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Thousands of ballots are being processed amid a surge of early voting

Early voting has seen thousands of votes arriving daily at the Elections Division office in Ventura
Caroline Feraday
/
KCLU
Early voting has seen thousands of votes arriving daily at the Elections Division office in Ventura.

Election officials in Ventura County say they've not seen early voting in such high numbers in previous elections, ahead of the November 5 Presidential Election.

Two metal carts are wheeled into the election divisions office at Ventura County Headquarters, which are piled up with plastic trays with around 9,000 neatly stacked envelopes. This is just today’s delivery of postal votes.

Michelle Ascencion, Ventura County Clerk Recorder and Register of Voters, points out that it's a "lot" for one day.

Her office is responsible for the counting of those votes, and she says they’re already seeing a high turn out of early voters in the county.

"We've seen a lot more people taking advantage of early voting. So that's actually been surprising to a number of us that have been around for a while. We haven't seen that many people coming in to the office to vote this early at this point in past elections," she said.

The Apex machine verifies signatures against voter records
Caroline Feraday
/
KCLU
The Apex machine verifies signatures against voter records

Within minutes of delivery, the envelopes are already taken to a separate room, where the air conditioning is turned up to keep it cooler, because it’s housing a giant cream-colored machine which can get hot when it’s in operation and working rapidly to verify the signatures on every envelope.

"This is called the Apex," explains Ascencion. "And what it's doing is scanning the barcode, which brings up the voter's record. And it's doing a high speed comparison of the signature. Those that are a match are sorted into one section, and those that appear to be a little off or the signature is missing...those are going into a different section. And so that's our first point of signature verification is with this Apex machine," she said.

From here, the ballots which are verified are taken to a room they nick-name 'the cage'. It’s secured by a metal chain link fence. A member of the public holds a note pad as she observes, as a woman wearing latex gloves sits in front of another special machine which slices open each envelope, and she separates the envelope from the ballot inside.

That's so that votes are kept private, explained Ascencion.

The ballots are then unfolded and flattened out before they can be taken to a secure room housing the machines which read the ballots.

"These are ballot scanners," explains Ascencion. "These are the machines that people seem to be concerned about, you know, whether there's an Internet connection or not. And this entire room is a closed system. What happens is they'll put a batch into the machine and the machine runs it through at a high pace. This is where the data is collected," she said.

Ahead of the election, there’s a steady and busy stream of sorting and organizing by the army of 800 background checked and vetted employees who come on board for the election. And Ascension says that come election night, the activity will go up a level and there’s an electric atmosphere.

"A lot of them come back, you know, election after election because they appreciate being part of the process so much," she said.

Ascencion says that more than ever, she wants to make sure the public understand and have confidence in the safety and security of their votes as they are processed.

Caroline joined KCLU in October 2020. She won LA Press Club's Audio Journalist of the Year Award in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Since joining the station she's won 10 Golden Mike Awards, 6 Los Angeles Press Club Awards, 2 National Arts & Entertainment Awards and a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Writing.

She started her broadcasting career in the UK, in both radio and television for BBC News, 95.8 Capital FM and Sky News and was awarded the Prince Philip Medal for her services to radio and journalism in 2007.

She has lived in California for eleven years and is both an American and British citizen - and a very proud mom to her daughter, Elsie.