NBC Bay Area reported the discovery to the Registrar of Voters and the postal service late Friday afternoon, so the investigation is in its early stages.
The Registrar of Voters was reluctant to speculate on exactly what happened or how the ballots reportedly ended up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but it closely examined the pictures NBC Bay Area provided.
“Well, it appears in the pictures that there are ballots mixed in with non-election material,” Shannon Bushey with the Registrar of Voters said. “So, with seeing that, you would think this may have come from the postal stream somehow.”
The Registrar of Voters wanted to remind voters that they can track their ballot by going to its website to make sure it ends up where it’s supposed to.
The Santa Clara County Registrar’s Office told NBC Bay Area Sunday that the postal inspector has the ballots now and is processing them as evidence.
The county attorney is working on getting the ballots back to the elections office, so they can be counted.