S1: Welcome in San Diego , it's Jade Hindman. Today is the last day to vote. So what should voters expect when the polls close tonight ? And how are local officials ensuring a free and fair election ? We'll find out. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. It's election day , and while many of you have mailed in your ballots , many are also lining up at polling locations across the county. So what happens once the polls close ? Well , here to answer some questions for us is Cynthia Paz. San Diego County registrar of voters. Cynthia , welcome back to Midday Edition. Hello.
S2: Hello.
S1: Well , I know it's a busy day for you , but I'm so glad you had time to talk to us.
S2: Those are getting processed and ready to go into the count. We've also had our vote centers open across the county since October 26th. So as we head into election night , when the vote centers close at 8 p.m. , that first set of unofficial election night results that comes out shortly after 8 p.m. will include all of those mail in ballots that we've received prior to Election Day , as well as ten days of early voting. Wow.
S1: Wow.
S2: Um , there was the conditions of the global pandemic , and we had this statewide push encouraging voters to not gather , um , essentially to to not gather at polling places or at vote centers and really encouraging voting by mail and doing so early. So at this time in 2020 , we were at over a million mail in ballot returns. Um , and currently with this election , we're just over 900,000.
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S1: And wow , when it comes to in-person voters , how many people have already headed to the polls this morning in San Diego.
S2: So as of yesterday , across our our vote centers that have been open for ten days , we've had over 80,000 voters visit our vote centers and vote in person. And we expect pretty high turnout today. For those of you who waited until Election Day to cast your ballot , you could expect to be waiting in some lines.
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S2: Uh , November of 2016 , we saw an 81% turnout. And November of 2012 , we saw an almost 77% turnout. So I would anticipate seeing something similar with this election , Somewhere around an 80% turnout in this election.
S1: And tell me about this. If anyone is actually trying to mail in their ballot today , will that will that ballot count.
S2: So it must be postmarked on or before election day and received by my office up to seven days after. Um , we also have our 150 official ballot drop boxes around the county , as well as 235 vote centers. These these locations will close at 8 p.m. , so you have until 8 p.m. to drop off. If you do mail it , you just want to ensure that you're aware of that pickup time that the US Postal Service will be picking up to ensure it will happen today. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. Well , walk us through a ballot journey from turning it into final tabulation.
S2: At that time , it captures an image of the envelope , which includes the voter signature. That signature on the envelope is compared against the signature we have on file for that voter when they registered to vote. Once the signature is verified , it goes on to the extraction process , simply removing the ballot from the envelope , placing it in ballot cartons , and sending it over to tabulation to be scanned into the count. During this process , if somebody failed to sign their envelope , that envelope remains unopened , and we send a notification to that voter informing them of the situation and giving them an opportunity to cure that situation so their ballot could be counted.
S1: A couple of weeks ago. Your office hosted a logic and accuracy test where you all invited members of the public to actually come and see your process.
S2: So. Elections here in California are open and transparent. We've been conducting logic and accuracy test for years , and the public has attended and they're welcomed. So that is not new. We do audits before our election and after our election , all to ensure the accuracy of our voting system and the accuracy of our result.
S1: Well , I know last week we did hear about ballot drop boxes in Washington and Oregon actually being set on fire. Hundreds of ballots were destroyed in that. How safe are ballot boxes here in San Diego County.
S2: They're very safe. We've already received over 300,000 mail ballots dropped off , um , at one of our 150 official ballot drop boxes. Um , we are not seeing any issues. Um , our ballot retrieval teams go out several times a day , uh , to retrieve ballots and bring them back in to be scanned into the count.
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S2: And it's been like that for many , many years. Come election night , the election is not over. Um , what I can tell you is that come election night , that first set of unofficial election night results that comes out shortly after 8 p.m. will include all the mail in ballots that we've been able to process into the count prior to Election Day , as well as ten days of early voting across our vote centers. Then poll workers are closing up their vote centers , and those voted ballots are being secured and returned to our office. So you'll notice throughout the night there will be periodic updates as vote centers return. There will be no updates. Election night , uh , to mail ballots. It will all be in-person voting on Election Day only Once all vote centers report and all votes are in the count , we will publish the final , unofficial election night results along with the projected outstanding number of ballots that still need to be processed into the count. This is an estimate. It will include known and unknown data. We know how many mail ballots and provisionals we have in house come election night , but we also need to estimate what we might receive in the mail over the following seven days. So there will be an estimate. This could be anywhere from 400,000 to 500,000 , uh , projected to still process into the count. After that final unofficial election night results , our next set of results will occur Thursday night by 6 p.m..
S1: All right. So quite the process there. I've been speaking with Cynthia Paz , San Diego County Registrar of Voters. Cynthia , thank you and happy election Day.
S2: Thank you. All.
S1: All. Vote centers are open today until 8 p.m. ballot drop boxes will also close at 8 p.m. today. You can find your nearest voting center or ballot box at pbs.org. Coming up , a look at voter confidence and what more to expect as ballots are counted.
S3: Election night is really just the beginning of our finding out , you know who's going to win all of the races that are important around the country to decide the presidency of the House , the Senate and local races.
S1: Hear more when KPBS Midday Edition returns. Welcome back to KPBS midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. If you haven't yet cast your ballot vote centers will be open today until 8 p.m. you can find those locations at pbs.org. But now , while we wait for the results , let's talk about public trust and election procedures. Joining me now is Casey Dominguez. She is a professor of political science at the University of San Diego. Professor , welcome back to Midday Edition.
S3: Thank you for having me.
S1: So glad you're here.
S3: Um , but that level of trust is lower than it was ten years ago or 20 years ago. And , uh , looks similar to how it looked in 2020 , in part , you know , what we've seen in the last several election cycles is that Republicans in particular have lost some confidence in how elections are administered , and that is driving those lower numbers.
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S3: He began that actually in 2016 , but certainly amplified that in refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election. Um , and , you know , people who trust him and follow him and like him have taken up those claims as truth. And they are they there are there are now a lot more people who are worried that elections are not being run fairly.
S1: Is that lack of trust just among Republicans ? Well , it's not.
S3: Entirely among Republicans. There's always some number of Americans that don't trust that elections are going to be run fairly. Um , among Harris supporters , this is um , Pew Research asks these questions repeatedly over time. So they give us some nice ways of looking at those numbers. About 10% of Harris supporters think that elections will not be run well , but about 42% of Trump supporters say that elections will be run not too well or not. Not at all well.
S1: And this is despite voter suppression laws.
S3: It is despite the fact that there there are some states that have made it harder for the poor , for the elderly , for people of color to vote , and have made it harder , in general to cast ballots by mail , to vote early , to register to vote. Um , despite that , um , most Americans in both parties , uh , still feel that elections will be conducted fairly.
S1: All right. And what does research show us about ways to increase election trust and voter turnout.
S3: So those are actually slightly different questions. We we actually know a lot about how to increase voter turnout. Actually casting a ballot is an act that requires people to take undertake quite a bit of effort. Right. You have to register. You have to make sure you get your ballot. You have to do the research. You have to fill out the ballot. You have to take it back somehow or go vote on Election Day. And so anything that makes that easier for people , whether it's being able to register on Election day , same day voter registration , whether it's being automatically registered at the DMV , whether it's mail ballots , we know from research that all of those things make it easier for people to vote and make it more likely that they will turn out to vote. There's also things that campaigns can do. We've studied this a lot in the political science community , talking to people face to face about helping them. You know , remember to turn out to vote is just a really great way to get people who might not otherwise have turned out to vote , to turn out to vote. So we know a lot about that. Trust is a slightly different issue , um , institutions in general in the United States and really sort of throughout the developed world are having sort of a crisis of confidence right now. And that's been a very long term trend. And the decline in trust in government worse in the last decade , in part because of populist rhetoric by the right , especially Donald Trump , but also by people like Bernie Sanders. And that's sort of on the left side of the spectrum as well. And so there's a lot of different contributors to that lack of trust in institutions in general. And election administration is part of that. But certainly elite rhetoric is part of the reason for that decline in trust in institutions and in elections. And one would think that elite rhetoric would also be a solution to that. In some ways.
S1: You've touched on it.
S3: I just want to emphasize that , um , our elections are run by our neighbors , right ? By people in our own communities. And that has a way of of , you know , making people feel comfortable with the results. But there's also partisanship that affects the way people feel about institutions. And , you know , any time that a party loses an election , some of the people in the in the party that loses feel like the election was , was stolen from them in some way. It's usually a very small number. Right now it's a bigger number because of the elite rhetoric that's driving that.
S1: An unverified claims about election fraud or popping up on social media , um , one that's gained a lot of traction is that non-citizens are voting or that they're allowed to vote in federal elections , which is completely untrue and baseless. But what are the consequences of these narratives ? Well , I.
S3: Think some of the consequences are potential voter harassment , right ? We already know that for there's a study that shows that Latino men are more likely to be asked for for their ID card in states that require it than white women are. So there's low level harassment. Like , I'm going to look at your ID really hard , and then there's higher level harassment. Like , I'm not going to let you vote because I don't think you're a citizen. Then obviously there's that harassment of citizens of the United States who have a right to vote is problematic for all sorts of reasons and and bad for democracy. And hopefully there are procedures in place at polling stations and training done by registrars of voters all over the country to try to prevent that from happening. But that's certainly one terrible manifestation of the false rhetoric about large numbers of undocumented people voting.
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S3: In part , you know , we've got external states , right ? I think their video refer you're referring to the FBI says that that was put out by. And I think the state of Georgia also said that , that that video is made by , by Russian intelligence , one of the , one of the issues with the decline in people's trust in the media is that the media used to do the job of checking those claims for us. And now people with less trust in the media and with so many sources of information that are so unverified , it's really hard to identify all of those claims on all of the different platforms that people use. It's really hard for the declining number of mainstream news organizations to put staff resources toward debunking every single one of those claims , and that has the potential to really affect people's trust in the system. And and who knows , lead to , you know , events like January 6th. Yeah.
S1: What advice do you have for for developing Skills and media literacy. I mean , with so much misinformation and disinformation. Especially from foreign adversaries entering the playing ground here , how do you.
S3: Um , you know , part of it is understanding what fact checking mechanisms are in place. In the places where you're getting your news. So if you're getting it from ECS or WhatsApp. Um , you know , understand that the information you're getting has not been vetted by anybody. Nobody's fact checked it for you. And so you should have a healthy dose of skepticism. For those kinds of platforms that you don't have for KPBS and , um , you know , the newspaper in your town and your local , you know , NBC news station , like , there's fact checking , there's institutional ways that we can get more reliable information. And you should remember that. Um , but I think the second part is the second thing a person can do , and we should all do , is be aware of our own biases. Research shows that we're more likely to share information and to and to believe it if it confirms our pre-existing beliefs. It's a gut feeling that says , yeah , I that this is what I believe to be true. And you see something that confirms that you're much more likely to believe it , you're much more likely to share it. And that doesn't make it more true just because it confirms what you already think. And so we need to learn to not conflate those things , and especially stuff that we see online , that it makes us feel really strong emotions like anger and outrage , uh , those tidbits of information that make us feel those feelings , you know , they're going to be amplified by social media algorithms , um , more than fact checks and , and , you know , more unbiased and maybe a little bit more boring information that doesn't evoke such strong emotions. And so we should check our own emotions when we see something that makes us that says , ah , you're right about this. And oh , this is outrageous. And , um , oh , I feel so angry about this. Well , that's a moment to just take a pause and maybe do a little research and see if that that fact has been confirmed by any reputable sources. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. And here's another piece of the puzzle on all of this. And that is that people have their own set of facts it seems.
S3: Right. If there's one side that says , um , you know , our Tijuana River is polluting our beaches , and then one side says , no , it isn't. I mean , what are we going to do ? We can't solve a problem if we can't agree about what the problem is. Um , and our being able to rely on a shared set of facts is absolutely critical to making decisions in a complex , large , multiracial democracy. Like we have to have some common ground and the facts serve as that common ground. And they do in courts of law and they do in schools. Right. And and we need to , um , find ways to , uh , bring those norms back to our debate about politics. Mhm.
S4: Mhm.
S1: Well , you know , news about the presidential race is top of mind for many voters. But can you talk about why it's important to to really pay attention to local races and ballot measures too.
S3: Well , I mean the , the , the national politics are important. There are important decisions made about foreign policy at the , at the national level that local elections don't touch. But a lot of what we do in our daily lives , where our kids go to school and what are a lot of the taxes we pay , sales taxes , property taxes , what they look like. And and you know , how homeless people are treated in our streets and whether , uh , local waterways are clean and how we get how we get our water in places like California. All of that , all of those decisions are affected by people that we elect at the local level in our cities and our county and our state. And because a lot of people do tune those races out. Um , you know , your your vote has a bigger chance of making a difference in those lower level races because fewer people are going to vote in them and the decisions they make are incredibly consequential. So yeah , definitely do do your research and vote in the down ballot races.
S1: Well , we talked about this earlier. Um , you know , and that is ways to increase voter turnout. You're involved in a group called us devotes , which works to increase voter turnout among college students. Talk to me about the importance of that group and why this effort is so important.
S3: Well , college students have all the characteristics of people who are going to have a hard time getting to the ballot box. Um , they they don't have a college education , which we know is one of the things that makes people more likely to vote. They don't own a home. They haven't lived in a , you know , they're moving around a lot. They're getting their first apartment or they're going away to school and they're , uh , They're generally going to have all the characteristics of people who are going to have a hard time getting to the polls. Plus , it's also completely new to them , and they may not feel confident about their ability to participate. And so , um , you know , there's there's a lot that we know about young voters and that we can do to help them. Um , and what we do at USC votes in particular , is because the University of San Diego draws students from all over California and all over the country and the world. There's just a lot of different rules all over those places , um , that students have to follow if they want to get registered to vote , get their ballots sent to them , make sure it comes to their address and not where their parents live. Um , and it's just a lot of logistical issues. And mostly we just focus on helping them through those practical steps they need to take in order to become voters.
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S3: It's almost never that the votes are all counted on election night. Even in the states that are like , yep , 100% of the precincts are reporting , that doesn't mean every vote has been counted. There's still provisional votes to count and there's always some mop up. But for states like California , we are allowed to mail our ballots on Election Day and they can arrive in some states , you know , up to a week or two weeks later. And there's several other states that do that. And so what we should remember is what we hear on election night is the media and the election experts deciding who has won based on the trends in the in the reporting in those states and not necessarily on all the votes having been counted. Um , vote counting , we should expect to take a couple of days or weeks. Places like California. It's for close elections. It could be weeks. And we've we've sort of gotten used to that as we've moved to the mail voting with everybody , voting by mail and the later deadlines for those. But , uh , election night is really just the beginning of our finding out , you know , who's going to win all of the races that are important around the country to decide the presidency of the House , the Senate and local races. So we're , you know , we're having a party. We're going to we're going to follow election returns with our students. But it's , uh , we shouldn't necessarily expect unless it's a blowout in one or the other direction , we probably will not have an answer for several days. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. People just really need to trust the process on that. It sounds like. Um , yeah. That in mind , though , this election is bringing up a lot of feelings of anxiety for voters across the country.
S3: Um , you know , I , I personally am not having a great time sleeping , but , uh , try to try to get some sleep , stay hydrated , get that exercise , eat some vegetables. Um , but also understand that this is a collective anxiety that many people are feeling. And , you know , talk about it with people talking about those anxieties. Sharing a sweet treat probably isn't going to hurt anybody. Um , in moderation , of course.
S1: I think those are all good things to do for sure. I've been speaking with Casey Dominguez. She is a professor of political science at the University of San Diego. Professor Dominguez , as always , thank you. And please indulge in some self-care.
S3: You too. Thank you so much.
S1: That's our show for today. If you missed anything , you can download KPBS Midday Edition on all podcast apps. I'm Jade Hindman. Thanks for listening.
