The Fresno County Clerk’s Office needs to be investigated. Victor Salazar, who ran unopposed this year, has made a mess out of the entire voting and ballot counting process. The Fresno Bee has an opinion piece on the mess here, and you can read this news story here.
Like most government officials, they blame their incompetence on lack of funding. But that is not going to change anytime soon, and they knew about budget cuts 6 months ago. The real problem is a complete lack of creativity, entrepreneurial thinking, and planning for right sizing government. We have all had to do this in our business lives, but the Fresno County Clerk evidently doesn’t have the capacity to operate without unlimited funding.
Salazar had 6 months to create a volunteer brigade, engage students, lower the poll worker stipend, and communicate the polling place consolidation plan to the community, and he didn’t do it. Now, given the problems, we can’t even take things like ballot security for granted.
Now, instead of most ballots being counted, over 40,000 ballots received before Election Day have not been counted. Political races hanging in the balance: Andy Vidak versus Jim Costa for CD20, and our Supervisorial contest between incumbent conservative Phil Larson and left wing SEIU backed Cynthia Sterling.
What is happening in our county is nothing short of a scandal of ineptitude.