San Joaquin County Registrar to retire
Austin Erdman’s last day after more than 30 years with county will be March 3
Registrar of Voters Austin Erdman will no longer be in charge of organizing the tight schedule of preparations for county-wide elections in coming years.
Erdman has announced that he will retire. His last day in office will be March 3, 2017.
“I’ve been planning my retirement for years. I told everyone that I would conduct this last election before I go,” Erdman said. “I’m 62 years old. I want to go out and enjoy life and travel while I’m still physically fit.”
Erdman has worked for San Joaquin County for more than 30 years. Before working with San Joaquin County, he had spent 10 years working in private business.
A former graduate of Lodi High School, Erdman attended Delta College and National University. He continued on to receive his masters of science in public administration from National University in 2002.
Erdman first started in the county’s agriculture department but began to shift his focus to the Registrar of Voters office due to his long-time interest in politics and political science.
“I didn’t want to take the step of running for office at an early age, so I decided to work the other side in running the elections,” Erdman said.
He applied for an open position and joined the Registrar of Voters office as the assistant registrar in 2000. By 2007, he was promoted to Interim Registrar and was appointed to his current position in 2008 by a unanimous decision of the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors.
Throughout his service as Registrar, Erdman has been involved in several community partnerships with local school districts and the Jacoby Center for Public Service and Civic Leadership at the University of the Pacific and political science and voting education programs. Through these partnerships, high school seniors now pre-register to vote through their civics classes. Many of these seniors he also encourages to work at the polls on election days.
“We’re probably the highest in the state of kids working the polls per capita,” Erdman said. “It’s important to get kids involved. It teaches kids to vote and what influences they have. And once they become voters, they’re always voters.”
The Jacoby Center Vote Smart Project is another initiative that supports the Registrar of Voters in improving voter education through social science research.
He has also worked together with groups such as the NAACP and Latino organizations, who helped him identify issues in the community that hindered voter turnout among certain communities.
One of these issues involved community members who were putting up signs telling people that if they didn’t speak English they would get arrested if they went to vote. The signs were meant to discourage Latinos and other minority groups, who are legally able to vote but may not speak well enough in English, from turning out to the polls, Erdman said.
Through that, he worked together with the Secretary of State to make sure the signs were not being put up and that voters were better aware of their rights.
Outside of his work in promoting voter education, Erdman is active with the Lions Club in Linden.
One of the things he’s learned from his years of service as Registrar is the work it takes to make an election happen.
“You’re opening 350 or more polling places and you have to open them on time and on Election Day,” Erdman said. Not only that but the polling places have to be staffed and any issues at polling places have to be handled that day.
In his position, he’s also worked with advising a lot of candidates from U.S. Congressmen to local government officials on the election process. A couple of people even visited the office inquiring about how to register to run for president, he said. They were referred to the California Secretary of State’s Office.
“It’s been a lot of fun here at the Registrar of Voters Office. I’ve had a wonderful career and met wonderful people. I’m going to miss the thousands of people I’ve met,” Erdman said.
Jerry Becker, the information systems director in San Joaquin County, said that Erdman has done a tremendous job in his years as Registrar bringing improvements to the election processes and being very transparent in making sure the election is run in a fair and appropriate manner.
The county will be beginning an open recruitment process to find potential candidates to take on Erdman’s role once he leaves in March. Candidates will be presented to the Board of Supervisors for consideration and approval, Becker said.
Erdman has made preparations for his transition.
He built a $1 million trust for the Registrar of Voters Office that the county can use to purchase a new voting system if needed and other such needs to avoid putting a larger burden of the cost on the county.
“There’s a lot of changes on the horizon. I’ve left the county in great shape,” he said.