When can I vote?
26-Oct-04
Californians: Today is the LAST DAY to request an absentee ballot! Absentee ballots need to be RECEIVED by your district on or before Tuesday, November 2nd. Postmarked by Nov. 2nd is not sufficient (only military personnel may use postmarks for absentee ballot deadlines). The election is in one week, so if you are planning to request an absentee ballot, you will probably want to go down to your county building and do it in person. You can deliver your voted absentee ballot to ANY ballot box in your county on election day, if you don’t think the post will deliver it in time. You may also have someone else deliver your ballot for you, but you need to fill out an affidavit on the envelope authorizing them to do so. ALL ABSENTEE VOTERS: Make sure you sign your absentee ballot!
In fact, if you do request your absentee ballot in person, you might just find that your county building has a vote early option that you can use. I’ll be voting this Saturday morning; Santa Cruz County has early voting at the county building in the County Clerk’s office. Since I’ll be busy all day on Election Day, I figure I’ll get this out of the way early.
A lot of people don’t know about early voting options. Call your county clerk if you’re interested and don’t know if your county offers this service. Santa Cruz and Santa Clara Counties in California both offer the service and have their early polls open this weekend as well as normal business hours during the week.