Monday is the last day you can sign up to vote for the upcoming General Election on November 8th. People can still sign up to vote at a county election office, online, at the DMV, or at the post office.
“That is our cutoff date to which we pull all those that are already registered to vote as of that and those are the names that get printed on our rosters there at the polling place,” said San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano.
If you miss the deadline, you can still register to vote conditionally through Election Day. Ballots cast conditionally will be processed once elections officials complete the verification process. Applicants can go to a county election office to register for that conditional ballot.
“Once they fill out their voter registration and information, they then will get their ballot, and then they get to vote, and then they'll return it at that point. Voters can also go to a polling location if they're not registered to vote on Election Day, and they would vote provisionally there as well,” Cano told KSBY.
For those who will register to vote at a polling place, those votes will not be counted on election night, “Anybody who votes provisionally at a polling location on Election Day, those ballots have to be researched. So we treat those as either a new registration or an update to a voter registration,” said Cano.
Cano added that provisional ballots are one of the last groups processed.
In order to vote, you must be a U.S. citizen, 18 or older on Election Day and not be serving time for a felony. If voting in California, you must also be a California resident and not currently found by a court to be mentally incompetent.
Cano said that the County is seeing a typical number of new registration as well as people who are canceling their previous registrations.
“We get a whole bunch of new registrations, certainly from Cal Poly students, and then we get a lot of cancelations because they're wondering, you know, in their new address or wherever they've moved to, hey, why didn't I get this contest on my ballot?” Cano added.
People can track their ballot on this here, at the California Secretary of State's website.
This story has been updated to reflect that you can't only be a permanent resident to be eligible to vote in California but must also be a U.S. Citizen and California resident in order to vote in the Nov. 8 election.
