Elections office has a suddenly busy schedule
Just a few months ago, the local election calendar was wide open.
But the ballot-casting landscape shifted in August, with proponents in Blue Lake securing enough signatures to move forward with a recall against one of the three councilmembers targeted, and the California Legislature putting a mid-decade redistricting measure before voters in a special election on Nov. 4.
Suddenly, there was a lot of work for the county’s Elections Office to complete in a very short time frame.
How short? Less than half the time it normally takes to get all the details ironed out, Registrar of Voters Juan Pablo Cervantes recently told the Journal.
“Through the miraculous work of my staff, we are a little ahead now,” Cervantes said earlier this month as ballots for the Proposition 50 question before voters were being readied to send out to the county’s nearly 83,000 registered voters.
But ballots are just a part of the logistics. There’re polling spaces to be opened and operated. Drop-off ballot boxes to be placed and polling place workers to be hired and trained.
The latter, he said, was “a big lift.”
“It’s a big scale up from seven people to 157,” but one he said was made a bit easier by the office’s shift from a volunteer-only system to paid temporary staff.
“It’s a broader net and makes it so more folks could participate in the process,” Cervantes said, adding his own first foray into all things elections was working at a polling place when he was teenager.
The ballot initiative, if approved, would temporarily set aside congressional maps drawn by the state’s independent, nonpartisan commission that oversees redistricting until the next census in 2030.
The proposition itself — dubbed the “Election Rigging Response Act” — is, as the name denotes, quite partisan and a reaction to the Trump administration’s nationwide gerrymandering push to secure more Republican seats in the Capitol before mid-terms.
The basic idea is to match tit-for-tat the five seats that Texas moved to be more friendly to Republican candidates under the Lone Star State Legislature’s redrawing effort.
California Democrats currently hold 43 of the state’s 52 seats in the House of Representatives.
A release from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office shortly after the state Legislature approved placing Proposition 50 on the ballot in late August describes the action as “an opportunity this November to push back against President Trump’s power grab in Texas and other Republican-led states.”
Conversely, opponents describe the initiative itself as a political power grab that is “dismantling safeguards that keep elections fair, removes requirements to keep local communities together, and eliminates voter protections that ban maps designed to favor political parties.”
While Humboldt would stay put in the Second District under the proposed map, northeastern Modoc and Siskiyou counties would be brought onboard, along with Shasta County, while portions of Mendocino and Sonoma would shift over to the First District.
One of the concerns expressed early on by Cervantes and other officials up and down the state was the financial impact putting on the special election would have if counties had to pay upfront from the same pot of cash that funds other essential services, including the sheriff’s office, while waiting for reimbursement.
That ended up being resolved with checks from the State Controller’s Office going out to cover the costs in late September, including Humboldt County’s $839,000 share of the estimated $251 million total “to administer the statewide special election,” according to an email from SCO press secretary Bismarck Obando.
“It’s a breath of fresh air to go into an election like this with resources and funding,” Cervantes said, allowing the office to execute the election “in a way that does right by the constituents and voters.”
He also hopes the payment might set a precedent going forward for the state to get “some of the election bill” instead of the county “picking up the state’s tab” in regularly scheduled elections. Those costs, he said, are divided up between the county and cities even when state and federal issues dominate the ballot.
Cervantes emphasized the work facing his office during an Aug. 27 Blue Lake City Council meeting as members entertained a motion to delay by two weeks a decision on when the recall would take place.
“It would be a great courtesy to us if you could handle this during this meeting,” he told the council. “We have a lot on our plate and being able to plan out, we need every day that we can be given.”
In the end, the council landed on a Jan. 6 date for the recall during a Sept. 9 special meeting, meaning voters in the city will see two elections in as many months.
While the November election has yet to be in the rearview mirror, Cervantes said his office will be ready to send ballots to Blue Lake in the first week of December. The city will be the one picking up the costs, an estimated $10,000 to $12,000 for the mail-in only, one subject ballot for residents in the town of nearly 1,200.
The last day to register to vote in the statewide special election is Oct. 20. For information on polling places and drop-off box locations, visit the county elections office website page here.
“We are geared up and ready to make this thing happen for you all,” Cervantes said.
Kimberly Wear (she/her) is the assistant editor at the Journal. Reach her at 442-1400 or kim@northcoastjournal.com.
This article appears in Protecting the Night.