San Diego Voters Head To Poll In Crucial Gubernatorial Recall Election

Speaker 1: 00:00 The eyes of the nation. This is not hyperbole the eyes of nation on California, because the decision you're about to make isn't, it's going to have, that's going to have a huge impact on California, and it's going to reverberate around the nation. And quite frankly, not a joke around the world Speaker 2: 00:18 That was president Joe Biden at a rally in long beach last night to drum up last minute votes for a fellow Democrat governor Gavin Newsome today is election day and the last day for voters to weigh in on whether or not to recall the governor from office and to choose his replacement. Should he be recalled? Joining us on this special election day is San Diego's interim registrar of voters. Cynthia pass Cynthia. Welcome Speaker 3: 00:43 In morning Speaker 2: 00:45 For voters who have not yet voted, how can they still get their ballot in? Speaker 3: 00:49 Absolutely. If you still have your mail ballot in hand, act on that mail ballot, seal it inside your envelope, sign your name and date it, and you could drop it off at one of 131 mail ballot drop-off locations across the county, as well as 221 in-person voting locations. You can find these locations@sdvogt.com. We have a locator tool, so you can find a location close to you. Speaker 2: 01:20 Is it too late to actually mail it in? There Speaker 3: 01:23 Is still time. We typically at this point, tell folks to go ahead and drop it off at one of our, our voting locations or drop off locations. But if it is mailed today, the ballot must be the envelope must be postmarked on or before election day and received by our office by the 21st of September. So they do have seven days if postmark timely to make it to our office. Speaker 2: 01:52 What time do the polls close today? Speaker 3: 01:54 The polls close at 8:00 PM. So if you want to vote in person, visit one of our 221 locations across the county, and you can vote in person up until 8:00 PM. If you're in line at 8:00 PM, you will get to vote. If you try joining the line after 8:00 PM, it will be too late. Speaker 2: 02:15 And what if they didn't get a ballot in the mail because they aren't yet registered to vote. Speaker 3: 02:20 They can register at any of our 221 voting locations or at our office. They simply can come in register to vote. It's called a conditional voter registration, and they will vote provisionally, meaning their ballot will be placed in an envelope. And once their registration is verified, that ballot will be removed from the envelope and added to the count. Speaker 2: 02:44 How can voters track their ballot to ensure their vote has been counted? Speaker 3: 02:48 And if they're mailing it through the us postal service or dropping off their mail ballot at a mail ballot drop-off location, they can use a tool called where's my ballot, and that will track their ballot and let them know when it's received by our office. Speaker 2: 03:05 And we know it's still early in election day, but voting has been going on for several weeks. Turnout is always an important part of an election, uh, but especially during a special election, how has turnout been so far right Speaker 3: 03:18 Now? We're seeing about a 47% turnout. The last time I checked. So turnout is pretty good. When you look at off your elections, we tend to see lower turnout, but this is pretty steady participation. We're seeing an increase and voters going to the polls today. Um, so ultimately on October 14th, when we certify these results to the secretary of state, we'll see what the actual turnout is. Speaker 2: 03:46 Any expectation of what that turnout might be overall. At this point Speaker 3: 03:51 At first, I was anticipating just looking at the 2003 recall election, which was really the only election we could compare it to. We saw a 66% turnout in our county. I was anticipating maybe 65 to 70% turnout. Maybe now I'm thinking 60 to 70% percent turnout. So, so we shall see what that might end up being. We know that over 900,000 of our active registered voters have already cast their ballot. So today we'll be telling that that folks are interested in this election and they are turning out to vote Speaker 2: 04:32 Even before the election has been decided. There are already voter fraud allegations, surfacing of what steps are you taking to ensure the voting is fair and accurate. Speaker 3: 04:43 As with every election, we take the security of our election. Um, very seriously. We have several chains of custody, um, procedures in place. Uh, prior to every election, we do an accuracy testing. It's called a logic and accuracy testing on all of our equipment. Um, after election day, we do a 1% manual tally to again, verify the accuracy of our voting equipment and our scanning equipment. So we take security very seriously. And when Speaker 2: 05:24 Will we know the results of the election Speaker 3: 05:27 We have until October 14th to certify this election to the secretary of state. And we will take every bit of that time to make sure the election is accurate, completely canvassed. And every eligible vote is in the count. We may see anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000 mail ballots dropped off today. So those will still need to be processed into, into the count over the following weeks. Any conditional voter registrations will still need to be processed as well. And those are a bit more labor intensive. So it may be a couple of weeks before in our county. At least we'll see more of a resolution, but we will take until October 14th to certify these results to the secretary of state. Speaker 2: 06:16 I've been speaking with interim San Diego, registrar of voters, Cynthia pass. Cynthia, thank you very much for joining Speaker 3: 06:23 Us. Thank you.