Sacramento County taking advantage of early ballots; nearly 250,000 have cast a vote
Sacramento County residents are taking advantage of early and mail-in voting in sizable numbers ahead of election day, Nov. 5.
Early voters have returned 246,577 ballots as of Thursday morning, according to Sacramento County elections officials. That’s a ballot for more than one of every four of the county’s nearly 890,000 registered voters.
The number of early voters in Sacramento County mirrors the nation as a consequential, closely contested Presidential election and nearly universal early voting nationwide — early voting is available in all but three states — has put early turnout on track to reach historic levels.
More than 59.8 million people nationwide have already voted by mail or in person ahead of election day, about 40% of the full 2020 vote, according to NBC News. That includes the millions of Californians who cast their votes early.
And those numbers could rise, said county officials Thursday who cautioned the early tallies are only inclusive of the ballots that have had signatures checked by elections officials.
The majority of early voters in the county, 141,199, mailed their ballots; another 97,580 took them to drop boxes.
County-designated voter centers have taken in nearly 8,000 ballots. More than 3,300 voting in person and nearly 4,500 vote-by-mail ballots have been dropped off at the centers, according to elections officials.
So far, more than 5.8 million Californians in 2024 have opted to vote early, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. Registered voters began receiving vote-by-mail ballots Oct. 7. Early voting sites opened that same day.
County vote centers in Sacramento and across the state opened Oct. 26 with other Sacramento County vote centers to open Nov. 2. All voting centers will be open until 8 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday.
This week, county elections officials released a lengthy list of security measures they are taking to preserve ballot security.
Among the measures, two people are stationed with ballots voted and unvoted at all times. Ballots are secured in locked cages under 24-hour watch. Ballot printers and paper are secured with tamper-evident seals; while 1% manual tallies ensure that the voting equipment delivers accurate counts.
Secretary of State officials assure California voters that election offices are working to ensure that ballots are secure.
“Elections officials are working overtime to make sure that voters have a safe, secure, accessible, and transparent election,” state elections officials said in a statement. “There are many security features built into our elections systems and voters should be confident that their vote is secure.”
Vote-by-mail turnout nationally soared to more than 101 million in a 2020 gripped by pandemic. In California, more than 15.4 million registered voters mailed in their ballots, according to the Secretary of State Office.
That November, the state saw record numbers at the mailbox and the ballot box.
It was the first year in which every active, registered California voter received a mail-in ballot, as the state navigated the global COVID-19 pandemic. Voters could return their ballots by mail with a prepaid return envelope or in-person at a ballot drop box or voting site.
The 15.4 million vote-by-mail ballots were the most ever cast in a California statewide election, a full 86% of all ballots cast that year. The total number of voters, at more than 17.8 million, was also the most ever, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
This story was originally published October 31, 2024 at 2:27 PM.
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