Riverside County registrar gives tour of ballot processing facility ahead of November election

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (KABC) -- As more than 1,000 temporary and full-time employees with the Riverside County Registrar of Voters begin to sort incoming ballots, administrators are touting increased security procedures to solidify the public's trust in the upcoming presidential election.

A look at the process

Everything is video recorded and live streamed and everyone works in pairs. Registrar Art Tinoco has even banned the removal of trash from the building, just to make sure ballots do not go missing.

"Believe it or not, I keep anything that may be considered trash until after we certify the election," said Tinoco. "We go through all of the various bins; we actually look through all the equipment, anyplace where we might actually find a ballot."

Tinoco also said there's a process in place to check every ballot that's returned - either through the mail or at county drop boxes - to make sure the signature on the envelope matches the signature of the voter on file.

"The mail sorter will take an image of the envelope. That image is transferred into our election management database, where we have operators who are reviewing or comparing the signature captured on the envelope again the voter record," he explained. "

"That is done with every ballot."

Verified envelopes then have the ballots removed from them, and are sent to a room filled with dozens of workers who inspect each ballot to make sure there aren't any markings or accidental writing that could cause an error when the ballots are counted on Election Day.

To verify the accuracy of the machine count of votes, the registrar's office will be conducting hand counts at randomly chosen precincts, and comparing those results with the machine counts.