The 2020 election is upon us—ballots have started going out to voters.
It’s time to get started on planning how you will cast your ballot and what will be on it.
What you can do right now: Make a plan
This is a quick summary; we have much more detail below.
September: Voter guides will be coming out all through this month (including the City’s official Voter Information Pamphlet on Monday, September 28). This is a good time for easy, slow-paced research. You have plenty of time to learn about what will be on the ballot.
September is also a good time to check your voter registration. Make sure it’s current and correct, and if you need to re-register, get that done now.
October is voting month. Your ballot will arrive near the start of the month. You’ll then have about a month to fill it out. If you’ve already made your choices, then filling it out will go that much more quickly.
Once you’ve finished filling out your ballot, it’s time to put it in the envelope, seal it, sign and date it, and drop it off. You can mail it, but dropping it off yourself at a voting center is the safest option. Ideally, you’ll be done before the end of the month, and you’ll be an #OctoberVoter.
November: Hopefully you’ll have already voted by then, but if not, the deadline is Tuesday, November 3—“Election Day.” This is the last day on which you can drop off your ballot, or vote in a polling place if you’ve left everything to the last minute.
Check whether you’re registered
There’s a couple of reasons to do this:
You might already be registered: You might have been automatically registered if you recently applied for a driver’s license or state ID card or changed your address through the DMV. If this turns out to be the case, and your registration is correct, you don’t need to register separately.
You might no longer be registered: Even California purges voters, though at least our state tries to only purge voters whom they credibly believe to no longer live at their last registered address. So if you did register, but missed two federal elections and a postcard from your county elections official, you may no longer be registered, and will need to re-register.
So you need to make sure you’re still registered, and that your registration shows the correct information (particularly name and residential address).
If you’re registered in San Francisco, use the City’s Voter Portal.
Elsewhere in California, use the state’s Voter Status page.
If you find that your registration is no longer current, or you simply aren’t registered, you’ll need to register.
Do you need to register?
If you’re already registered and your registration is current, you don’t need to do anything.
You need to register if any of these is true:
You checked your registration and it was incorrect or missing: If you got purged or found that some of your registration info was out of date, you’ll need to re-register.
You’ve changed your name: Anything that changes your signature will require you to re-register, since the signature on your ballot envelope must match the signature on your registration.
You’ve moved: If your residential address has changed since you last registered, you’ll need to update your registration so you can receive your ballot. You do this by simply registering again with your new address.
Registering to vote
You must be:
A United States citizen
A resident of the state where you’re registering (we’ll assume this is California)
18 years old OR 17 years old but you’ll be 18 by Election Day
Not in prison or on parole for a conviction of a felony
Not prohibited from voting by a court on grounds of mental incompetency
You can register to vote online on the Secretary of State’s voter registration page. It only takes a few minutes.
If you register by October 19, you will receive a ballot in the mail. Please register ASAP if you need to and haven’t already—don’t leave this to the last minute! Remember that it will take time for your ballot to arrive, for you to make your choices and fill it out, and for you to return it.
If October 19 comes and goes and you still aren’t registered, you can still vote. You will need to do so at a polling place or the Voting Center, casting a provisional ballot. Ask the poll workers about Conditional Voter Registration. If the Department of Elections confirms that you are eligible to vote, your vote will be counted.
Receiving your ballot, 2020 edition
Due to the pandemic, the governor has ordered an all-vote-by-mail election.
This means that everyone who was already registered or registers by October 19 will receive their ballot in the mail, no ifs, ands, or buts.
If you were already registered before October, you should already have it, as ballots go out about a month before Election Day—those ballots went out starting in late September and ending October 5. (If that’s you and you don’t have your ballot, check your registration and register if you need to!)
If you registered recently or are registering now, your ballot should arrive soon, and you should start making your choices now and filling out your ballot as soon as you have it.
Voting: Make a plan!
Due to the Trump administration’s sabotage of the Postal Service, we may not receive our ballots as quickly as we’re supposed to, or be able to return them via the mail with confidence that they’ll arrive on time.
This is where planning comes in.
Making your choices
Before October, start looking at the state propositions and local ballot measures. Look at different candidates for local offices such as Supervisors, state offices such as State Senator, and federal offices (not just the White House).
Research your two voter information guides. The state’s Voter Information Guide went up in August; the City’s Voter Information Pamphlet will be published on Monday, September 28.
You can also look at local advocacy groups’ voter guides. We have a guide to City propositions and a guide to state propositions, each with our analyses and recommendations.
We’re not the only ones by any means. Some other voter guides you may want to look at are those from the San Francisco League of Pissed Off Voters, the SF Berniecrats, the San Francisco Democratic Party, local Democratic Clubs such as Harvey Milk and Alice B. Toklas, and the League of Women Voters.
Filling out your ballot
In the time between receiving your ballot and casting it, you’ll fill it out with your votes. A standard ballpoint pen is all you need.
We strongly recommend doing this well before Election Day, in a private place of your choosing (ideally at home). Then you can put your completed ballot in the envelope, sign and date it, and then just drop it off.
Especially during a pandemic, you probably don’t want to spend any time in a polling place that you don’t need to.
That being said: If circumstances prevent you from voting before Election Day, you can vote in a polling place. You should bring your ballot with you to the polling place, especially if you go to a different polling place than the one you were assigned—different locations have different candidate races, and a provisional ballot at another polling place may not have some of your local races.
Casting your completed ballot
Your ballot will come with a postage-paid return envelope; you must use that envelope to return your ballot, no matter how you do it.
Fold each ballot card separately before stacking them and putting them in the return envelope. Your vote will still count if you don’t, but it makes the Department of Elections’s job that much easier.
Make sure you sign and date the envelope! The envelope must be signed and dated before elections officials will accept it, and the signature must match the one you used when you registered. Ballots get held up or rejected for lack of signature or signature mismatch—we’ll say it again: make sure you sign and date the envelope!
You have a range of options for dropping off your ballot, from least to most risk (both in terms of avoiding the pandemic and ensuring your ballot arrives in time to be counted). They are:
Dropping your ballot off at a voting center or drop box early
Dropping your ballot off at a voting center or drop box on the last day (“Election Day”)
Mailing your ballot early
Mailing your ballot in the last week before “Election Day”
Those of us in the City have three options for in-person drop-offs:
Early voting at the Voting Center at Bill Graham Auditorium: Normally in City Hall, this year it’s across the street and one block east, on Grove, between Polk and Larkin.
Weekdays through Monday, November 2: 8 AM to 5 PM.
(Except for Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Monday, October 12, when it will be closed for the holiday.)
Weekends of October 24–25 and October 31–November 1: 10 AM to 4 PM.
Tuesday, November 3: 7 AM to 8 PM.
Early voting at City drop-off stations: As of mid-October, the Department of Elections has published a list of drop-off stations where ballots can be returned without going to the Voting Center. Check that list for locations and their days and hours.
Day-of voting at your local polling place: On Election Day, all the polling places across the City will open up to receive ballots. The voter portal (as well as your ballot envelope) will tell you your local polling place, and the Department of Elections has info on other polling places in the City (specific locations will be published to Election Day).
All polling places will be open from 7 AM until at least 8 PM. Remember, if you are in line, stay in line—the polls will stay open until everyone in line has voted!
Don’t live in San Francisco? As in all things, if you don’t live in the City, check your county’s elections office. Here are links to early ballot drop-off info for the other eight counties of the Bay Area:
Alameda County: Drop boxes; polling places
Note: Polling places presumably won’t open until Election Day.
Contra Costa County: Vote Before Election Day; Vote On Election Day
Marin County (tentative; check www.marinvotes.org for confirmed locations before you go)
Solano County (scroll down for links to lists of drop-off sites)
On Election Day, you can drop your ballot off at any polling place in California.
Tracking your ballot
In San Francisco, the Voter Portal offers status information on your ballot starting after ballots have gone out. You can check that page to see whether they’ve mailed it yet and (after you cast it) the timeline of it being received, inspected, opened, and counted.
San Francisco and many other counties also participate in the state’s Where’s My Ballot? system. Registering with this system gets you email, text-message, or phone-call notifications about your ballot.
Would you like to do more?
There are ways you can get involved in the election beyond voting.
Serve as a poll worker
Those friendly, helpful volunteers who help facilitate people’s exercise of their franchise? That could be you!
Here’s the City’s page for getting involved as a poll worker. If you don’t live in the City, your county will have a different page with the relevant information.
Monitor the polls
Election Protection (the 866-OUR-VOTE people) are recruiting volunteers to monitor the polls on Election Day. These are non-partisan volunteers who work to ensure voters have accurate information and to help resolve problems they may encounter.
Monitor the count
A new group, the Scrutineers Community, works to monitor the counting of votes, which continues after Election Day (we’ve all spent time refreshing the results pages looking to see where the numbers settle). These folks are working to ensure an accurate, trustworthy count.
Deliver friends’ and family members’ ballots
A voter can designate another person to deliver their ballot, subject to certain requirements. Check your county’s elections website (that link goes to San Francisco’s) to verify legal requirements in your county. You should also check the state law on returning other people’s ballots, CEC §3017(a)(2), for its requirements.
Returning another person’s ballot for them is something you might do if you have your own transportation and some free time. You might do this for friends and family who have limited mobility (especially with the pandemic and this year’s transit cutbacks) or limited time and are therefore unable to return their own ballot.
Each ballot return envelope includes a “Ballot Return Authorization” form in the corner:
If you offer to drop off someone’s ballot and they accept, that voter must fill out that form on their return envelope to identify you and your relationship to them, with the exception that you (the person delivering the ballot) must sign the third blank on the form. This is a sacred responsibility, so please take it seriously and only offer to drop off someone’s ballot if you’re absolutely sure you’ll deliver it in time! You must deliver their ballot no more than three days after receiving it from them—and, of course, before the deadline.
Get out the vote
Last but by no means least, you can talk to other voters and help get out the vote.
You can do this within your own circle of friends, getting loud about your own plans to vote (you don’t need to say what your votes will be/were!) and encouraging them to vote. You can offer to drop off their ballots, as described above.
Post on social media about it; make voting something you do visibly.
And many voter outreach opportunities concern getting out the vote in other counties or states.