Exclusive | Inside LA County election vote counting facility with rows of empty desks despite $336 million budget

As the vote count totals crawl across Los Angeles and California, The California Post visited the county’s 144,000-square-foot ballot processing facility Thursday which showed dozens of empty work stations.The scene at the warehouse appeared at odds with the mounting pressure to process hundreds of thousands of remaining ballots.County officials announced Wednesday night that just 77,521 additional ballots had been processed since Election Night, but an estimated 713,180 ballots are still outstanding.Yet during The Post’s visit, large sections of the facility appeared lightly staffed.

Rows of workstations sat empty.Multiple sections of chairs were unoccupied.In one area, where ballots that cannot be automatically read by scanners are reviewed by election workers, roughly 25 bins of ballots appeared ready for processing while no employees were seated at nearby desks.In another section where workers open envelopes and prepare ballots for counting, The Post observed about 75 employees working, despite the area being capable of accommodating more than twice that number.The scrutiny comes as Los Angeles County spends nearly $336 million annually on the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office.County budget records show the department has more than 1,100 budgeted positions.The department is led by Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, who oversees the elections and earns an annual salary of $448,179, according to county records.Los Angeles County’s election operation is enormous by any measure.Los Angeles County’s voter rolls exceed 5.8 million people, more registered voters than the populations of most U.S.

statesThe Post asked the Registrar’s Office how many employees are currently assigned to ballot processing, whether staffing vacancies exist, why numerous workstations appeared empty despite the large backlog, and whether additional staffing could accelerate the count.Nico Ruderman, a Venice Neighborhood Council member and former California State S...