I’ve been reading today that California will be sending out mail-in ballots to all registered voters again for the recall election, like they did in 2020, because of the Delta variant. The latter part is not entirely true.
In February of this year, California passed a bill called Senate Bill 29 which mandates that the pandemic election policies of the 2020 election be continued through the end of 2021:
Existing law required county elections officials to mail a ballot to every registered voter for the November 3, 2020, statewide general election. Existing law, for the November 3, 2020, statewide general election, also required county elections officials to use a specified Secretary of State vote by mail tracking system or a system that meets the same specifications.
This bill would extend these requirements to all elections proclaimed or conducted prior to January 1, 2022. By requiring county elections officials to mail a ballot to every registered voter, and to track those ballots, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
This would obviously include the recall election beginning this month. According a the San Diego County registrar:
Are you sending ballots to all registered voters? Yes. This is a requirement of Senate Bill 29. The Registrar’s office will mail over 1.96 million ballots to active registered voters for this election.
They will begin mailing out ballots to all registered voters on August 16th, but people can still chose to vote in-person if they choose.
While the polls predict a tight contest, I would expect Newsom to remain as Governor given the mail-in ballot mandate. It’ll be just like the 2020 election all over again.