The more than 600 official polling places in Santa Clara County
will be open today from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. There are actually 624
precincts in the county, but some polling places overlap, said to
Elma Rosas, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County Registrar of
Voters.
The more than 600 official polling places in Santa Clara County will be open today from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. There are actually 624 precincts in the county, but some polling places overlap, said to Elma Rosas, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.
Voters heading to the polls should be aware that their voting location might have changed since the last election as many precincents have been consolidated.
“We really encourage our voters to look at their sample ballot and look at the address of their polling place,” Rosas said. “That’s the key thing.”
Santa Clara County voters will still be using the punch-card ballots, as will voters in Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Solano and Mendocino counties.
While voter turnout is expected to be high today, a record-breaking 140,000-plus absentee ballots were issued by the county registrar for the recall election, Rosas said.
“That surpasses the (139,326) that we had in the presidential November 2000 election,” Rosas said. It also surpasses the 112,905 issued during the previous record-setting gubernatorial election in 1998.
The county has received more than 93,000 absentee ballots so far, which Rosas called “a high percentage.” Ideally, the registrar would receive all absentee ballots before election day.
“We obviously want to get back as many as we can right away,” she said.
Absentee ballots can be turned in to any polling place today, but can no longer be mailed in. The collected absentee ballots that have already passed signature verification will be tabulated after the polls close tonight, while counting of the absentee ballots collected today will likely start Friday after signatures are verified tomorrow and Thursday.
The total cost of the election was predicted to be between $3 and $5 million. To date, $2.7 million has been spent on the recall and staff at each polling place have yet to be paid for their work or training, Rosas said. The county’s polling places are all fully staffed with four to five people each.
“We knew we were probably going to be closer to that $5-million mark,” Rosas said. The estimate was based on the cost of a regular election.
To find the correct voting place, log on to the registrar of voter’s Web site at: www.sccvote.org.
