SAN DIEGO — If you want your vote to count, your ballot must be postmarked no later than Election Day on Nov. 3. It also has to arrive at the Registrar of Voter’s office by Nov. 20. But if you want your vote to be tabulated as part of the first batch of results released that night, Tuesday, Oct. 27 is the recommended deadline for mailing your ballot.
More than 800,000 San Diegans have already returned their ballots. That’s a record this far out from Election Day, but it's still less than half of all registered voters in San Diego County.
“We ask voters to continue that effort,” said Registrar of Voters Michael Vu.
He’s hoping with the pandemic that San Diegans will continue voting by mail. This leads to a question some have asked about the envelope: “Why does the envelope have holes?”
“We want to make sure that when we are extracting the ballot out of the envelope, after it's been verified, that we've taken all of the content out of it - including that respective ballot,” Vu said.
As some voters have discovered, there are times when the holes line up with a voting circle on the ballot. So what happens if someone else fills in that vote after you've mailed your ballot?
“If it does occur, it would get caught by the system itself because that would be most likely an over vote situation and we would be looking at the ballot to determine if the respective mark is that same,” Vu said.
Since that circle would look different than the others on the ballot, that specific vote would be thrown out, but the others would be counted.
If the idea of mailing your vote makes you nervous, you can still vote in person. Starting Saturday, 235 super polling locations will open around the county and Vu said the sooner you go, the better.
“We're trying to keep the lines and the crowding low on election day, so contemplate that," said Vu. "Either vote on Saturday, Sunday or Monday in advance.”
In other parts of the country, we've seen voters in long lines. In some cases, they’ve waited several hours. The CDC has released recommendations for voters. These include stay at least six feet from others and stay apart even if you're wearing a mask. Bring an extra mask, hand sanitizer and water. And wash your hands or use sanitizer before and after leaving your voting location. Use hand sanitizer before and after touching items others may have touched.
The registrar's office will provide masks for voters who don't have one. And Vu recommends filling out your sample ballot before you arrive so you spend as little time as possible inside the voting booth.
Vu added that these are unprecedented times and it's hard to predict how things will go at the polls. Vu is asking voters in advance to please be patient.
“When you're mixing between the pandemic and highest turnout election in a four year period, there has to be an exercise of patience that we're asking of all voters," said Vu.
