The voting cycle is half done, but the vast majority of Santa Clara County voters haven’t cast their ballots.
As the vote-by-mail voting period hit the midpoint Tuesday, county elections officials reported that the percentage of returned ballots in Santa Clara County reached just 12.3%.
Whether this means a return to traditionally high turnout numbers in this General Election remains to be seen.
The more than 1 million registered voters in Santa Clara County are voting by mail at the pace of about 20,000 per day. The 26 voting centers open this weekend for in-person voting, with 13 days until the polls close.
In 2020, 78.6% of voters in Santa Clara County voted by mail in the presidential race, when total voter registration was 1.02 million. The percentage of mailed ballots is expected to be similar this year. Overall voter turnout in the county was 85% in 2020.
In this year’s hotly contested 16th Congressional District, the pace of mail voting in Santa Clara County – 11.4% – is slightly less than the overall rate. The district includes portions of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
In Santa Clara County, 26 vote centers – including five libraries – open on Saturday for in-person voting. Voting at these sites will continue through Election Day, Nov. 5. Another 79 vote centers will open for four days, beginning Nov. 2. Here are the voting center locations. https://vote.santaclaracounty.gov/vote-person/official-vote-center-list-and-schedule
Vote-by-mail ballots can be sent via the US Postal Service at no charge, or dropped in one of the many voting drop boxes scattered around the county. Here are the Drop Box locations.
Pre-election voter registration ended Monday, but prospective voters can still vote by completing Same-Day Voter Registration forms on Election Day and requesting a ballot in person. Here is how you can find out if you are registered to vote. https://rovservices.sccgov.org/Home/IndexPost?selected=vr&electionId=137&distance=5&navtab=do&asm=simple&selectedLanguageId=22\
Interesting races in Santa Clara. 49er Ghost candidates, George Guerra and Albert Gonzalez have chosen not to campaign at all, while 49ers have sent five mailers on their behalf. Kevin Park has been titled by the 49ers as a Mental Health Advocate, though no record exists of Park doing anything for mental health. Housing, jobs.and transportation are big issues. However, the 49er mailers use Mayor Lisa Gillmor as the number one issue. A mayor with a 69% approval rating is the 49er Orwellian Goldstein.
I’d expect lower turnout across the board in CA because many voters left the area over the last few years. And, I am at the point where I focus on the propositions/measures but other than that it’s almost a given CA will vote in the Democrat for President and the most liberal candidates for senate, etc. It’s wild how voting trends haven’t changed much outside of less support for extremely wasteful housing bonds and a desire for more accountability for criminal activity. In our house if it requires more taxes we always vote no because the taxes are used so inefficiently and everything is expensive already. Paying more into failing systems makes no sense. Looking at Council races for San Jose or County Sup or Congress, we just get the same people recycling in and out of the politics scene and failing up (Sam L and Karla and Cortese and Nguyen). We aren’t picking true leaders at this point, so many are disengaged.