All Santa Clara County Voters to Receive Mail-In Ballots in 2020

As more and more voters cast their ballots by mail and others wait until election day to even register, Santa Clara County has approved sweeping changes in its election infrastructure, including replacing traditional polling places with new voting centers.

The Board of Supervisors earlier this month opted to implement the Voter’s Choice Act model of voting for this county, allowing the Registrar of Voters to join five California jurisdictions that successfully piloted the program in 2018 and at least four more implementing it for 2020—all in service of making voting easier.

“I am excited about the Voter’s Choice Act model coming to Santa Clara County,” said Registrar of Voters’ Shannon Bushey after the supervisors’ unanimous vote April 9. “It is going to make it more convenient for our 900,000 registered voters to cast a ballot and is anticipated to increase voter participation, (as) there will be many more options for when, where and how people can vote.”

The Voter’s Choice Act will is set to be implemented beginning with the March 2020 presidential primary election.

This new model of voting means that all voters will be mailed a ballot prior to election day. After marking their ballot, voters will have the choice of returning their ballot by mail with postage provided by the county, dropping their ballot in a ballot drop box anywhere throughout the county, or visiting any vote center within the county.

The locations of the new vote centers have not been determined.

The vote centers will replace traditional polling places and will offer an array of services, such as receiving a replacement ballot, receiving assistance or voting materials in multiple languages, voting using an accessible voting machine, dropping off a vote-by-mail ballot, registering to vote or updating a voter registration.

Vote centers also allow voters to cast their ballots at a location that is convenient to them, meaning there is no longer a wrong place to vote, which has the added benefit of reducing the number of provisional ballots issued and cast.

Public meetings will be held to receive feedback regarding the creation of the county’s election administration plan. The plan will include outreach, voter education, as well as the number and location of vote centers, the number and location of ballot drop boxes, and many other details necessary for the successful implementation of the new model.

“The new process makes sense,” Supervisor Joe Simitian said in an interview about the new plan. “It’s a net plus for our voters. But it’s a big change. We’ll have to work hard to communicate the new process to the public.”

He also noted that “the Voter’s Choice change is coming at a time when we’ll be experiencing other significant changes as well, a March primary and new voting technology among them. So getting the word out will be key.”

The Voter’s Choice Act, passed by the California State Legislature as SB 450 in 2016, was implemented successfully in San Mateo, Sacramento, Napa, Nevada and Madera counties during the 2018 elections. Two of the largest counties in California—Los Angeles and Orange—have also signed on to the model for the 2020 elections.

For more information, contact the Registrar of Voters’ Office at 408.299.8683, toll-free at 866.430.8683, or visit sccvote.org.

13 Comments

  1. Finally! Your legitimate vote as an American citizen will mean “NOTHING” with a Mexican as Secretary of State in charge of all voting services and counting. Couple that with Mexicans in charge of most County Voting Registration, Mail in Ballots and Ballot Harvesting from people who have received their ballot due to illegal immigrant driver licenses and you have a complete Mexican take over of this state. Thank god that on the Federal level the President has prepared to decline Certification of California’s vote totals unless Padilla allows a Federal Audit. Finding 10% of the ballots as illegal voting will suspend California’s voter results in the 2020 Presidential Election. California will lose their Representative and Senate seatings until there is a Federally supervised new election and the courts are accessed. Those who issue, collect and certify fraudulent votes will go to jail. California will be in court and without Congressional representation for years. Read the Federal Election Laws and the case law attending. Local elections would not be affected. So we can vote to name California “Calimexico”.

    One more American Conservative Supreme Court Justice and this country will have legal citizens, black, brown, yellow etc.

    Jack Slade of counsel

  2. Sounds like social progress to me. California will be able to have elections without anyone knowing about it!

    “We held an election last week, and the results just arrived in the mail. Hillary Clinton won!”

    “The mailman said he thought it was an honest election.”

    Go back to your homes.

  3. Just wondering . . . .

    When the State Elections Authority announces the results of future votes, what result should they report so that the maximum number of people will believe that an actual election took place?

    A. Gavin Newsom wins by 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent.

    B. Gavin Newsom wins by 53 percent to 47 percent.

    C. Gavin Newsom wins by 60 percent to 40 percent.

    D. Gavin Newsom wins by 93 percent to 7 percent.

    E.. Gavin Newsom wins by 99 percent to 1 percent.

    Personally, I think option “E” seems kind of fakey and sounds too much like North Korea..

    I think the best approach to keep the masses believing in the system is option “C” or option “D”.

  4. Jack, if there is an office this county can be proud of is the ROV. I started volunteering years ago and has been impressed by this office. It is very hard to trick at least for this county ROV. For example, each polling place is formed by members of different political parties which helps with checks and balances. You know each person’s party because it is next to their names. If the person is not registered to vote within the typical process or makes errors on their ballots, changes address, so on…they will vote abcentee. This means, this person’s ballot and voting rights will still have to be verified, no double voting, matching signatures, and other measures. They also have these random people that drop by the different polling places to check on seals and other legal policies. On Election Day, people will still be able to vote in person or drop ballot. What is going to change is that instead of having 100 polling places per city to give an example, there will be just ten. The reason for this change is because most people in the county are already voting by mail. Thus this will save money to the county and the state. The registration process is not changing just the delivery of ballots. The officials of this office are also members of different political parties. THANK YOU SCC ROV staff and volunteers. This is what bipartisan community work looks like!

    • > You know each person’s party because it is next to their names.

      Well, there you go!.

      California’s system of “ballot harvesting” allows third parties to collect ballots from voters and transport them to vote “collection points”.

      The voter’s name and address must be written on the ballot envelope.

      Could the third party ballot harvester simply look up voter’s party registration on the Registrar of Voter’s precinct list and simply “lose” the Republican or Libertarian ballots?

      Well DUH!!!

      LEGAL VOTING FRAUD BUILT INTO THE SYSTEM RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR BIG FAT FACES!

      If the U.S. Attorney General has the power to take control of the Ferguson, Missouri police department for civil rights violations, it has the power to take control of every Registrar of Voters in California for voting rights violations.

      Who knows. The voting system in California is SO corrupt that as far as anyone knows DONALD TRUMP may have actually won the 2016 election in California.

      • Trump only needs to worry about his Mueller report and Texan reports for now All of that is very fishy!

  5. Oh good we can al vote 27 times right from the house. It will be so wonderful knowing all of my votes will be counted as long as I vote for the right Democrats. However beware if you vote for the wrong Democrat you will be arrested and be made a trial monkey and exposed as a Russian agent.
    Hay, Hay, Ho, Ho, Voting Age has got to Go!

  6. Yet another example of California corruption. Doesn’t the left already have this state locked up with all of their cheating & rigging? What good is it to rig it even more?? My guess is they are afraid Trump is onto them. Let the games begin!

  7. Here is an example of what the Democratic machine thinks about all this. A quote from Brent Budowsky, a columnist for “The Hill” in an e-mail exchange with John Podesta (Hilary’s Chief of Staff) :

    “The best single move to elect her would be a massive voter registration and organization drive. Expand the electorate so more voters will vote so her low trust ratings generally will have less pro rated impact, and the number of higher trust voters will be newly registered.”

    Plain and simple, they need more Un-Informed voters in order to win. And low and behold, right on que, here is the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors rolling out the red carpet. Add a sanctuary county act on top of that and Shazam, even more un-informed voters voting. If they come here illegally and with no regard for our laws or culture (or us), why would they not vote themselves some public benefits if the County is so kind as to send them a ballot.

    This is how we have become the most One-Sided State in the Union. Well this and a few more cheating shenanigans.

  8. The ROV sent me two absentee ballots last time. I think it had to do with the shady stuff I noticed when getting my new drivers license (Real ID).
    I was waiting in a huge line at the DMV (yes, I had an appointment). The DMV people asked everyone to use some app to fill in their personal info to “save time”. It’s from some random company I had never heard of. They had a huge disclaimer about what they can do with the data. The DMV people made it look mandatory. I was a sucker.
    And the great and wonderous benefit of using this app? When you finally get to the front of the line, the DMV person gets a printout with your submitted personal info. Then you can watch as they re-type this very same information into another computer. The kicker? They still had me fill out a paper form with the same information on it.

    Just a few days later, I started getting text messages from PACs asking for contributions.
    And then, just a few weeks later, I received two absentee ballots for the last election.
    This is a total scam.

  9. > All Santa Clara County Voters to Receive Mail-In Ballots in 2020

    By the way, did any of the geniuses on the Board of Supervisors think to ask: “How secure and reliable are the conveyances of the United States Postal Service?”

    Those who pay attention to things and converse on various community grapevines such as “Next Door” and “Ring” and other social media report frequent occurrences of theft of mail from mailboxes, and theft of packages from door steps.

    In fact, package thefts are now so common that the perps even have their own colorful sobriquet: “Porch Pirates”.

    It would seem reasonable that someone on the bloated staffs of the Supes could have picked up the phone and called the local postmasters and asked: “How many incidents of reported or suspected mail theft occur in the County every year?” I suspect that the answer would be jaw dropping.

    If “homeless” people can be motivated to rifle every trashcan in the city for a mere five cents per aluminum can, it probably wouldn’t be hard to get them to search and destroy every non-Democrat ballot in a mailbox for ten cents a pop.

    And even if any of the mail thieves were apprehended, would anyone even mention it in their newspaper?

    “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one sees it, did it really happen?”

  10. How many times have you heard Democrat politicians scream: “COUNT EVERY VOTE!”

    Well, with one hundred percent mail-in ballots, EVERY VOTE ISN”T GOING TO GET COUNTED.

    https://youtu.be/frElEIfHoto

    Mail theft is very common. Most of the time, the victim doesn’t even know it has occurred.

    And when it does happen and get reported, it goes down to the bottom of the work pile. SJPD says they are so overworked and understaffed that they likely won’t even assign an investigator.

    And, for all the Social Justice Warriors, does mail theft occur more often in “rich” neighborhoods or in “poor” neighborhoods?

    Shame on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors FOR NOT EVEN ASKING THE QUESTION if the postal system is secure enough for “democratic elections:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *