SLO County getting more space to count, store ballots — just in time for presidential election

The San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder’s Office is getting a makeover, complete with more room for counting and storing ballots.

The former one-room elections office held space for counting ballots, along with a roll-up window and cabinets for ballot storage, according to Deputy Director Clerk-Recorder Melanie Foster.

The room didn’t leave much space for people to move around — especially when candidates and citizens crammed into the office to watch staff count the ballots.

Construction will add a new, 185 square-foot room to the office for ballot storage, which is critical in a county with such an engaged electorate, Foster said.

During the March primary election, San Luis Obispo County had a 52.3% voter turnout — much higher than the statewide average of 34%.

“People want to see the process and people are voting,” Foster said.

The ballot processing and counting area will now be 1,165 square-feet, offering some more breathing room to both election workers and observers.

“I’m hoping it will flow a little bit better,” she said.

Still, the new space isn’t large enough to hire more staff to count the ballots, according to Foster.

“This is a stop-gap, it’s not an absolute solution,” Foster said. “We still need more space, we can’t fit more people.”

The county hired Rob Reynolds Construction to complete the $500,000 project, according to San Luis Obispo County Public Works Department spokesperson Shelly Cone. The funding was allocated from the county’s General Government Building Replacement Reserves, she said.

Hunter Smith Architecture is the lead architect on the project.

Construction started on April 6 and should be completed by mid-August — just in time to prepare for the November election, Foster said.

Elections office gets more ballot storage, counting space

The new office will be divided into two rooms: a ballot storage space and a ballot processing space.

The storage room will include built-in, locked cabinets and multiple security cameras, according to Foster.

There, the county will store ballots from the active election until the results are certified. Then, the ballots will be moved to the county’s warehouse and held for 22 months before being destroyed, Foster said.

Rob Reynolds Construction tore out a wall and expanded the office into an area that was formerly an interview room for the San Luis Obispo County Human Resources Department.

The additional storage is helpful with the potential for a two-card ballot, Foster said.

AB 1416, which was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2022, will require future ballot measures to add a list of supporters and opponents to its summary on the ballot.

“It’s going to take up a lot of extra space on the ballot,” Foster said, so she expects the county will need to switch over to two-card ballots.

The only time SLO County had a two-card ballot was during the June primary election in 2022, according to Foster.

Construction will also change the layout of the “fish bowl” area of the office, where staff process and count the ballots.

Each step of the ballot processing and counting procedure will now fit in the same room, Foster said.

Before, staff sliced open mail-in ballot envelopes in the archive room down the hall, completed signature verification in a different room across the hall, then processed and counted the ballots in the so-called fish bowl, Foster said.

Now, staff will scan the ballots, verify the signatures, open the envelopes, inspect the ballots and count them in the same room, she said.

This will reduce the hassle of moving ballots around the Katcho Achadjian Government Center, and make the ballot-counting process easier for observers to understand, according to Foster.

“They can see it from beginning to end,” she said.

The county will also establish a dedicated area to process candidate filing in the new space, which formerly took place in the Clerk-Recorder’s Office, Foster said.

“We encourage any citizens who are curious to come see us,” Foster said. “We’re always here to answer questions.”