Polls are closed and another Election Day is in the books, but at the San Luis Obispo County Government Center, the real work happens after 8 p.m.
Throughout the day on Election Day, it was a revolving door of people at the SLO County Government Center on Monterey Street. Voters were trickling in and out of the building to cast their votes in person.
“We’ve had over 7,000 people actually go vote at our polls, which is much higher than even the past four or five elections, so super proud of our voters that did decide to go to the polling place and actually cast a vote there,” said San Luis Obispo County clerk-recorder Elaina Cano.
On top of that, Cano says she’s expecting about 40,000 to 60,000 mail-in ballots.
Whether it was walking, driving, or biking up, several people decided to hand in their mail-in ballots to student volunteers, part of the Student Poll Worker Program.
“With California being a state that mails out ballots to every voter, it kind of made sense to me that we see a lot of people turning in those mail-in ballots today, but I was really impressed with the turnout,” said student volunteer Hannah Carr. “I think it’s been really monumental for such an important election.”
At about 9:30 p.m., things really started to pick up. Truckloads of containers with ballots from precincts all over the county are brought in for counting.
“At the collection center, we have big box trucks and U-Hauls, and those are carrying our voted ballots, and they get escorted down by a sheriff’s deputy escort to make sure that everything is safe and secure,” Cano said. “The ballots arrive here, and then we unload them, and then we continue counting.”
Cano says she’s never left before midnight on an Election Day, so it’s going to be a pretty long night for her and the workers there.
