FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — Ballots are being mailed across California, and voters can expect to receive them in the coming days as election season gets underway.
As voting begins, California Attorney General Rob Bonta raised concerns about federal involvement in elections and emphasized protections already in place for voters.
“For the past year, we’ve watched this administration try and take control of how Americans vote were to send federal law-enforcement to polling places, and spread misinformation to make people doubt our elections, but there are laws in place to protect our elections,” Bonta said.
Bonta also said it is illegal for immigration agents to be outside polling places and said the state is prepared to deploy its own election observers.
“We’ve definitely considered the possibility of ICE, military, marines, being at or near postal stations. There’s a clear federal prohibition,” Bonta said.
In Fresno County, roughly 260,000 people are expected to cast ballots in the midterm general election. Fresno County Clerk James Kus said voters can expect a secure election and accurate results.
“For the next 29 days, we are in and ready to serve the public,” Kus said.
Kus said election officials are continuing to test voting equipment ahead of Election Day.
“We’ve been doing testing we’re doing testing even right now on our tabulators to make sure all the equipment is ready for voters. That it scans correctly, records correctly, and that’s all available and open for the public to see, all of our processes are,” Kus said.
Several key dates are approaching as the election nears. Ten Fresno County voting centers are scheduled to open Oct. 24, followed by 44 additional voting centers on Oct. 31.
Voters can expect to receive two ballot cards in the mail featuring more than 25 contests, including state and local races. The ballot will also include 14 state propositions, with some voters seeing up to six additional measures depending on where they live.
Kus said Fresno County is expected to take about 24 days to certify the election. Addressing concerns about the pace of election results, he said ballot processing can create delays, particularly when a large number of vote-by-mail ballots are returned at the last minute.
“We unfortunately have up to 50% vote by mail ballots returned on the last day, historically in Fresno County, that can create a massive bottleneck of delays in the overall result by days even up to a week,” Kus said.
Election officials said testing and preparation efforts will continue as ballots begin arriving and voting centers prepare to open throughout Fresno County.
The Fresno County voter information guide will start going out this week; it gives a breakdown on each measure.
If you still have questions, there will be two county accessibility workshops this week, one on Thursday and one on Friday.
The Thursday workshop is from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Friday workshop is from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Location for the workshops: RICV Fresno 3636 N First Street #101 Fresno.
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