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Left, poll worker Victor Garza helps Golda Hashem Zukhm-Viren and her husband Paul Viren cast their ballot at City Hall yesterday. Photo by Victor Maccharoli.

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In era of vote-by-mail, many still enjoy polls

By COLBY FRAZIER — Nov. 4, 2009

Despite being the city of Santa Barbara’s first vote-by-mail election, thousands of residents turned out at several ballot drop-off locations yesterday to cast their votes at the last minute.

While some said procrastination was behind their election day rush to the polls, others said they were reluctant to part ways with the age-old tradition of slipping their ballot into a box, speaking with a poll worker, and experiencing the other tangible aspects of participating in the democratic process.

“I always like to come to the polling place,” said Deborah Hicks, shortly after casting her ballot at a drop-off polling station at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. “I kind of like seeing the real faces of someone who’s making that contribution. It’s always hopeful to come see an election.”

Alan Wellman, an election worker who helped oversee operations at the museum drop spot, said dozens of voters who stopped by expressed their support for polling places, even if the option exists to drop the ballot in the mail.

“Many people say they prefer the tangible aspect of seeing people,” he said, noting that some feel personally slipping a ballot into a box, rather than relying on mail, helps ensure that their ballots will be counted.

At a drop-off center at City Hall, Mary Moreno, a veteran poll worker, said roughly 100 ballots were being dropped off each hour — a rate that she felt was higher than any previous year she’d experienced, when most people cast ballots at polls.

“We’ve been busy, busy, busy,” she said.

Victor Garza, a drop-off worker stationed at City Hall, said he was just glad to see more people turn out than in 2007, when a lowly 37 percent of registered city voters cast a ballot.

Marcelo Lopez, the city’s administrative services director, said as of 8 p.m., when the first wave of vote-by-mail ballots were counted, well over 1,200 ballots had been deposited at the City Hall drop-off location.

If similar numbers held for the other six drop-off spots, the number of voters to visit a polling place would rival the 5,476 who did in 2007, when 16,364 people voted, mostly by mail.

If there was any surprise in the relatively high numbers of those who chose to drop off ballots on election day, it was a pleasant surprise.

“I think I was surprised at the number of people who dropped off rather than mailed in,” said City Administrator Jim Armstrong. “But I’m not surprised by overall turnout.”

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What is with this mail in vote stuff? : 11/4/2009

I guess its easier to accidentally "lose" ballots that way. How do you confirm that your vote was actually received and counted? Do you have a receipt?

Bring back the polls

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