‘All Hands on Deck’ as California Election Officials Struggle to Find Pandemic-Safe Polling Places

California election officials have a clear message for voters ahead of the first statewide election during the coronavirus pandemic: Fill out your ballot at home.

Voting by mail will be easier this fall, when every registered voter in the state will be sent a ballot in an effort to reduce crowding at polling places.

But for many Californians, distanced voting is not possible; some might have language barriers or disability issues requiring in-person assistance. Others, like voters who have recently relocated or are experiencing homelessness, may not have received a ballot in the mail.

For them, and the many others voters who simply prefer to cast their ballots in person, state and local officials are scrambling to create a safe voting experience that reduces the risk of COVID-19 transmission.

Some counties are using the crisis to pilot novel ideas, while others are struggling to replace longtime polling places where a gathering of people could pose a significant health risk.

“Say goodbye to voting in residential garages and retirement homes,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said. “To different extents, different counties are struggling to find replacement and smarter voting locations.”

Padilla said it’s “all hands on deck” in the effort to find voting locations that can accommodate physical distancing.

“We’re not going to go into a voting location and see 30 voting booths all side by side,” Padilla said, who last week issued safety guidelines for in-person voting. “So we’re needing both new locations and larger locations.”

Acknowledging that finding and staffing new locations may prove impossible in many parts of the state, Padilla is supporting legislation that would let counties reduce the number of polling places they have to open in the fall.

The proposal, Senate Bill 423, mirrors an executive order signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in June.

Supporters believe the changes will not come at the expense of access: If counties opt to consolidate voting locations, they’ll have to open the polls for longer hours — beginning the Saturday before Election Day.

“As we have already seen in some other states, a massive reduction in voting locations would result in longer lines and larger and potentially unsafe gatherings on Election Day,” Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Elections and Redistricting, said in a hearing on the bill this week. “SB 423 will ensure that that will not be the case in California.”

A report from the Brennan Center for Justice on racial disparities in voting access warned that election administrators should “avoid closing polling places without firm analytical evidence that doing so will not overburden remaining polling places.”

Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, worried aloud at the hearing that “for people not to have access to the polling place that they’re used to going to, I can see that as being problematic for voter access.”

But election officials say many counties will have no choice — with many long-time polling places either unavailable or unusable during the pandemic.

“We know in Alameda County specifically, a lot of the locations that were used in the primary are reluctant to make themselves available this November or simply not making the commitment,” Padilla said.

Alameda, like counties across the state, relies heavily on churches and synagogues to serve as polling places. In Oakland, more than half of the polling places in the March primary were houses of worship or religious facilities, like parish halls. Asking those facilities to open their doors for voting on weekend days of worship could prove difficult.

Tim Dupuis, the registrar of voters in Alameda County, declined to comment for this story.

“We’ve traditionally used churches, but when you’re asking them to be open on Sunday, some of the churches have said ‘wait a second!’” said Joe Holland, the registrar of voters in Santa Barbara County. “It’s been a real challenge.”