Registrar says county can produce JSON cast-vote records; board urged to direct release

The Alameda County Registrar of Voters told the Board of Supervisors on Nov. 12 that the office can produce a machine-readable cast vote record (CVR) in JSON format for this election and that a verbal approval from the Secretary of State's office allowed it for this cycle.

Registrar Tim Dupuis said he had discussed the file format with the Deputy Secretary of State and received verbal approval to produce a JSON CVR for this election, with the ability to redact precincts with 10 or fewer votes in compliance with state guidance. "I've also explained to her that we see San Francisco continuing to produce the JSON file," the registrar said. He added the office can produce the JSON as part of scheduled tally updates but noted that each update requires quiescing the tally environment and can add processing time of up to a couple of hours due to ranked-choice computations and the CVR generation.

Speakers at public comment — including Karen Butter of the Alameda County Elections Commission and candidates who reported voters struggling to locate names on voting machines — urged the board to require a JSON CVR and, if the file is encrypted, to provide a key so independent analysts can review results. Supervisors thanked the registrar for persistence and asked staff to communicate update schedules more proactively to reduce public confusion about timing of tallies.

The registrar said the next public update was scheduled for Friday and that the office would include a JSON CVR then. He also described the operational challenges of processing hundreds of thousands of mail ballots and the extra time required to stage, signature-verify and scan ballots into tally-ready formats.