Discarded ballots found in a ravine near California’s Highway 17 in the Santa Cruz Mountains are now under review by the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.
Spokesperson Michael Borja told NTD, a sister media of The Epoch Times, in an email that the U.S. Postal Service turned in approximately 35 ballots, which are being reviewed.
The Registrar of Voters wrote in the email that these ballots will still be processed. Borja said these ballots have to be proven to have been postmarked on or before Election Day or have to get a confirmation from the Postal Service. These ballots will still need to “undergo the same validation and signature verification processes as all other mail ballots,” he added.
“Any ballots whose envelopes have been opened or sufficiently torn such that the ballot may have been tampered with cannot be counted,” Borja stated.
The discarded ballots were first found by a local registered nurse, Julie Ann Nieman, on Nov. 10, when she was on her way to work and took a break from motorcycle riding to warm up her hands. Nieman told NTD that the area is a place where people tend to dump garbage.
However, she noticed “new garbage” that seemed unusual. In addition to dozens of ballots, Nieman said there were other pieces of mail and parcels torn open.
Two of the people whose ballots were recovered told NBC Bay Area that they had dropped off their ballots at a post office drive-thru mailbox on Payne Avenue in west San Jose.
Postal officials in Washington, D.C. have joined the investigation. As of Nov. 15, it is unclear who is responsible for discarding the ballots, other mail, and parcels and how the ballots ended up at a highway dump site.
Nieman said, “If that was my ballot that I spent a lot of time [and] energy going through it and voting and doing everything, that would be very upsetting to me that my ballot was just dumped on the side of the road.”
Affected voters will be notified after the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters finishes reviewing all the ballots, according to Borja.
