Voting by mail: How to get your ballot from your mailbox to the ballot box

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — If you are a registered voter in Kern County, you may have already received and dropped off your mail-in ballot. Others can expect them this week.

We are now just one month away from California’s March 5 primary election.

What you should know if you want to vote by mail

“If voters haven’t received their ballots by Friday, Feb. 9, then they should contact our office to have a ballot reissued,” said Kern Auditor-Controller-County Clerk Aimee Espinoza.

Ahead of the primary election, registered voters should have or will receive three key pieces of mail — a voter information guide from California’s Secretary of State (one per household), as well as a sample ballot and mail-in ballot from Kern Elections (one of each per registered voter).

Espinoza noted, during this election cycle, mail-in ballots have been sent out before sample ballots, which include all things local, such as candidate statements for supervisorial and state Assembly races.

A mail-in ballot lets you vote by mail, which Espinoza said lets voters vote a little earlier and take their time filling out their ballots.

“It’s taking it out of the sending envelope and voting your ballot normally,” Espinoza said of how to complete a mail-in ballot. “There are instructions on every race, there are instructions for the entire ballot, how to mark your ballot.”

So what do you do with the ballot, once you’ve filled it out?

“[Voters] can either drop it in the mailbox or they can find an official Kern County drop box.”

County drop boxes are now open.

There are 19 locations, including at Bakersfield College and Cal State Bakersfield campuses.

Each drop box has security cameras, though they don’t video record voters’ faces. Espinoza said this is to ensure voters can remain anonymous.

You can mail back your ballot as soon as it’s filled out.

Ballots with invalid or missing signatures will not be counted.

In case that happens to you, Espinoza said be on the lookout for a cure letter.

“That notifies the voter that either their signature did not match, or they were missing a signature, and it gives them an opportunity to cure that, to correct it, to sign again and send it back to our office.”

Espinoza added, “If we can’t confirm that signature belongs to the voter based on our records that we have here in our office, that envelope is never even opened, and it is just set aside and kept with the rest of our election materials.

She also emphasized voting-by-mail is a secure process.

“A lot of the times, I see people surprised we check every single ballot, which we do.”

Because this is a presidential election, voters will get party-specific ballots for the primary.

If you’re not registered with a party, you have two options.

Register, or request a cross-over ballot, which, simply put, allows a voter not affiliated with a certain party to vote for a candidate of their choice.

“Non-party preference voters, they have the option of crossing over,” Espinoza explained. “There are some parties that allow non-party preference to vote in their primary. And so, they’ve been notified by mail. We’ve sent those out, and we’ve received some requests for another ballot.”

Espinoza said you can request a cross-over ballot on election day as well, whether in person at Kern Elections or a county poll site.

You can also change your party registration in person at the Elections Office or online, either at the Secretary of State’s website or kernvote.com.

But don’t wait until the last minute to turn in your mail-in ballot.

Espinoza said, “A ballot that is postmarked by March 5, 2024, and is received within seven days after that day, we can receive and accept and process.”

Again, for your ballot to be counted, you must sign your envelopes, and that signature has to match what’s on file at Kern Elections.

And if you want to vote for a write-in candidate, be sure to mark the bubble and manually write in that candidate’s name.

That list of write-in candidates is still being finalized.

You can also sign up to track your ballot from when it’s mailed to you to when it’s counted.

And as political candidates travel cross-county to gain voters, Espinoza warned: “Voters should not be having anyone fill out that ballot for them, unless they truly are in a situation where they need that assistance. For different candidates, campaigns going out, it is their right to go out and they’re doing their canvassing of neighborhoods … ultimately it is the voters’ decision who they vote for, who they mark on that ballot, and who ultimately gets counted in our final results.”

Here’s what to know if you want to vote in-person, on election day

“We’ve had a process where you had to bring your mail-in ballot in order to receive a poll place ballot,” Espinoza said. “That’s no longer the case because of technology that we use, and we can actually look up voters in real time to determine whether or not they have submitted a vote by mail ballot yet or not.”

Espinoza explained that technology also works the other way around. Once you vote in-person, records will show you’ve already cast your vote for the election. You will not be able to vote by mail as well.

Poll sites are throughout the county, including Ridgecrest, Buttonwillow, Delano, Frazier Park and more, and are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

8 p.m. is a hard deadline, Espinoza underscored.

“At 8 o’clock, no one is allowed to drop their ballot in a drop box any longer, Espinoza began. “The drop boxes across the county are locked up. There are staff there waiting, and they lock those all up. And the last person in line, if there is a line, a poll worker will go get behind that person right at 8 o’clock, and if anyone comes after 8 o’clock, we are closed. But, if anyone is in the line at 8’oclock, we will stay open as long as it takes for them to be able to cast their ballot.”

Because Kern County is still a “traditional poll county,” Espinoza said “poll sites [are] in neighborhoods, in churches, in schools, in rec centers…”

Ballots are counted during typical business hours, but Espinoza noted whatever ballot-counting hours they announce to the public, they have to operate within that time frame.

County residents can watch ballot counting in real-time as “observers.”

“We have livestreaming in the office for ballot processing, so that’s going to be in our vote-by-mail room and in our ballot counting room,” Espinoza said of another method in which voters can watch the ballots being counted in real time.

“Those cameras will be livestreamed as long as ballots are being processed,” Espinoza said. “Our cameras at our drop boxes, for this election, we’re not going to have the livestreaming service available.”

She said her team is working on getting livestreaming services for ballot drop box cameras ready by the November general election.

Election results, however, cannot be checked in real-time, as the county first has to report its counts to the state.

Espinoza said Kern Elections could start processing mail-in ballots as early as this week. It all depends on how many ballots come in.

“Reminding people, you don’t have to vote for every single race,” she said. “The races that you do vote for will still count.”

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