Why You Should Vote Early

By Julie Bischoff and Gregory Gandrud

The 2024 Election Has Begun

Many of us remember Election Day, not Election Month. We remember going to the polls, showing ID, receiving our ballot, casting our votes, and learning the results that same night or early the next day.

Times have changed across the nation and especially here in California. We have an extended voting period, legal ballot harvesting, ballots arriving in the mail after election day, ballot curing, ballot tracking, drop boxes, and quite a few different ways our ballots are processed.

But why should you vote early? Why not go in person to the polls and physically exercise your right to vote? Here are the reasons why it is smart to vote early under the current laws:

1. Vote Early so that your ballot isn’t sitting in a drop box that may or may not be secure, or worse, working its way through the mail from Friday to Election Day, whereupon the election office would still have you on the list of voters eligible to vote at the polls (making you a target for impersonation on Election Day).

2. Vote Early so that no one can vote in your place at the polls. Remember: Photo ID is not required (except for first time voters in a federal election). If someone does vote as you at the polls, once their ballot is placed in the ballot box it cannot be removed, and it will be counted before any ballots still sitting in the mail, in a drop box, or not yet processed in the days before the election. If someone has impersonated you at the polls, your ballot will not count; there is no way to fix this afterwards.

3. Vote Early so that the election office has enough time to contact you to fix a problem with your envelope. If you forgot to sign and/or date your envelope, if your signature doesn’t match, or if you signed in the wrong place, they’ll need time to contact you. Those envelopes – which cannot be corrected (a process called curing) before Election Day – will go into a separate pile and will be dealt with after Election Day. Afterwards, volunteers may try to reach you to sign an affidavit within a certain time so that your ballot can be counted. However, if your ballot cannot be cured in the allotted time, it will not be counted.

In 2022, over 500 ballots in Santa Barbara County needed curing. It took the efforts of many volunteers to cure many but not all the ballots. As several races in the county were decided by less than 40 votes, each vote really is very important.

In another example, in 2024 Supervisor District 1, there were 56,220 eligible voters. Only 26,599 ballots were returned and counted. Roy Lee won the Supervisor Race by 565 votes with only 47% of eligible voters casting a ballot that was counted. Your vote matters!

4. Vote Early so you have the time to fill out your ballot accurately and completely.  It is astonishing how many people leave many candidate races, measures, and propositions unmarked. It takes time to read, study, and vote intelligently on so many items.

5. Vote Early so you aren’t one of the more than 20% of high propensity election day voters who did not make it to the polls in 2022.

6. Vote Early because life happens. Your spouse has an accident, someone in your family is sick, your water heater breaks, the car won’t start, the skies deluge Santa Barbara County with inches of rain and flood the roads (2022) or you just plain forget.

7. Vote Early and Sign up for Ballot Tracking to be sure your ballot has been received by the Election Office. If you don’t see that it was received, you will have time to contact the Election Office and correct the problem.

8. Vote Early to eliminate election mail, phone calls and text messages. Your political party accesses the Secretary of State lists of those who have voted and removes you from their contact list.  Every early voter costs the party $1, every voter who votes at the polls costs the party $20!

9. Vote Early and encourage others to do the same. You can set an example for the nearly 50% of registered voters who never even vote at all, even in presidential elections, by showing them how easy it is to Vote Early using their Vote by Mail Ballot. Telling them to wait and vote after 2pm on Election Day is not the way to vote. It’s risky, like waiting until the last minute to do something important. Even Donald Trump has encouraged everyone to vote early and to bank their vote.

10. So, VOTE EARLY! … But if you still want to go to the polls on Election Day – GO EARLY!!

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Julie Bischoff taught classes on Election Integrity for several years, was a poll worker, a poll observer and observed the procedures of Ballot Adjudication, Signature Verification, installation of Dominion Software and other practices. She feels our county election officials have a difficult job to do with the laws they have to follow. But the laws are the problem and encourage voter fraud in many ways. To reduce some of the problems, VOTE EARLY!

Gregory Gandrud is a former Carpinteria City Councilmember and is currently the Treasurer of the California Republican Party. He votes as soon as he receives his ballot and takes it to a secure drop box near his home at Ventura County Government Center. He encourages you to vote as soon as you can and to return your ballot in whatever way is most comfortable for you whether that is through the mail, at a secure drop box, an in-person at a voting center (perhaps an early voting center), or at the County Elections Office. So, VOTE EARLY!

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