New voting setup to make its mark
5 counties test replacing local polling places with mail
Sometime next week, every voter in San Mateo and Napa counties will get a June primary ballot in the mail, whether they asked for it or not.
And don’t even think about going to your local polling place on election day. It won’t be there.
The two Bay Area counties are among five in the state taking the first steps to implement the Voters Choice Act, a law passed in 2016 that will dramatically change the way Californians cast ballots. Almost every other county is expected to join them in 2020.
There will be plenty of differences from the way the state has long run elections. Most voters will cast their ballots by mail, accelerating a trend that is already under way. Neighborhood polling places will be replaced by far fewer county voting centers, where people can register and then vote at the same time.
“Voters will now have more options for when, where and how they cast ballots,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said earlier this year as he released a public service announcement on the changes.
It all starts Monday, when ballots are expected to be mailed to every registered voter in San Mateo,
Napa and the other counties participating in the new system this year — Sacramento, Nevada and Madera.
People can return completed ballots in the mail or take them to drop boxes that will be provided in virtually every community. Local centers where residents can vote in person will also be opened in the days leading up to the election.
In San Mateo County, for example, four centers will be open weekdays, beginning Monday. Five more will be opened May 26, and 30 additional centers for the four days before the June 5 primary election. Beginning May 26, the centers will open seven days a week, including Memorial Day.
The local voting centers will be key to the new program. Staffed 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. by election workers, they will allow residents to drop off their ballots, cast ballots on voting machines and register to vote all the way up to election day. People also will be able to register and immediately cast a ballot at the centers.
Voters now must register 15 days before an election, although those who sign up after the deadline at their county election offices can cast a provisional ballot.
Because the centers are connected to the voter registration database, residents can instantly confirm whether their registration is up to date. Voters can cast ballots at any center in the county, not just the one nearest to where they live. Each center can provide ballots for any community in the county and can also replace damaged or mismarked ballots.
“A lot of people say they like to vote at their polling place, where they can meet with their neighbors,” said Mark Church, county clerk and chief elections officer for San Mateo County. “They’ll still be able to do that at the voting centers.”
They might have to travel a bit farther to do it, however. San Mateo County’s 39 voting centers will replace more than 200 polling places.
Voters in Napa and San Mateo counties already have been hit with a flood of educational material, letting them know what’s coming. Along with mailed and social-media notices, Padilla has joined election officials at public meetings to answer questions about the switch.
But for many voters, the changes won’t be that big a deal.
“About 90 percent of our voters already vote by mail,” said John Tuteur, county clerk and registrar of voters in Napa County. “We have gone from 96 polling places in 2006 to 11 in 2016, mostly in (the cities of ) Napa and American Canyon.”
That’s a story being told throughout California, where more than half the state’s 19.4 million registered voters have signed up to receive a mail ballot for every election. In 2016, nearly 58 percent of the votes in the presidential election were cast by mail.
In 2015, San Mateo County was one of a handful of counties selected to do a test run for the new voting system. While the local elections didn’t attract nearly as many voters as this year’s statewide elections will, everything went smoothly.
“More than 97 percent voted by mail, with only 2.5 percent showing up at polling places,” Church said.
One of the main reasons for the voting change is the belief that it will boost turnout. While the county’s turnout in the 2015 local elections was only 29 percent, that was up from 25 percent two years earlier.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges with the new system. Both San Mateo and Napa counties are hustling to hire enough people to staff the long hours at the new voting centers.
“We’ll have eight centers and 56 people” to cover the hours, said Tuteur of Napa County. Instead of poll workers just
putting in a single long shift on election day, “this is a commitment of weeks.”
The vote center workers, who as intermittent county employees must be fingerprinted and undergo background checks, need more skills than the traditional election day crews, said Church. They’ll be paid around $18 an hour.
“Luckily, we’ve been able to hire a number of former poll workers who have the technical knowledge to operate the voter centers,” he said. “But we’re still recruiting.”
The system has been in place for Colorado for years, but it’s new to California. That means election officials around the state are going to be closely watching San Mateo, Napa and the three other counties for what works and what doesn’t.
“What happens in this election will determine what happens going forward,” Church said.
Under the law, 14 counties were eligible to participate in the new voting program this year, but nine of them, including Santa Clara County, declined, for a variety of reasons.
In 2020, the other counties can come aboard, although there’s no requirement. If there was, the state would have had to pick up the local tab for new equipment and other costs, which would have been a deal breaker.
But in Napa and San Mateo counties, election officials are convinced that the extended voting period and added convenience of mail ballots and voting centers will persuade more people to vote.
“The benefits will outweigh any challenges,” said Church.