The official Election Day may be about a month away on the calendar but actual voting in California could begin sooner than that. Vote-by-mail ballots are now being sent out.
County elections officials in California are mailing the ballots, which must be returned by 8:00 p.m. on Election Day, November 4, to be counted. The ballots can either be mailed back to counties or dropped off at polling locations. A new law that will allow ballots postmarked by Election Day to count does not go into effect until next year. Military and overseas ballots were sent out last month.
The Secretary of State’s office says 69 percent of ballots were cast by mail in the June 2014 primary, an all-time high. In the November 2012 General Election just over half of voters used the mail-in option. The number of vote-by-mail ballots cast has been steadily increasing for several years.
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