Butte County re-certifies election results, forgotten ballots counted
CHICO, Calif. — Butte County has re-certified the 2020 Election results after more than 500 forgotten ballots were counted.
As expected, the updated vote count did not change the outcome of any local races.
Measure E, which was the only race that could have been affected, passed by a narrower margin of 95 votes, according to the Butte County Registrar of Voters.
The measure, which made the race for city council district-based, led previously by 143 votes.
The 529 ballots were left in a dropbox on the Chico State campus before being discovered weeks after the Nov. 3 election.
"It's obviously not the way things are supposed to be going," Butte Co. Elections Manager Keaton Denlay told KRCR's Jerry Olenyn on Dec. 14. "We had 24 drop boxes in the county and the other 23 were done properly."
The updated vote count slightly boosted Butte County's record-breaking voter turnout in the 2020 Election.
A total of 104,151 votes were counted county-wide, with a voter turnout of 83.28 percent, the highest percentage Butte County has ever seen.
