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-Editorial
California Governor Gavin Newsom will stay in office as a majority of Californians voted “NO” against the recall led by state Republicans who were against the Governor’s restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Imperial County Registrar of Voters issued an “Unofficial Election Results” update on the Registrar’s website at https://elections.imperialcounty.org/ for the September 14 Gubernatorial Recall Election.
Early results show that Imperial County voters said no to the recall. Republican challenger Larry Elder received the largest amount of votes in the Imperial Valley with 3,072 votes at the beginning of the vote count. No other candidate was close to reaching the 1,000 vote mark locally.
“‘No’ is not the only thing that was expressed tonight,’” Mr. Newsom said. “We said “yes” to science, we said ‘yes’ to vaccines, we said “yes” to ending this pandemic.”
Mr. Newsom’s leading opponent, talk show host Larry Elder, received the most votes on the ballot’s second question of who should become governor, if the recall were successful, with 44.7%.
“As of today, there is an unknown number of vote-by-mail ballots, including an undetermined number of vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by September 14, 2021, not yet received by the Registrar’s office. These postmarked ballots must be received by the Registrar’s office by 5:00 p.m. on September 21, 2021. Furthermore, the Registrar’s office may receive additional ballots that were deposited to outside counties,” stated Gil Rebollar, County Public Information Officer.
Provisional ballots are counted after all voter rosters are reviewed and the voter’s history is applied to the voter’s record. The procedure for tallying provisional ballots is just as long as processing vote-by-mail ballots, but require some additional steps to take. This process includes:
- Staff members work one precinct at a time and one provisional envelope at a time;
- Each voter of a provisional ballot must be located on the Election Management System (EMS) identified by name, address, and/or birthdate. Updates to changed addresses are made at this time;
- Signatures are validated through the EMS; and
- Provisional ballots are cross-referenced to precinct voter rosters to ensure multiple ballots were not cast.
As mandated by the State of California, the Registrar of Voters has until October 14, 2021, to certify the election. The Registrar’s staff will work diligently to complete the election canvassing process and update the public of results in a timely manner. The Registrar’s office thanked the public for their patience as staff and poll workers continue to conduct canvassing for this election.
