Fallbrookians take to the polls

Editor's note: Village News goes to print on Mondays, so results of the Nov. 3 election were not known at press time.

Election Day was Nov. 3, but this year, California voters had the opportunity to cast their ballots even before then.

While voters in the past had to request a mail-in ballot, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in June to send all registered voters a ballot through the mail in order to allow Californians to limit their potential exposure to the coronavirus.

And voters still had options to cast their ballot early if they did not receive their mail-in ballot or felt more comfortable voting in person. For the first time this year, early in person voting was offered in some areas starting Saturday, Oct. 24, and all San Diego County polling places were open from Saturday, Oct. 31, right through Election Day.

As of the morning of Sunday, Nov. 1, some 1.1 million votes had been cast in San Diego County, about 300,000 more than the same time in 2016, KPBS reported.

In Fallbrook, Jayden Dominique was one voter taking advantage of in-person voting at the Fallbrook Community Center Nov. 1 – her very first election, she said.

She said the act of casting her first ballot was a lot easier and less stressful than she expected.

"I think it was pretty nice to be able to just walk in and get it done instead of how I expected, (with) all of the super long lines and everything," Dominique said.

While poll workers said it had been quite busy at the community center the day before, there were no long lines to be seen that Sunday.

It was Ashley Arzate-Hernandez's first election, too. She said she's been registered to vote for two years, but this is the first time she has actually voted. She walked into the center to drop off a mail ballot.

"It was very important for me to show up and vote because it's good for our community to know who is there to actually support us and give back to our community," she said.

Marjorie and Dave O'Dell also dropped off the ballots they received in the mail at the community center, Fallbrook's only in-person polling place but one of three ballot drop-off locations.

"It's our American right to have a voice and if we don't at least try to get who we or what we want voted for, we have no right for the rest of the year to complain about what's going on," Marjorie O'Dell said, explaining why voting is important to her.

"In these crazy times, Dave O'Dell said, you need to get out and make sure that your party is represented and you want to make sure that the things you believe in are going to go your way ... right now, to me the political climate is so crazy and malicious that you really do need to get out there and make sure that you get your vote in."

Both O'Dell's said they made sure to physically hand their ballots over at a drop-off site, rather than sending them in the mail.

"I would never mail in a ballot," Marjorie O'Dell said.

Dave O'Dell said he had been concerned about the potential for voting boxes to be vandalized, ballots to get lost in the mail, or any number of other issues that could prevent his vote from being counted.

"We walked in here and did it, (using a) box to me seemed crazy and ridiculous," Dave O'Dell said.

That fear may not be unfounded – there have been a handful of reports of ballot box vandalism, including one in the Baldwin Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. And the United States Postal Service warned 46 states and the District of Columbia back in August that it could not guarantee all mail ballots for the November 2020 election would arrive on time.

Alyssa and Alex Julian said they never received their mail ballots, "which I know we were all supposed to, so that was weird," Alyssa Julian said.

But with in-person voting of course available at the community center, they had no trouble making their voices heard.

"If you have something you believe in, then you should definitely vote for it, because I know a lot of people that have all of these opinions about everything, but they don't do anything to try to change it," Alyssa Julian said.

"I feel the same way," Alex Julian said, "we have to have our voices heard ... even though it's just the two of us who are voting, there's a lot of people that can vote in the same direction that we're going for."

Will Fritz can be reached by email at [email protected].