As a senior technician in the Nevada County Elections Office making sure all voting equipment and computers are working correctly, Michael Lloyd has a close-up view of the elections process.
“Most people don’t realize how much verification goes into everything,” he said. For instance, all voter signatures on ballot envelopes are checked against voter signatures on file. “We have a machine plus two people look at any signature before we send a letter to the voter saying it’s not matching (if that’s the case),” he said.
The Elections Office must also scrupulously adhere to state regulations governing all aspects of the process. “There’s a lot of behind-the scenes deadlines that we have to meet with the state which makes the whole logistics of getting 75,000 ballots out challenging,” he said. “Keeping up with new registrations, ballot address changes and making sure everyone gets the ballot they’re entitled to is daunting.”
Lloyd grew up in Nevada City and attended Nevada Union High School but moved to Southern California after graduation to attend University of Redlands in Southern California. After earning his degree in Asian Studies, he taught high school for a few years in Japan.
He returned to Los Angeles and worked for a time as a hotel accounting manager but he started to feel the pull of Nevada County. “I enjoyed the city but I missed the nature back there,” he said, adding that he and his wife thought it would be a good place to raise their two children, now ages 5 and 2-and-a-half.
The family landed in Nevada County in 2018 where his wife Megan got a position as a librarian. Lloyd got his first shot working at Nevada County Elections Office in 2019 as a temporary employee. He said he enjoyed the staff and when a full-time position opened up two years ago, he jumped at it. He said Nevada County has a great group of temp workers – “We get a lot of repeating people who come back.”
When he’s not working, Lloyd enjoys spending time with his family reading fantasy books and seeing movies. He and his wife got married at the Del Oro Theater in Grass Valley.
Lloyd is very busy these days supporting the coming March 5 Presidential Primary Election. He oversees the county’s voter registration system and the database that connects with the California Secretary of State.
“I had no idea there was so much going into a vote-by-mail ballot,” he said. “As a voter, you just sign a registration form and you get a ballot. There’s a whole lot of stuff that goes on to verify and validate it and track everything.”
