By Pearl Boelter
The change from using precinct in-person voting (schools, club houses, homes) to vote centers occurred in the 2020 elections. In-person voting sites went from 984 to 181(81% reduction). Additionally, 121 drop boxes were added with only 40% having security cameras nearby. In 2022, knowing that the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, I expected precinct voting to return. Seeing the vote centers and drop boxes still there, I began to investigate through local elected official contacts, website reviews, and Public Records Act requests. The following is what I found.
The California legislature passed SB 450, the Voter’s Choice Act (VCA) in 2016 which allowed counties to change from precinct voting to vote centers and drop boxes. The operative word is allowed. There was no mandate for Orange County to move from precinct voting. To date, 50% of California’s counties still have precinct voting.
Orange County’s Board of Supervisor’s (OC BOS) initially voted in 2017 to not adopt VCA and remain with precinct voting. However, in 2019, the Board of Supervisors with one new member and one vacant position voted to adopt the Voter’s Choice Act. There was also a heavy push from the California Secretary of State.
I was still confused as to why I didn’t receive notices from the Registrar of Voters (ROV) regarding this dramatic change in how I vote. With several ROV Public Records Act submittals, I found out that the only way I would have known about the change was being connected to the OC ROV’s Facebook page, checking the OC ROV’s website and/or checking the OC BOS’s website. This lack of outreach resulted in only 44 OC voters attending the public meeting in August 2019 when Orange County had approximately 1.2 million voters. Two years later, in August 2021, there was another public meeting to review the VCA after its use in 2020. Again, due to the lack of outreach, only 23 people attended, 3 in-person and 20 online.
The next review of Orange County’s VCA is going to occur this year, 2025. The Orange County Board of Supervisors can decide to opt out of the vote center model and return to precinct voting. The following are reasons to return to precinct voting:
Security
- Increased Security and Integrity in Elections
a. Precinct voting uses paper voter rosters; vote centers use electronic poll books which require network connection (routers, wifi) which is also a violation of California’s election code.
b. Precinct voting has poll workers that manually check the voter in and have the voter sign the voter roster and put his/her address.
c. Reduced use of vote by mail drop boxes which are unmanned and only 40% have security cameras.
Costs - Comparison of 2018 and 2022 General Midterm costs show the VCA costs up 25% from the Precinct Voting.
a. VCA requires seasonal staffing of 181 vote centers for 4 and 11 days and daily ballot retrieval for 29 days from the 121 VBM dropboxes.
b. A comparison of ROV budgets from 2018 to 2022 show an increase of 2.5 million in employee expenses beginning with the 2019/20 budget.
Although a Public Records Request was submitted for the costs associated with the 2024 Presidential General Election, the ROV responded that they have 9 months to get that information to the State.
Advantages to Precinct Voting - Neighborhood precincts are closer to home, easier and quicker to get to than centralized vote centers. Precincts are usually limited to approximately 1000 -2000 voters max, not 50,000. Orange County has 20% of their vote centers open for 11 days mapped for 50,000 voters with the rest of the centers open for 4 days and mapped for 10,000 voters.
- Provable chain of custody (to the voter and from the voter) to the precinct ballot box, one voter, one ballot.
- Small number of election workers needed at small precincts, so it’s easier to manage and live stream.
- Easy to audit ballots cast in the voter’s precinct.
In order to get information about the VCA Registrar of Voters public meetings, please sign up for meeting notices with this link: https://ocvote.gov/voting/election-administration-plan You can also contact Board of Supervisor Janet Nguyen at (714) 834-3110 or Janet.Nguyen@ocgov.com