At the polls at Stockton’s Fire Station 10, balloting for the primary election unfolded ever so quietly.
Voters came in one at a time Tuesday at the station on west March Lane. They checked in with poll workers, cast ballots or dropping off the ones they had brought from home. There weren’t long lines when Stocktonia visited, rush at the door or crowds gathering outside.
For poll worker Robyn Gilford, the pace was easy to describe.
“Very steady,” Gilford said.
Across several Stockton polling places Tuesday, the city’s primary election day followed a similar rhythm. Poll workers described turnout as steady or just plain slow. But at each stop, the work of the election continued: names checked, ballots scanned, questions answered and voters moving through the process in a few minutes.
Polling places are open until 8 p.m. Tuesday. It’s the last day to vote in person or return a ballot. Vote-by-mail ballots had to be postmarked no later than Election Day, according to the California Secretary of State.
The ballot includes statewide races, congressional contests and local races in San Joaquin County. Among the more high profile are three Stockton City Council races, two county Board of Supervisors contests and assessor-recorder-clerk.
By Monday, political data firm PDI showed about 16% of San Joaquin County ballots had been returned, with 67,548 ballots returned out of 410,255 eligible to vote. The figure offered an early snapshot of turnout before Election Day voters continued casting ballots Tuesday.
At the polling station in University of the Pacific’s Don and Karen DeRosa University Center, there wasn’t much action.
Poll worker Roberta Barajas blamed the location.
“It’s kind of out of the way from the main streets,” Barajas said. “They’ve only been using this spot for like five years, and parking is an adventure over here.”
There had been a few technical startup problems, she said, but nothing that stopped the site from operating.
“We got it done,” Barajas said.
At Stribley Community Center on East Sonora Street, poll worker Bonnie Huggins said the pace had been steady. She expected more voters later in the day, when people started getting off work.
“We’re going to start getting a lot of them around 5 o’clock,” Huggins predicted.
Huggins said voters still had options if they came in before polls closed.
“You just come in,” Huggins said. “If you want to vote a new ballot, we’ll just issue a new ballot, or you can vote your mail-in ballot. We just scan it, scan you in, and you can take that ballot and shoot through our scanner, and it gets counted tonight.”
The only challenge at Stribley, Huggins said, was the Wi-Fi.
“The Wi-Fi here is really bad, so it’s like knocking out our phones and things like that,” she said. “But we’re doing okay.”
For voters, the reasons for wanting to cast ballots — beyond just basic civic responsibility — varied.
At the University of the Pacific, Donte Miller, executive director of student success and retention, said he voted because “we’ve got to make sure that we hold people accountable.”
Miller said incarceration, education and support for young people were among the issues he was thinking about most as he cast his ballot.
“Really, prison and incarceration,” Miller said. “A lot of folks are kind of glancing over that, and I don’t like it.”
He said he was also focused on how Stockton supports young people, including their paths to colleges and universities, and how the city creates space for them to become part of civic life.
For Miller, the ballot also showed a contrast between the crowded race for governor and some local races where voters had fewer options. He noted the crowded field in the race, with more than 50 names on the ballot.
“I think this governor election is going to be really, really interesting,” Miller said. “Seeing a ballot of almost a full page is a little concerning, but it’s exciting that people want that top seat.”
But in several local races, “I don’t think that I felt like there were enough options,” Miller said.
That concern, he said, is tied to a larger question for Stockton: how to encourage young people who leave the city to come back, get involved and see elected office as one possible avenue for change.
“How do we create spaces and conditions where our young people’s voices can be elevated and folks want to come back to Stockton?” Miller said.
Miller said he hopes elected officials take community concerns seriously beyond election season. Candidates and officeholders often visit neighborhoods when they need votes or want to discuss a specific issue, he said, but the follow-through matters.
He said officials need to be “more intentional” about returning to those places and understanding the concerns of people in different parts of the city, whether in North Stockton, South Stockton or elsewhere.
Also at the university, Sanford Heyman, a disabled veteran, said he had dropped off his ballot and was motivated by concerns about national security, voter identification and constitutional government.
“I think it’s important that we safeguard our country,” Heyman said.
Heyman said he supported Steve Hilton in the governor’s race and believed voters should be required to show proper identification. He said security was one of his top concerns, along with rising costs such as homeowners association rates.
He, too, noticed the difference between the number of candidates running for governor and the smaller number of candidates in some local races.
“There’s so many people running for governor,” Heyman said. “I’m just surprised when I looked at the sheet. A lot of them I don’t even know, I never heard of.”
In some local races, he said, there appeared to be little or no competition.
“There was one or two or three things where there’s only one person on the ballot,” Heyman said.
As the afternoon moved toward the after-work rush, polling places remained open across Stockton. At some sites, workers waited for voters to trickle in. At others, they expected the pace to pick up before polls closed.
For Barajas, who has worked elections before, the message to those still deciding whether to show up was simple.
“Vote,” she said. “Every vote counts.”