Counting the ballots in San Diego will be more time-efficient this year since the county purchased a high-tech counting system.
San Diego’s Registrar of Voters, Michael Vu, said the new system can count 4,000 cards per hour, compared to the old system that had the capability to count 500 cards every 45 minutes.
“What you are seeing is half the amount of people we’ve had than prior elections, particularly than the 2018 November election,” Vu told NBC 7. “And the reason why is because we purchased a new, more efficient voting system so we have high-speed scanners, a much higher speed than what we had in the past.”
The old system involved 160 scanners that counted 500 ballots in a manual process.
Because of the efficiency of the new scanners, 250 volunteers helped at the polls this year. During the last election when the old system was still in use, 500 volunteers helped.
