{"id":308693,"date":"2026-05-10T07:22:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T07:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/308693\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T07:22:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T07:22:38","slug":"explainer-kern-county-voters-now-have-their-ballots-now-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/308693\/","title":{"rendered":"Explainer: Kern County voters now have their ballots. Now what?"},"content":{"rendered":"

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) \u2014 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.<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Watch \u2018After Sunrise\u2019 on KGET+; Click to learn how to get KGET+ on your smart TV devices\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of voters feel overwhelmed by a ballot that\u2019s full of races that they don\u2019t 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\u2019t necessarily required to pass judgment on,\u201d said Eric McGhee, policy director and senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California. \u201cI think that can be intimidating for voters, and it\u2019s just important to understand that you don\u2019t have to make a choice on races that you don\u2019t know anything about and that you don\u2019t care about.\u201d<\/p>\n

To combat this, McGhee said voters can go \u201cas deep or as shallow\u201d as they would like when casting their ballots.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou shouldn\u2019t feel intimidated about non-voting just because you don\u2019t have an opinion on everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said that candidates names on ballots are also randomly ordered and not alphabetically or by party.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust be patient about going through that list to find a candidate that you want to find,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Navigating the governor\u2019s race<\/p>\n

Zooming in on California\u2019s statewide elections, Eric McGhee, policy director and senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California, said this cycle\u2019s governor race is particularly competitive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not usually quite this wide open. We haven\u2019t had it be that way for quite a while, probably since the recall election that put Arnold Schwarzenegger in office,\u201d McGhee said, adding that the governor\u2019s race with no clear frontrunner is the most \u201cunusual\u201d part of this year\u2019s election cycle.<\/p>\n

California operated on a \u201ctop two primary\u201d system, meaning the top two vote getters in a race move on to a general election in November, regardless of political party.<\/p>\n

\u00a0California June 2026 primary election ballots: What you need to know\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

With no clear Democratic frontrunner in the governor\u2019s race, McGhee said it could raise the possibility of the two top-voted candidates in the primary are both Republicans.<\/p>\n

The two most prominent Republicans<\/a> in the gubernational race include Chad Bianco, a Riverside sheriff, and political commentator Steve Hilton.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf 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,\u201d McGhee said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Casting, tracking your ballot<\/p>\n

Now that many Kern County voters have their ballots \u2014 or will have them soon \u2014 McGhee said voters have any time between now and June 2 to cast their ballots.<\/p>\n

But there are a few rules about mail-in voting residents should be aware of.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne word of caution to a fair number of voters in rural areas, there\u2019s been a change to the way that the Postal Service processes mail. If you mail your ballot on Election Day, you can\u2019t guarantee that you\u2019re 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\u2019t count,\u201d McGhee said. \u201cI 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\u2019s going to arrive on time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0New California voter ID measure could change elections in Kern County\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

If your ballot doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

McGhee said there are also resources available to track your ballot,<\/a> one of them being a text message update service from the California Secretary of State\u2019s website.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s 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,\u201d he said. \u201cIt just gives you sort of peace of mind that everything is proceeding the way you want it to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KGET 17 News.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) \u2014 Ballots are making their way to voters after being mailed out earlier this week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,38967,129706,129707],"class_list":["post-308693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-democratic-candidates","tag-eric-mcghee","tag-kern-county-voters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}