It was around 6 p.m. on May 4 when Registrar of Voters Juan Pablo Cervantes received the call.
Staff members preparing drop boxes to begin accepting ballots the next day for the June primary had just found nearly 600 envelopes containing votes cast in the November special election still inside one that had been posted at the Humboldt County Elections Office.
“My immediate reaction was devastation. We care deeply about the integrity of this process, and discovering a mistake like this was incredibly painful, not just for me, but for my entire staff,” Cervantes said in an email to the Journal. “My team works in elections because they genuinely believe in the democratic process and its importance in civic life.
“From there, our immediate focus was on securing the ballots, documenting what had occurred, preserving the integrity of the situation, and beginning to evaluate what legal and procedural avenues might exist moving forward,” he continued. “At the same time, we began reviewing how this happened and what corrective actions needed to be implemented immediately. We wanted to make sure that although a terrible mistake had been made, we handled it with the utmost integrity.”
Less than 48 hours later, the county issued a news release on the discovery, including a statement from Cervantes, who took ultimate responsibility, describing the turn of events as “unacceptable” and saying it “runs counter to the core of what this office stands for.”
“I have always emphasized the importance of honesty and transparency in this office,” he said. “I am sharing this with you because you deserve to know when we fall short, not just when things go right. I promise you that we are taking this seriously. We will strengthen our processes and continue pushing toward the standard our community expects and deserves. As long as I serve as your county clerk-recorder and registrar of voters, I will continue to operate with transparency and remain accountable to you.”
What the review by his office found, Cervantes told the Journal, was there had been a miscommunication about the status of the drop box in question.
Just like every election night, teams of two — comprising county supervisors, county department heads and election workers — were dispatched to sit watch at the 12 metal containers situated from Trinidad to Willow Creek to Redway about 20 to 30 minutes before the polls closed.
“Those teams are on site with seals, chain-of-custody materials and closeout procedures in place so that voting closes exactly at 8 p.m. If voters are physically in line at 8 p.m., they are still allowed to cast their ballot, but anyone arriving after 8 p.m. is not permitted to deposit a ballot,” he said. “Once the final voter in line has voted, the team seals the drop box, documents the closeout process and transports the ballots back to the Elections Office. The boxes remain sealed until teams of election workers at our office retrieve the ballots and document the counts.”
On the night of Nov. 4, Cervantes said, the team assigned to the one at the election headquarters in Eureka had “partially removed” ballots from the drop box before being “redirected to another responsibility with the intention of returning to complete the process.”
“During that transition, there was a miscommunication that the box had already been fully emptied and completed, and the box was stored without being fully emptied,” he said.
To prevent another similar occurrence, the office immediately enacted additional steps to drop box closing procedures going forward.
Under the previous process, according to Cervantes, the number of ballots collected from each one were documented but there was not a specific check-off on the box itself.
“To strengthen that process, we added a new physical verification procedure. At the end of election night, two election workers now physically inspect each ballot drop box to confirm it is empty. They complete and sign a verification form, which is then placed inside the empty box,” he said.
“The following day, a different pair of election workers conducts a second physical check of the drop box and retrieves the verification form,” Cervantes continued. “The box is then sealed with a uniquely numbered seal that is documented on the form. The verification records are retained with the official election materials. In short, we added multiple layers of physical verification, documentation and accountability.”
As of May 15, Cervantes said none of the 596 voters impacted have been notified by his office.
“Since the ballots were discovered, they have been minimally handled out of an abundance of caution while we pursue all legal avenues to have them counted,” he said.
How that might happen is unclear.
As the initial release stated and Cervantes noted in his follow up with the Journal, the county is working to have the ballots included in the final election tally in conjunction with the California Secretary of State’s Office. Beyond that, officials have declined to offer any specifics.
“Given that we’re currently in the midst of a legal process, and in order to protect the integrity of that process, I can’t comment further at this time,” Cervantes said. Similarly, county spokesperson Catarina Gallardo told the Journal, “Since this is a legal matter, the county must respect the integrity of that process and will not be discussing those details further with the press at this time.”
The Secretary of State’s Office initially indicated in a May 6 email that it was working on answering a series of questions, including how uncounted ballots found after an election are handled in general. When the Journal followed up after receiving no response for a week, a member of the press team said that it was “reviewing the matter and in contact with Humboldt County. We will share any information we have as it is available.”
As the Journal was going press late Tuesday afternoon, the press office sent another email, saying that the “situation is not at all common,” and referring any further questions on how the county was moving forward on the matter to the local elections office.
An added wrinkle is that California Elections Code requires ballots be “destroyed six months after the election was certified.” With the certification having taken place Dec. 5 on the local level and Dec. 12 on the state level, the clock is ticking.
The Journal found one other similar instance in the state, which Cervantes said he was also aware of. In December of 2020, 529 mail-in ballots were found in a locked but unemptied drop box set out near Chico State University after the certified results from the previous month’s election had already been published.
“I believe that incidents like this are very rare,” Cervantes said, noting the Chico case “was one of the only comparable examples I was able to find.”
That situation was resolved after the Butte County Clerk-Recorder’s Office requested and was granted a waiver for the certification deadline by a superior court judge, allowing the ballots to be counted and the results recertified.
While the outcome for one item on the ballot could have changed due to the additional votes, the measure still passed in the end, just by a slimmer margin.
Regardless of whether the ballots found in Humboldt County are counted, last year’s special election results won’t be impacted. The only item being decided was Proposition 50, which temporarily sets aside congressional maps drawn by the state’s independent, nonpartisan commission that oversees redistricting until the next census in 2030.
Passed by nearly 65 percent of voters across the state, the initiative — dubbed the “Election Rigging Response Act” — was a direct partisan response by the California Legislature to the Trump administration’s nationwide gerrymandering push to secure more Republican seats in the Capitol before mid-terms.
The statewide support was mirrored locally as well. Adding in those found earlier this month, about 48,100 ballots were returned, meaning around 56 percent of Humboldt County’s 86,000 registered voters participated. The vast majority were mail-in ballots, with only 5,500 residents using a voting center, according to the final cumulative report issued by the elections office on Dec. 3. By those numbers, the 596 uncounted ballots equate to 1.2 percent of the total votes.
The president, an ardent critic of main-in ballots amid his unsubstantiated and discredited allegations of voter fraud, took particular aim at Proposition 50, which was designed to match tit-for-tat the five congressional seats that the Texas State Legislature had moved to be more friendly to Republican candidates under its redrawing effort.
That includes posts on Truth Social calling the initiative “unconstitutional,” a “giant scam” and “rigged.” At the time, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Secretary of State Shirley Weber pushed back on his election day allegations.
“The bottom line is California elections have been validated by the courts,” Weber said in a statement. “California voters will not be deceived by someone who consistently makes desperate, unsubstantiated attempts to dissuade Americans from participating in our democracy.”
The discovery of the secured but uncounted votes on May 4 comes as mail-in ballots used in elections across the nation are facing a renewed attack by the Trump administration.
The president issued an executive order March 31 decreeing the creation of state voter eligibility lists using federal data, including Social Security information, and requiring the U.S. Postal Service to only deliver mail-in or absentee ballots to those whose names are included. That would thrust the agency into playing an unchartered role in determining voter eligibility.
Elected officials and a coalition of voter rights organizations are challenging the order in court, including the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law.
According to the center, “the executive order would inject chaos into our elections, block eligible American citizens from voting, undermine voter privacy, and expose election officials and others to criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs.”
And, it notes, the order and another similar attempt in 2025 “are unlawful principally because the president lacks any authority to run elections. The Constitution gives only states and Congress the power to set election rules.”
An issue brief by the Bipartisan Policy Center outlines several “challenges” presented by the order, starting off with a reference to the aforementioned elections clause of the U.S. Constitution.
On the matter of eligibility lists, the brief states that while the section seems “intended to give states a federal resource for ensuring that individuals on their voter rolls are U.S. citizens,” such rosters would “likely be incomplete and inaccurate” due to the number of reasons why an individual “may not be present on U.S. citizenship databases.”
Those include, according to the policy center, older “natural-born citizens” who might be missing from the system because the Social Security Administration “only began tagging citizenship status about 40 years ago.”
“The order includes a provision for individuals to access and correct their records, but no federal ‘cure process’ of this kind exists today,” the brief states. “The 90-day timeline for DHS to build the entire system — including the correction mechanism — is ambitious for a program that could require millions of people to verify their citizenship or update their residency information.”
The policy center also notes federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting, instances of that occurring are “extremely rare” and citizenship verification already takes place on the state level.
Similarly, the provision regarding mail-in ballots “appears intended to ensure that mail ballots are only sent and returned by eligible voters, and to create an auditable tracking mechanism for ballot mail,” but those mechanisms currently exist, with the brief stating: “Mail voting is already safe and secure.”
Receiving a ballot at home has become increasingly popular across the nation and the same rings true in Humboldt County, especially since the COVID pandemic, with Cervantes saying around 85 percent of local voters choose the option.
The process, he said, “is a longstanding and heavily used part of elections across the country, and it includes multiple layers of safeguards and verification.”
“In fact, voting by mail as a method of enfranchisement in the United States dates back as far as the Civil War,” he said.
Asked to address the security and safety of elections in the current political climate, Cervantes said he understands “people hear a great deal of national rhetoric around elections and mail voting, but our responsibility locally is to focus on the actual process, the actual safeguards and the actual facts.”
“In Humboldt County, ballots are handled by trained local election workers under documented procedures,” he said. “Ballots are issued to actively registered voters, returned ballots go through signature verification, and there are chain-of-custody and reconciliation procedures for ballots returned by mail, drop box, or in person, all while actively encouraging the public to observe every step of the process.”
“No election system should rely on blind trust alone, which is why transparency is so important to us,” Cervantes concluded. “We want people to ask questions, come observe, and understand how the process works. I firmly believe the answer to skepticism and building public confidence is transparency, accountability and continual improvement.”
Interested voters can track their ballots through the Secretary of State’s Office at california.ballottrax.net/voter/.
Kimberly Wear (she/her) is the assistant editor at the Journal. Reach her at 442-1400 or kim@northcoastjournal.com.
This article appears in ‘Devastation’.
