San Joaquin County supervisor wants a 'warm body' to greet voters at ballot drop boxes

A lengthy discussion over election integrity at Tuesday's San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors meeting ended with a failed attempt to cut the county's number of vote-by-mail ballot drop boxes and staff the remaining boxes with "ununiformed" workers.

District 4 Supervisor Steve Ding brought the motion to the table, sparking conversations on the dais about potential voter intimidation and staffing costs. Ding serves as the head of the Election Advisory Committee, which has, for months, been pushing for more surveillance over drop boxes in San Joaquin County.

At the Sept. 12 meeting, the board of supervisors approved a proposal to replace drop boxes across the county with new boxes equipped with security measures to prevent election fraud.

About 50,000 San Joaquin County voters used ballot drop boxes during the 2022 General Election, according to the San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters.

With the supervisors' September vote, nearly $200,000 was sent to the registrar of voters to replace the county's 25 ballot drop boxes with "Vote Armor" boxes from Laserfab, Inc. The boxes have fortified locking mechanisms and tamper seals, and are being strategically placed near public buildings that are equipped with security cameras, according to Registrar of Voters Olivia Hale.

Ding insisted on Tuesday that he wanted to "scale back" on the number of drop boxes in the county from 25 to 13 — the minimal number the California Secretary of State requires counties to make accessible to voters. The supervisor argued that it would be easier for county and law enforcement officials to safeguard 13 boxes, and pushed for the county to prioritize in-person voting options instead.

Ding proposed that the registrar of voters hire workers to sit near the boxes during the ballot drop-off period. The boxes will be available to voters starting on Feb. 5 and ending on March 5.

"What I want to do, just like at a polling place ... when you go to a polling place, you don't just pick up your ballot, go and vote and stick it in a box. It's handed to you by a polling worker," Ding said. "I'm not talking about a polling worker that interrogates people when they go up to a drop box, but rather, somebody that's sitting by the drop box, just like they would at a polling location, in case somebody has any questions. Pretty much a warm body."

He suggested that the county use a $175,000 security grant to cover staffing costs, and said the county could find contingency funding if the grant money can't be used for that purpose.

Hale said using the grant money to hire people to man the boxes posed "a high concern" to the secretary of state.

"We need to do a deeper dive and get the clarification from the state on the laws and regulations to ensure that we can pull off anything like that," Hale said.

"I wish the state would sue us," Ding replied. "I would like to have the state tell us, 'No, we don't want anybody around the drop boxes. We don't want any witnesses, no people.'"

District 2 Supervisor Paul Canepa questioned whether having staff sitting near the boxes could be considered intimidating to some voters.

"People have different levels of anxiety and fear of one thing or the other," Canepa said.

Still, Ding sought to move forward with eliminating 12 of the 25 previously approved drop boxes.

County Counsel Edward Kiernan told the board before that could happen, direction must be given to the registrar and agendized for a future meeting. He also reminded the board that, under the law, it is the registrar's responsibility to determine how many boxes are in the county and where they are placed.

"(The boxes) serve a purpose and if we just willy nilly say, you know what, we're done with wherever they are, there might be certain areas that are in need of a drop box, like, rural areas," Canepa said.

District 3 Supervisor Tom Patti seconded the motion, but pulled his second after Canepa's comment. Patti noted that there are some people who are against voting using drop boxes.

"If you have a problem with people collecting ballots and dropping them in, then get off your ass, knock on your neighbor's door, collect their ballot, and go be a ballot dropper," Patti said. "Don't complain about the system. Utilize the system to your advantage. Get off your ass and go knock on doors and harvest ballots so that the people in your community are making sure they're getting their vote in."

"We have a system in place in San Joaquin County, in the state of California, that allows drop boxes and we are fighting against it, I think, needlessly."

The board ultimately decided to leave the drop boxes plan as is. Hale is expected to provide an update on the March 5 primary at the Feb. 6 meeting.

Record reporter Hannah Workman covers news in Stockton and San Joaquin County. She can be reached at hworkman@recordnet.com or on Twitter @byhannahworkman. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.

This article originally appeared on The Record: SJ supervisor wants a 'warm body' to greet voters at ballot drop boxes