Alameda County, despite registrar's resistance, may require early release of cast vote records

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A pixelated Alameda County Registrar Tim Dupuis addressing the Board of Supervisors earlier this year.

ELECTION 2024

36 days to Election Day

—POLICY CHANGE—With just days before vote-by-mail ballots are mailed to all Alameda County registered voters, comes a major policy directive that hopes to ensure transparency in the coming election.

—The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will discuss on Tuesday a proposed policy that would direct Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis to release cast vote records beginning with the first batch of results released on Election Night.

—The policy directive would cover all races in Alameda County.

—The cast vote record item on Tuesday’s agenda follows a board letter written by Supervisor Keith Carson.

—Several members of the newly created Alameda County Election Commission, for much of this year, have been clamoring for the release of a cast vote record, a digital version of the tabulated votes, but without any information about voters.

—Carson’s proposal specifically excludes the release of ballot images.

—Proponents for releasing the cast vote record believe the county’s bungling of ranked choice voting in an Oakland school board race in November 2022 could have been averted if more eyes were available to notice any potentially peculiar patterns in the cast vote record.

—San Francisco releases cast vote records on Election Night and after every subsequent update of election results.

—But Dupuis has resisted calls to release cast vote records on a timely basis. In past years, cast vote records have been released after the election is certified, roughly a month after Election Day.

—At the Election Commission’s meeting in August, Dupuis suggested that pending state legislation may prohibit him from the early release of vote cast records.

—But some skeptical commissioners reached out to the California Secretary of State’s office on their own. The answers the commissioners received differed from what Dupuis had communicated to them.

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