Sacramento area vote centers will get busy — how to vote in person or drop off a ballot
Elections officials and volunteers in Sacramento County are preparing for what could be quite a rush on Tuesday, despite most voters on-site appearing to prefer dropping off their ballots in official receptacles rather than filling them out the old-fashioned way.
As of Sunday, the California Secretary of State reported 10,612,498 vote-by-mail ballots had been received. That’s 48% of the roughly 22 million Californians registered to vote.
In Sacramento County alone, according to the Secretary of State, 86% of all eligible voters (roughly 886,000 residents) are registered. As of Thursday, according to county spokeswoman Janna Haynes, the Registrar of Voters’ Office had gotten back a little more than 400,000 — still a record pace for what is expected to be an all-time high number of votes.
Still, after a mostly quiet turnout this weekend, the county’s 84 voting centers are likely to be packed on big day. The county is urging voters to vote prior to Tuesday and to consider visiting centers mid-morning or mid-afternoon over the final two days to avoid lunch and post-work crowds.
Haynes said county officials encourage voters to fill out their ballots at home and deposit them in one of the 71 official ballot drop boxes or drop them in the mail. That will allow them to avoid potential lines at vote centers.
Drop box locations are listed on the voter registration department website. A shorter list of 58 drop boxes is included in the ballot envelope that was mailed to voters residences two weeks ago.
Margie Miramontes, a Sacramento County elections inspector working this season at the Citrus Heights City Hall, said one common refrain she’s heard from voters in the past few days was anxiety over the mailing process.
Among those who preferred to leave their ballots with officials in-person, their reasoning stems from a concern that their ballot might not make it to the proper place and be counted by Election Day.
“That’s our biggest issue we’ve had is people who are concerned over ‘is this ballot really going to get counted?’ ” Miramontes said, who added that she has total faith in the Post Office workers responsible for bringing mailed ballots to vote centers. “We assure them that Sacramento County has an incredibly great team of people that are honest — it’s just a very, very good system, with all our paper trails intact.”
Stephanie Arnold, a front-line Sacramento County elections worker sat out in front of Citrus Heights’ Sylvan Oaks Library on Sunday helping to deposit voter ballots into bags. She said she’s heard similar concerns from voters, who aren’t keen on handing their precious ballots into the hands of a middleman.
“I think a lot of people feel comfortable giving it to us, cutting out any potential middlemen, like the mailman,” Arnold said. “Just having that reassurance that it’s coming directly to voting officials so that it can get turned in directly each night.”
And that system, still two days out from Election Day, has been managing a significant load.
Since opening up the City Hall vote center on Oct. 24, Miramontes has seen a surprisingly large early turnout. She estimated that the center processes about 150 in-person voters and between 400 and 500 drop-off voters every day. Arnold said the Sylvan Oaks site has seen a more than two-to-one preference for drop-offs over in-person voting since opening on Saturday.
Some people voting inside may not even be doing so by choice. Miramontes said many are first-time voters, or have recently moved, and so must use in-person facilities to confirm information.
Miramontes, who has worked in the county’s election office for 20 years, said this season’s numbers are a huge increase from the midterm elections, and a significant increase from the 2016 election as well.
“For this election, we knew it was going to be much more traffic,” she said. “We didn’t know it was going to be this busy.”
Even on the busiest days during the midterm, Miramontes said she might see 50 to 60 people coming in to cast ballots ahead of time. She expects Tuesday will bring in even bigger crowds.
“Chaos,” was her laconic prediction for City Hall on Tuesday.
With limited occupancy in vote centers due to coronavirus — the Citrus Heights site allows just 16 people into the voting facility at any given time, which includes about five staffers — lines could pile up and wait times could drag on.
“We expect to have a long line when we open and it’s probably not going to be a single break for us,” she said. “Anyone who gets here by 8 p.m., they will be processed.”
But she’s not sure if the majority of people arriving Tuesday will be voting in person or coming to drop off their mail-in ballots. That’s why there will be extra staffers stationed in the parking lot holding bright pink ballot bags, reading to receive them from voters.
As for voter Marcelina Ewbank, who dropped off her ballot at the Sylvan Oaks Library, her preferred method came down to ease and security.
“I just wanted to make sure that I dropped it in an official box because of things I’ve been hearing in the media about things being tampered with,” Ewbank said. “I didn’t want to put it in my regular mailbox, and this was convenient because I live close.”
The vote centers are designed to keep people socially distanced due to the coronavirus pandemic. Voters at the centers will be asked to wear a mask. Those who do not want to wear a mask can summon a vote center worker to collect a filled-out ballot from them outside the center, including in some cases from their car at the curb.
A list of all the in-person voting sites are available on the county’s election website. Registered Sacramento voters can cast their ballot at any of those centers, regardless of where in the county they live.
On Election Day, all vote centers will be open to accommodating anyone who gets in line by 8 p.m.
This story was originally published November 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.