at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Subsequent laws have extended the amount of time for ballots to arrive after election day and have required officials to notify voters who forget to sign a ballot envelope before dropping it in the mail.. Ballots begin arriving in mailboxes across California before the Iowa caucuses or early primary states have served their time-honored tradition of culling the presidential herd.
. So-called “same-day” registration provides more flexibility to those who make a last-minute decision to participate in the election. It also gives registered voters the chance to change their party affiliation and cast a ballot in presidential contests that are closed to nonparty voters. These locations are open for several days — some as many as 10 — before the election. Voters can visit any site they want, not just one near where they live. And in most counties that have opted in to the new law, a voter’s ballot can be reprinted if needed and additional help is offered for those who don’t speak English.
L.A. voters will not be automatically mailed a ballot, even though their traditional polling places will have disappeared. Those who don’t request an absentee ballot by the state’s Feb. 25 deadline will need to visit one of the county’s 965 vote centers. And if county leaders are to avoid angry tales of Angelenos stuck in traffic as they scramble to find a voting center on election day, the public awareness campaign now underway will have to cleanly hit its mark.