Adapting polling amid a pandemic

Election Day will look different due to COVID-19

The morning of the March 3 primary, the Yolo County Elections Office started getting calls from poll workers saying they wouldn’t be able to work.

Cancellations are normal. That’s why the Elections Office keeps a list of backup poll workers on file. Typically 3% to 5% of people scheduled to work can’t when Election Day rolls around.

But what Registrar of Voters Jesse Salinas didn’t expect was how many people they would ultimately have to contact and fill those shortages. The cancellation rate doubled to 10%, causing Salinas and his staff to scramble to fill those positions.

In retrospect, the culprit is obvious: coronavirus.

The majority of poll workers are 65 and older and are more susceptible to COVID-19. But at the time, the virus had just started to make headlines. It wasn’t until March 18 that Yolo County issued

its first shelter-in-place order, encouraging self-isolation and social distancing.

On Election Day, all Salinas knew was he had to make things work.

He “burned through the backup list” and ran around the Woodland’s Erwin Meier Administration Building — the home of many county offices — to find help from other county workers.

Despite the chaos of March 3, Salinas remains thankful for the experience.

“It gave us a clue of what might be taking place (this upcoming election),” he explained. The timing, which was “two weeks before a tremendous shift took place,” could have been worse.

If it were a June election, as has happened in the past, it would have been “much more difficult trying to figure things out,” he added.

As soon as the March primary results were finalized, Salinas and his staff went to work. They had to plan for an uncertain November while coronavirus cases across California continued to rise.

Just as schools and businesses have had to ride a wave of policy changes related to COVID-19, election officials have considered

several iterations of how the November election will look.

Talks centered around limiting in-person voting while promoting vote-bymail options.

In California, all active registered voters will receive a mail-in ballot — which comes with prepaid postage — for the 2020 election starting Oct. 5. This is thanks to legislation signed in June by Gov. Gavin Newsom to protect the November election against possible disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bill requires local election officials to mail ballots to every registered voter in the state. It also requires them to count any ballot received within 17 days of the election — as long as it’s postmarked by Election Day — which is two weeks longer than it has been historically.

Salinas indicated that in Yolo County over 70% of registered voters prefer the vote-by-mail option, with the statewide average being around 72%. He added that other states whose voters prefer to cast their ballots in person are going to have a harder time this election cycle. This vote-by-mail shift will be more jarring elsewhere.

However, it was important for Salinas to still provide an in-person option for Yolo County voters. This has to do with the

diversity of California and the need to eliminate barriers based on language, disability or other factors, he indicated.

This is where the Voter Assistance Centers come in.

In Yolo County, vote-bymail ballots can be filled out and returned in the provided envelope via mail, dropped off at a Ballot Drop Box or returned to one of 12 Voter Assistance Centers, where voters may also still choose to vote in person.

The county is also sending out voter notices to confirm mailing addresses. The notices, complete with prepaid postage, must be signed and returned by mail to be processed.

Taking lessons from March, Salinas increased the number of poll workers hired for November. This is both to have a longer list of backups as well as more people to staff the additional hours at the Voter Assistance Centers.

New data shows all-time highs in voter registration both at state and county levels.

Yolo County is reporting 115,340 registered voters as of Sept. 3. This signifies approximately a 5.7% increase in voter registration since the 2018 general election, where data from the Secretary of State’s website shows that there were 109,103 Yolo County registered voters in September of that year.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced earlier this month that California surpassed the milestone of 21 million active registered voters just 60 days before Election Day and 32 days before mail voting begins.

“2020 is another recordsetting year for voter registration in California,” Padilla

said in a news release. “Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, our democracy remains strong and resilient.”

Residents can still register to vote online at registertovote.ca.gov to receive their ballot in the mail the first full week of October.

Yolo County’s Ballot Drop

Boxes will be open starting Oct. 5 and will close at 8 p.m. on Election Day. The Voter Assistance Centers will be open from Oct. 31 through Nov. 3.

For more Yolo Countyspecific voting information, the county encourages voters to visit yoloelections. org.