There will be scores of places to cast a ballot until 8 p.m. Tuesday in San Joaquin County for California’s primary election, but concerns abound around voter apathy.
The county Registrar of Voters predicts fewer than half of the local registered voters will cast a ballot.
The county has 130 polling places where people can vote in person or drop off a completed ballot. Every registered voter in California gets a mail-in ballot, which is valid as long as it’s postmarked by Election Day and arrives at county elections offices within seven days of the election.
If you haven’t already mailed in your ballot and don’t want to vote in person, there are also 27 local dropbox locations, including nine in Stockton. There’s even a drive-thru drop-off spot at 44 N. San Joaquin St. where voters don’t have to get out of their cars to deliver their ballots.
The primary will narrow the field ahead of the November general election and in some instances, fully elect a candidate who receives more than 50% of the vote. At stake is not only the next governor and various statewide offices, but candidates for U.S. Congress. Locally, three Stockton City Councilmembers are defending their seats against challengers.
Even with all the options and the blizzard of campaign mailers that voters have received, county Registrar of Voters Olivia Hale predicted countywide turnout will be higher than the 27% who cast ballots in California’s 2022 primary. But she’s expecting the numbers will fall short of the 46% who voted in the statewide special election last November that recast California’s congressional districts to favor Democrats — a reaction to a similar move in Texas that favors Republicans.
It will “fall somewhere in that range,” she forecast to Stocktonia.
Local officials wish more people would vote.
In April, the county Board of Supervisors was warned of a “significant gap“ in voter participation. About 142,000 residents are not registered to vote.
“Additional efforts are needed to ensure residents understand the process and feel confident participating,” the supervisors were informed in board papers. “Traditional outreach methods, such as mailers and public meetings, are not sufficient to effectively reach all communities.”
Some misconceptions are bound to cause concerns about voter rolls and ballot security. Hale’s office said steps have been taken to allay those worries, such as around-the-clock video monitoring of drop-boxes.
And thanks to a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last Wednesday, law enforcement officers will be banned from interfering with California elections. The law criminalizes the act of taking cast ballots from the custody of a local election official, as gubernatorial candidate Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco did earlier this year when he seized more than 600,000 ballots from his own county’s registrar of voters. Although Bianco claimed he was checking for proof of fraudulent voting, there was no evidence to suggest any ballots were cast improperly.
Hale said the goal is always “a safe and secure election.”