In person-voting on Sunday appeared to be going more smoothly in Riverside County a day after local voters encountered some unexpected delays.
“It is clear goings right now,” said Wanda Wilders, a poll worker at the Arlington Library in Riverside.
As of 10 a.m. Sunday all 130 voter assistance centers were back to normal and processing ballots without delays.
Issues with software used by all voting centers in Riverside County had been fixed overnight, Irving Rivera, an assistant supervisor, told KTLA. The combination of broadband issues and the number of voters slowed down check-ins, he said.
The location could now process voters in less than 10 minutes, Rivera said.
“We have been getting a lot of voters so that has caused a little delay, which we saw yesterday. But other than, that today we’ve been getting them in and out as fast as we can,” Rivera added.
On Saturday, some centers were experiencing “intermittent delays” in processing ballots due to “significant volume in the voter registration lookup system,” Riverside County spokesperson Brooke Federico said.
“The county team is working diligently to ensure that all sites are processing voters as quickly as possible,” Federico said in a news release. “Some voters may be offered a provisional ballot if the location they are visiting is experiencing delays.”
State Sen. Melissa Melendez tweeted earlier Saturday that voting machines in Riverside County stopped working.
“Voting machines in Riverside County are down. We are working on finding out what the problem is and when the registrar will have this fixed. This is completely unacceptable,” she wrote shortly after noon.
The county later confirmed the delays and said staff members were working to address the issues.
High voter turnout at some polling locations caused the computers used to verify voters’ eligibility to slow down, the Press-Enterprise reported.
Meanwhile, county officials said the machines voters use to cast their ballots have been working properly.
“There have been no reports of delays with the ballot marking machines at the voter assistance centers,” Frederico stated in the news release. “Ballot marking machines are not connected to the internet, and only mark ballots that are printed and then cast in a ballot box.”
The Riverside County Registrar of Voters opened 130 voting assistance centers on Saturday. Registered voters can drop off their mail-in ballots or choose to vote in person, and county election workers are asking voters to be patient at these locations.
The voter assistance centers will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday through Monday and 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Election Day. Voters can also cast their votes by returning their vote-by-mail ballot at one of the voter assistance centers, an official drop-off box or through the mail.
Ballots post-marked on or before Nov. 3 and received by the Registrar of Voters by Nov. 20, will be counted.