County Purchasing New Ballot Sorting Equipment That Could Alleviate Processing 'Bottleneck' [View all]

The Board of Supervisors approved the purchase of a BlueCrest, Inc. ballot sorting machine for the Elections Office on Tuesday after a brief discussion on the decision not to use a competitive bid process.

The equipment will help handle the huge increase in vote-by-mail ballots the Elections Office processes, staff said.

Before the pandemic, vote-by-mail ballots ranged from 20-40% of ballots cast. Now, vote-by-mail ballots are sent to every registered voter, and that type of ballot accounts for more than 80% of ballots cast each election.

Santa Barbara County had processed more than 111,000 ballots as of Thursday, and about 92% of them were vote-by-mail ballots.



https://www.noozhawk.com/county-purchasing-new-ballot-sorting-equipment-that-could-alleviate-processing-bottleneck/