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Posted inLocal News

The life of a ballot after it leaves the voter

by Ruth Dusseault, Bay City News November 1, 2024October 31, 2024

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Early voting has begun at the Contra Costa County elections office in Martinez on Oct. 30, 2024 (Ruth Dusseault/Bay City News)

Ballots are being cast around the state between now and Tuesday at 8 p.m. when the polls close on Election Day. What happens to those ballots after they leave the voter’s hand is a multi-step process that county registrars must perform in a secure yet transparent way.

As of Wednesday, the Contra Costa County elections office had received 206,000 vote-by-mail ballots.

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Tagged: ballot boxes, ballots, California voters, Contra Costa County, Contra Costa County Clerk-Recorder, Election 2024, Election Day, election workers, signatures, USPS

Ruth Dusseault, Bay City News

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.

More by Ruth Dusseault, Bay City News

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