S.J. County registrar prepares for election

With the Nov. 6 general election a little more than a month away, San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters Melinda Dubroff said on Wednesday that her staff have already begun testing voting equipment.

“Starting next week, we’ll be running test ballots on our scanning equipment as part of the logic and accuracy testing,” Dubroff said.

Voter registration staff are processing online voter registrations from the California Secretary of State’s website and from automatic registration at the Department of Motor Vehicles, Dubroff said, as well as voter registration cards gathered from various organizations that hold registration drives.

The election officer team has been appointing inspectors and clerks for precincts throughout the county and will begin training poll workers next week, Dubroff said, along with finding replacements for election officers who have recently canceled.

“Everyone is quite busy in all areas,” Dubroff said. “We have a full team of warehouse workers putting together precinct supplies, and that’s also where some of our equipment testing takes place.”

Dubroff’s staff have also been working on expanding the Drive Up Democracy program, which allows voters to drop off their vote-by-mail ballots at city halls in the four days prior to the election, to include more rural areas such as Linden and Lockeford.

“We want to make sure rural voters have the same opportunities to drop off their ballots as everyone else,” Dubroff said. “Vote-by-mail voters won’t have to pay postage as they can give their ballots directly to election officers, and they can get an ‘I voted’ sticker.”

For more information on Drive Up Democracy, including the dates, times and locations drop boxes will be available, visit

Approximately 337,000 voters have registered in the county so far, Dubroff said, a slight increase from the 334,000 registered voters in the 2016 presidential election.

“It’s pretty remarkable that we have more registered voters now, in a gubernatorial general election, than we had in the presidential general election,” Dubroff said

The county has also seen an increase in voters registering with no party preference as opposed to Democrat or Republican, Dubroff said, citing the 60-day Report of Registrations published by the Secretary of State on Sept. 9, 2016 and Sept. 7, 2018.

“In 2016, we had 44.15 percent of registered voters who were Democrats. It’s now down to 42.01 percent,” Dubroff said. “In 2016, 32.65 percent of registered voters were Republicans, and it’s now down to 29.65 percent. No party preference voters were 19.35 percent of registered voters in 2016, and it has climbed to 23.77 percent.”

Lodi City Clerk Jennifer Ferraiolo said her staff have been working to ensure that voters are informed of the city’s new by-district voting system — where voters can only vote for city council candidates who represent the area of town where they live — which recently replaced the old at-large system where residents could vote for any council candidates within the city.

“On our website, we’ve clearly listed that three districts are up for election, which three districts and who the candidates are for this election,” Ferraiolo said.