Politics & Government

Marin Registrar Undaunted by Close Elections

The potential for controversy and recounts with two close Marin County elections doesn't faze Registrar Elaine Ginnold.

If you happen to be among the approximately 60 percent of eligible voters who didn’t bother showing up to the polls for last week’s elections, don’t bring it up the next time you run into Elaine Ginnold.

As Marin County’s Registrar, it’s her job to make sure that every vote is counted.

But as someone committed to what she considers the essence of democracy, the subject is personal.  

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“We take it for granted, but it’s fundamental to our democracy,” Ginnold said in a recent interview with Patch.

“There are some places where people don’t have the right to vote or the right to vote is truncated in some way where their votes don’t count.”

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Ginnold has been to some of those places.

She’s traveled the world as an official elections observer in burgeoning democracies in Asia and Eastern Europe.

Ginnold is now concerned with matters much closer to home.

She heads Marin’s Elections Department, which is in the process of certifying elections countywide ahead of a Dec. 3 deadline.

The San Rafael City Council race is among two that remain too close to call, with Maribeth Bushey Lang clinging to a 238-vote lead with an unknown number of outstanding mail-in and provisional ballots yet to be counted.

Larkspur’s City Council race is even closer, with Kevin Haroff leading Daniel Kunstler by 39 votes. 

If a controversy emerges in either race, all eyes will be on Ginnold.

She is undaunted.

Ginnold is an elections veteran with more than 25 years in the business. She worked in Alameda County for 18 years – 16 years as the Assistant Registrar and two years as the Acting Registrar – before taking Marin County’s top elections post in 2005.

Her offices in Alameda came under fire for incompetence when they were forced to use touchscreen ballots rushed out just ahead of the 2004 presidential primary, scolded by a group demanding the elimination of all mechanical ballots on another occasion, and challenged by multiple candidates on the losing end of close votes.

“Sometimes when there’s a close race it gets very contentious,” she said. “People will do that. Sometimes they want to find somebody to blame and the most convenient argument is the elections office.”

Ginnold gets it in large part because she was once a politician. She was elected twice to the Dane County (Wisconsin) Board of Supervisors in the 1970s.    

That experience helped instill in her the sanctity of free and fair elections.

“I think we’re all very protective of the process,” Ginnold said. “We all work together to make sure we do everything honestly and transparently.”

Ginnold is highly respected among her industry peers.

Sonoma County Assistant Registrar Gloria Colter described Ginnold as a “dedicated public employee.”

Ginnold is among just 20 or 30 state elections officials who participate in a legislative committee monitoring election law changes and how they impact local precincts.

Others have taken note of Ginnold’s work monitoring elections in far-flung locations such as Mongolia, Albania and Kazakhstan, too.

“When you’re called to do things like that that’s because people believe in you and have confidence in your knowledge and your ability,” Colter said.

Ginnold has gained that respect by going above and beyond what’s required of an elections official.

When eligible voters on Election Day called her office saying they couldn’t get to the polls because of illness or injury, she literally brought the polls to them, sending Elections Department staffers to their homes with mail-in ballots.

Earlier this year, her office started a program of helping elderly voters living in residential care facilities register to vote and mark their ballots, if needed.

“We found that there was a need there and that people responded very well to it,” Ginnold said. “We were very careful that we followed procedures to make sure nobody felt coerced because it’s a very vulnerable population.”

Ginnold returned home from her travels with an understanding of why voting is so essential to a democracy that she insists she’ll never take for granted.

“Those elections are run very well on the whole, but at the end of election day, when all the votes have to get counted, everything becomes very obscure. It’s not transparent the way it is here, so people can’t really follow along to see what’s happening with the vote. That’s not a good thing.

“It really expands your appreciation for what we have here, as imperfect as it is.”

 


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