Politics

County Invests In Upgrades At Registrar Of Voters

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published February 16, 2010 at 10:29 AM PST

This story was published more than 14 years ago.

San Diego’s Registrar of Voters is working to make voting more efficient.

When the June primary comes around, voters who chose to cast their ballots early at the registrar’s office in Kearny Mesa should find more counter space and shorter lines.

Registrar of Voters Deborah Seiler says 20,000 people showed up at her office to vote in the days leading up to the presidential election in 2008.

Become a KPBS sponsor

"We’re trying to be able to speed up the processing of voters when they come in," she said.

Most people still chose to vote at their local polling station.

However, Seiler encourages people to vote by mail, using absentee ballots. She says almost half of San Diego voters voted absentee in the last presidential election, and more than 70 percent voted absentee in the recent special recall election in Oceanside.

Seiler says the county is investing in new equipment to handle absentee ballots more efficiently.

Tags

Politics Regional Governments

Alison St John

twitter

Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.