Polling Places/Votes Centers” and CONDIS, “Conditional Registrations, which is somehow different from Provisional Ballots.”

BRAPPS fell from 66,429 uncounted to 11,294 — in other words, 55,135 were counted today.

CONDIS — the most intensive, as they require outside verification of eligibility — fell from 7,844 uncounted to 6,378, meaning that 1,466 were counted today.

Counting of CONDIS seems to be the limiting factor: I don’t know how much they can hurry their count up even if they throw all of their staff at them.  The 2,376 ballots left in those first four categories where wer’re down to the pulp can probably be finished in less than an hour, judging by the rate that they mowed through those BRAPPs today.  But at the present rate the CONDIS will take a little more than four days.  My guess is that at some point they’ve done all that they can to find people — which as I recall means sending certified mail to their home address — and then they get canceled and we move on.  So if you voted based on a conditional registration, GO TO THE ROV SITE and make sure that your are now registered, in which event your ballot will presumably have been counted.

Depending on that deadline, we could be almost done — or the last bits might come in slowly over this week and next.  I could call the ROV’s office and seek an explanation, but that’s more of a VOC thing to do.  I like to figure it out from the clues they leave!  But in any event, we’ll probably be talking about fewer than one vote per precinct, so once conditionals are down to triple digits even almost all of the the close races probably won’t be affected.

March 12:

The votes, they dwindle down to a precious few….  Yesterday’s 20,048 uncounted has become today’s 9,254, a reduction of 10,794.

Where’d that come from?  Well, one thing that moved in the other direction is that they recalculated their number of DROPPIES (or found another stack of them, or emptied one they had forgotten about, increasing both the number of DROPPIES over all and the amount of recounted ones by an 1,000.  So we actually must explain the reduction of 11,794 uncounted votes.

Uncounted BRAPPS fell from 11,294 to 1,358, so that 9,936 total is the brunt of the counting done today.  (For the first time, there are fewer BRAPPS than DROPPIES to count.)  The balance are CONDIS — the number of uncounted ones fell from 6,378 down to 4,520, so that’s 1,858 counted.  And that accounts for all the counting.

Let’s review the categories so that I can make my predictions:

BABES: “[VBM] Ballots Arrived By Election [Day]” = 694
DROPPIES: “[ballots retrieved from] Drop [Boxes] = 539
DUPES: “Duplications [substituting for damaged ballots]”= 495
LAMES: “Late Arriving Mail that is Eligible)” = 648
BRAPPS: “Ballots Returned at Polling Places” = 1,358
CONDIS: “Conditional [registrations, not provisionals]” = 4,520

Everything except CONDIS amounts to 3,734 ballots, which takes a third of a day at normal staffing.  (I suspect from the numbers that Kelley has maintained normal staffing, perhaps because of the desire to wrap up the Presidential Primary results.)  Those CONDIS, seem to require about 2.5 days of work.  So, combined, that’s about three days — less if the staff on normal ballots can quicken the CONDIS count.  With coronavirus coming, I suspect that Kelley would like to clear his office, so I think he will keep people Saturday and aim to finish by Tuesday — which is still a remarkable pace.

March the Friday the 13th:

If we are to believe the countdown timer, there will be counting on Saturday.  If fully staffed, will it finish things off?  Let’s take a look!  Of the 304,823 ballots cast in all categories, they have counted 302,074, leaving 2,749 uncounted.

What I find a little confusing is that the current election results show 804,410 ballots cast.  Don’t panic about that discrepancy, but I think that it will require me to do some actual reporting, like a phone call or email.  I suspect that for their “Precinct 0” they had already counted almost exactly 500,000 ballots before election day.  Nice — but were they all early VBMs?  It would be nice to know which modes people used to vote — and whether that number included anything from Vote Centers or Drop Boxes.

Among uncounted ballot categories formerly in “pulp” status:

• BABES “[VBM] Ballots Arrived By Election (Day)” fell from 694 to 144)
• DROPPIES “[ballots retrieved from] Drop Boxes”) (fell from 539 to 189)
• DUPES “Duplications & substitutions for damaged ballots” fell from 495 to 295 );
• LAMES (“Late Arriving [Vote By] Mail that is Eligible)” fell from 648 to 148).

The total remaining in these four categories combined is 776.  (If you get the idea that they’re counting ballots in increments that are multiples of 25 or 50, I’d say you’re right!)

For uncounted ballots from the two big remaining categories:

• BRAPPS “Ballots Returned at Polling Places” (which I consider Vote Centers still to be) fell from 1,358 to 158.

That brings the running total to 934.

• CONDIES (“Conditional Registrations” which apparently differ from “Provisionals”) fell from 4,540 to 1,815.

And that brings the total to 2,749 — just under 2/3 of which are Conditional Registrations.

They could probably finish on Saturday — but with a reduced staff could leave it until Monday.  Regardless, though, after this first count their work is not yet done.  I believe that they run a certain number (10%) through a check — but that will probably not require anyone but regular employees.  Hopefully, no recounts this time.

Monday, March 16

They did not finish on Saturday.  They did not finish by Monday.  I’m trying hard not to take Neal Kelley’s making hash of my every prediction personally.  Just in case he’s reading these posts and laughing at me, I now predict that he won’t be done until April 4, just to speed things up.

Here’s where we stand, with what I concede is probably a substantially and rightfully truncated team of counters, presumably all social distancing their hearts out:

The “Total ballots left to count” count is down by exactly 1,000, from 2,749 to 1,749.

BABES (IN BY ELECTION DAY), still 144
DROPPIES (DROPBOXES), still 189
BRAPPS (RETURNED AT POLLS) still 158
DUPES (DAMAGED BALLOTS) 195, down by 100
LAMES (LATE ARRIVING MAILED ELIGIBLE) still 148
CONDIES (CONDITIONAL REG) 915, down by 900

Could they finish the initial count tomorrow?  Sure, with enough labor, which is unnecessary (as the state’s final delegate results are hung up on almost every other county other than OC.)

Will they?  Probably not.  And what I don’t recall is whether they do the verification before they declare themselves entirely done.  (And, for all I know, they may already be doing the verification before they even finish the last few ballots.)

Tuesday, March 17

The conditional ballots have been vanquished, down from 915 to a mere 15.  The total left to count is down from 1,749 to 704.  It is reasonable to expect that tomorrow is going to be the end, which is why I dare not predict that outcome.

The other numbers, save for the droppies, haven’t budged.

BABES (BALLOTS ARRIVED BY ELECTION DAY), still 144
DROPPIES (DROPBOXES), was 189, now 44
BRAPPS (BALLOTS RETURNED AT POLLS) still 158
DUPES (DAMAGED BALLOTS) still 195
LAMES (LATE ARRIVING MAIL, ELIGIBLE) still 148
CONDIES (CONDITIONAL REG) was 915, now 15

TODAY WAS THE DAY that we finally passed 50% turnout in the primary.  (Yesterday, we got there only by rounding up.)

March 18: 

TOTAL: Down from 704 to 533
BABES: Down from 144 to 0
BRAPPS: Down from 158 to 131

I’m betting on three things: (1) Neal Kelley is slow-walking this count at the end just to keep other counties’ Registrars of Voters from looking bad, (2) No more than five people did counting today, and (3) Despite all that, it will still be done on Friday, so that everyone can have a relating weekend.  (Or Maybe Tuesday.)

March 19:

March 5

March 13