BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — Ballots are making their way to voters after being mailed out earlier this week while some Kern County voters, already have their ballots in hand.

But with a long list of political hopefuls on the ballot, some voters feel overwhelmed when deciding who to vote for and casting their ballot.

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“A lot of voters feel overwhelmed by a ballot that’s full of races that they don’t know that much about and we ask a lot of our voters in the United States. We ask them to make a lot of decisions that voters in other countries aren’t necessarily required to pass judgment on,” said Eric McGhee, policy director and senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California. “I think that can be intimidating for voters, and it’s just important to understand that you don’t have to make a choice on races that you don’t know anything about and that you don’t care about.”

To combat this, McGhee said voters can go “as deep or as shallow” as they would like when casting their ballots.

“You shouldn’t feel intimidated about non-voting just because you don’t have an opinion on everything,” he said.

He said that candidates names on ballots are also randomly ordered and not alphabetically or by party.

“Just be patient about going through that list to find a candidate that you want to find,” he said.

Navigating the governor’s race

Zooming in on California’s statewide elections, Eric McGhee, policy director and senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California, said this cycle’s governor race is particularly competitive.

“It’s not usually quite this wide open. We haven’t had it be that way for quite a while, probably since the recall election that put Arnold Schwarzenegger in office,” McGhee said, adding that the governor’s race with no clear frontrunner is the most “unusual” part of this year’s election cycle.

California operated on a “top two primary” system, meaning the top two vote getters in a race move on to a general election in November, regardless of political party.

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With no clear Democratic frontrunner in the governor’s race, McGhee said it could raise the possibility of the two top-voted candidates in the primary are both Republicans.

The two most prominent Republicans in the gubernational race include Chad Bianco, a Riverside sheriff, and political commentator Steve Hilton.

“If the Democratic candidates split their vote a bunch of different ways, they could have the total number of people voting for a Democrat could be much higher than the total number voting for a Republican, but you could still have two Republicans advance, because the Republicans are only splitting their vote two ways effectively, and the Democrats are splitting theirs a much larger number of ways,” McGhee said.

When it comes to selecting a candidate that aligns with your values, McGhee recommends voters lean on published voter guides and local media to learn more about candidates. He said tuning into local media can be more helpful than national media, because local news stations and papers report more in-depth on local races.

Casting, tracking your ballot

Now that many Kern County voters have their ballots — or will have them soon — McGhee said voters have any time between now and June 2 to cast their ballots.

But there are a few rules about mail-in voting residents should be aware of.

“One word of caution to a fair number of voters in rural areas, there’s been a change to the way that the Postal Service processes mail. If you mail your ballot on Election Day, you can’t guarantee that you’re going to get a postmark on that day. It might, but you might not get the postmark until the next day, and then your ballot wouldn’t count,” McGhee said. “I would recommend that everybody mail in their ballot at least the day before the election, and probably, just to be super safe, mail it in a week before, so you know that it’s going to arrive on time.”

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If your ballot doesn’t arrive or you need a new one, McGhee said voters can apply for a new one, or they can show up to their local polling place on Election Day and cast their votes in-person.

McGhee said there are also resources available to track your ballot, one of them being a text message update service from the California Secretary of State’s website.

“That’s generally something I recommend for every voter who, especially if they want to use the vote-by-mail system like rather than taking their ballot in and handing it in-person,” he said. “It just gives you sort of peace of mind that everything is proceeding the way you want it to.”

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