New law to expand early voting and create more options - Moorpark Acorn
Transition from polling
places to voting centers
MORE TO COME— County elections officials say a minimum of 34 ballot drop boxes will be provided countywide. RICHARD GILLARD Acorn Newspapers
Traditional neighborhood polling places are fading into history for Ventura County elections.
That’s because county election officials are transitioning to a new voting model under California’s Voter’s Choice Act in time for next June’s election. The law is meant to expand early voting and flexible voting opportunities.
Major provisions in the law include replacing hundreds of polling places open for one day with about 50 voting centers that serve a larger population and will be open for four days including election day. About 10 voting centers across the county will open even earlier—10 days before the election—officials said.
Miranda Nobriga, Election Division’s public information officer, said there are advantages to letting people use voting centers instead of requiring them to visit a specific polling place.
“People are not assigned to a location, which is really helpful if people live and work in different areas in the county. They’re able to go into any of the 50 locations in that four-day period and vote their home ballot,” Nobriga said.
All voters will automatically receive a mail-in ballot about a month before elections. All ballots will be in both English and Spanish and accommodations must be made for speakers of other languages under the law.
There will also be a greater push for voters to return ballots to secure drop boxes prior to election day at locations including city halls and other government facilities.
There will be a minimum of 34 drop boxes countywide, officials said. Criteria for dropbox placement include proximity to public transportation as well as neighborhoods with high percentages of low-income and disabled voters.
Election officials held a virtual public consultation meeting Nov. 17 as required under the law. The Zoom meeting was designed to receive public input to help officials develop a draft election administration plan that will need to be approved by state election officials.
More public meetings and an outreach program are planned in coming months so voters understand the changes.
The Voter’s Choice Act was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2016 and started out as pilot program. Counties were allowed to join or hold off on making the changes. A handful of counties made the change but Ventura County was not one of the early adapters.
Local election officials were concerned about the cost and restrictions imposed by the new law and also feared many voters would be upset about the loss of traditional polling places.
But the pandemic caused officials to reconsider.
Some aspects of the law were used in the 2020 presidential election and September recall election in Ventura County with special permission by the state to help prevent the spread of COVID, officials said. One big fear was the number of elderly poll workers who would be especially at risk from exposure to COVID.
Nobriga said there were some complaints about the lack of traditional polling places in the November 2020 election, but the concerns largely subsided by the time the recall election was held in September.
“Voters in Ventura County have already had a taste of this. We’ve had two elections so they’re kind of getting used to the new model,” Nobriga said.
While polling places may be missed by some voters, Nobriga said setting up hundreds of them for every election posed its own challenges, such as when a school held a function on election day and could not serve as a polling place as usual.
“When we had 389 polling places, locations changed,” Nobriga said. “People would call and be upset to have to go six more blocks away.”
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source: https://www.mpacorn.com/articles/new-law-to-expand-early-voting-and-create-more-options/
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