California election officials have a request for voters this fall: return your mail ballot early. The state has a reputation for taking weeks to finish counting votes, and officials say much of the holdup comes from the wave of ballots that land in the final hours before polls close.<\/p>\n
Nearly every active registered voter in California is sent a ballot, and over 85%<\/a> of the state’s voters cast their vote via mail. In Sacramento County, the share runs over 94%<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation<\/a>, said voters who sit on their ballots until Election Day are a big part of the reason it takes California so long to report results.<\/p>\n “I hate to say this, but you’re part of the problem if you are turning in your ballot in an envelope on Election Day,” she said. “You are creating part of that backlog.”<\/p>\n Ballots mailed on Election Day can take a week or more to count, and they are the only kind that can arrive too late to count at all. Alexander’s group urges voters to send their ballots back no later than Halloween, the Saturday before the Nov. 3 election.<\/p>\n How to return your ballot<\/p>\n Voters have more ways than ever to return their ballot. They can mail it, place it in a county drop box, or hand it in at a vote center or elections office. A growing number of counties, including Placer, also offer “Sign, Scan and Go<\/a>,” which lets voters turn in a mail ballot in person without the envelope.<\/p>\n “You can actually see your ballot scan in front of you,” said Ryan Ronco, Placer County’s registrar of voters. Sacramento County uses a central-count system, so ballots dropped at its vote centers go back to the elections office for processing.<\/p>\n Voters who want to follow their ballot can sign up for the Secretary of State’s Where’s My Ballot? service<\/a>, which sends updates by text, email or phone.<\/p>\n Is a mail-in ballot secure?<\/p>\n It is a question officials hear constantly after a year of national fights over mail-in voting, and they answer it the same way every time.<\/p>\n “I have been in Placer County’s elections office for 32 years, and it is definitely a safe and secure way to vote,” Ronco said. He said voters often worry that ballots go out to people who aren’t registered, or come back with no checks, but that the reverse is true. “There are many double checks in the vote-by-mail process,” he said.<\/p>\n Those safeguards include signature verification and chain-of-custody rules that void a first ballot when a voter requests a replacement, so people can\u2019t vote twice. It\u2019s a process anyone can observe for themselves<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Yolo County, Assessor-Clerk-Recorder Jesse Salinas said he wants to reassure voters who have seen coverage suggesting this election might not run smoothly. “This election process is geared up for success,” he said. He urged people to have confidence in the system and to call their county registrar with any questions, adding that local offices can resolve almost any problem that comes up.<\/p>\n Fixing ballot problems<\/p>\n