San Diego County Still Needs Poll Workers For Election Day

The call is out for the San Diego County registrar of voters. They need more poll workers for next Tuesday's election. Joining me is Michael Boland. Welcome to the program. Ask for having me. Last time we spoke you had almost filled your poll worker quota. Now there are vacancies? There are. We specifically need bilingual poll workers for this upcoming election in specific areas within the County. Chinese, Filipino, Spanish and Vietnamese are currently covered linkages. We are seeking individuals that can serve as a poll worker to sign a particular in the specific languages. Right now we are sitting well but we always like to have as many bilingual poll workers as what our allocation set out in terms of overall goals. Are there specific neighborhoods where you actually need more workers? There are, for example in the Chinese community, there is Carlsbad center city in downtown San Diego, and the Filipino bilingual poll workers we need bilingual poll workers in Dell Beas, Escondido, Oceanside, Spring Valley, Valley Center, and Spanish, Fallbrook, lemon Grove, Spring Valley area. Finally Vietnamese witches the Dell deals area, alcohol and a variety of locations for the Vietnamese bilingual poll workers that we need. Is the fact that this is such a long ballot, is that increasing the need for poll workers? Every election we need bilingual poll workers as well as poll workers in general. We are buttoning up this election and we are making one last call out there to make sure our bilingual poll workers are out there. We have a very diverse community in our County and we want to make sure we are serving them as well as we can and making sure there is representation to serve those that are limited in English. For you concerned about long lines on Tuesday? There's always a concern when you have a high turnout as we are going to have in this election, as well as the fact that we went to a two card because there are so many contests. I'm concerned with long lines on election day and that's one of the reasons why we are asking voters who are going to the polling place to be well informed as to what selections they will make before they receive their official ballot. What I've been asking voters to do is take out the sample ballot and premarket well before election day and bring it with them and that we can transfer those votes onto their official ballot when they receive it, this way it reduces the lines at the polling locations. If you are planning on going to the polls, make sure you get your right and a site polling location. You can find out that information on the back of your sample ballot or you can go to SD vote.com where your assigned polling location is. It will reduce provisional voting situation that may occur. We talked about people who may want to observe the election at the polls. Most notably Donald Trump has asked his supporters to observe polling what are the rules and regulations regarding poll watchers? Elections are always a transparent process and it's a form of integrity of the overall elections to allow for observations inside the polling place. An individual from the public or from an organized group can go inside a polling location and observe the process, however there are policies and procedures associated with the observation and what I mean by that is that there can't be any level of intimidation or disruption or interference with the overall election process if the poll worker is interacting with voters and trying to issue a ballot. There, the voter should be free from any type of interference from an observer the observers are there to observe. Any type of election were campaigning needs to be 100 feet from the polling location. What I always say is, a sanctuary for voters to be free from any additional campaign materials that they've already received. Now it's a time for them to go into a quiet place to return to a voting booth and make their selections. Any interference or intimidation that we hear, we have to 100 -- field support representatives who are circulating to every one of the 1552 precincts. We will ask with them probably to make sure that any type of disruption that is happening at a polling location certainly from any observers gets handled appropriately. We reported yesterday that your office had already sent out a record number of mail in ballots. Yesterday was the last day to request those ballots. How many more ballots will you be sending out? At this point in time, we issue 100 -- 1,110,000 ballots. That is an absolute record in terms of how many ballots we've issued for this election. The other record is that we are reporting out 1,652,862 registered voters within the County. We've never seen those numbers before in terms of record registration turnout. It certainly is a historical number, and we will see if the turnout will be historic. When it comes to reporting the results on election day, considering the long ballot, what can voters, I wonder if you expect the length of that ballot will affect tell soon folks go out -- results go out. We've already had 400,000 mail ballots returned. It is taking longer to process every single one of those card so we know that is taking longer. At the polling location it will take voters longer time to make their selections because there are many more contests than in prior elections. It's going to take longer to vote inside the voting booth. And then deposit them inside the box. It will take a long line, they will hold up the point from closing down processing, causing of the precinct and getting those ballots back to our office. What you're saying is it's going to be a long night. As well as a long campus because there is a 28 to 30 day timeframe for us. Election day is next Tuesday, November 8 I been speaking with Michael blue. -- for. Coming up the high cost of housing is driving some families to leave San Diego. It struck 20 p.m. here listening to KPBS Mid Day Edition