It’s time to vote! Your ballots are arriving in your mailbox soon. (Or if you’re one of our military or overseas voters, then you should already have your ballot in hand.) With the help of your State and County Voter Information Guides, you have plenty of time to do your research, consult with friends and family, and make informed choices for this election.

Voters will notice some changes to their ballots that we hope will make the voting process easy to understand. Here’s a few that our office would like to highlight:

• Voting Instructions: Please completely fill in the square next to the candidate or selection of your choice and use a blue or black pen to vote. We ask that you use a blue or black pen so that the equipment can easily detect your choices. If a ballot comes back to us with choices marked in red ink, for example, our office can still count the ballot but it will take extra time for us to process. If you don’t fill in the square completely, it can be harder for the machine to read your vote. Again, we can take steps to make sure your vote is processed accurately, but it takes extra time.

• Message for No Party Preference/Nonpartisan voters: Sometimes, voters are surprised when they get a ballot with no candidates for president. It’s usually the result of a recent visit to the DMV, but there could have been some administrative error. We’re not sure until you make us aware of the problem. The Nonpartisan ballots include an explanation why there are no candidates for president and what to do if you believe you’ve received one in error. 

• Instructions for US Senate: There are two contests for the same US Senate seat. That’s not a mistake, and you can absolutely vote in both! The full-term contest is to vote for your next US Senator; the partial/unexpired term seat is to fill the vacancy left by the death of Dianne Feinstein.

Speaking of the US Senate: there are so many candidates who are running for that seat, the list of candidates occupies multiple columns. We know that’s annoying (sorry about that!), but we do want voters to be aware so you know that there might be more choices in the next column to consider. 

Did You Know?

The first jurisdiction to vote using the secret ballot was Louisville, Kentucky in 1888. Also referred to as the Australian Ballot, it was a controversial decision but deemed necessary to protect voters from intimidation at the polls and to address concerns around the role of money in politics.

Want to read more? A History of the Australian Ballot System in the United States, a dissertation written by Eldon Cobb Evans, sets forth the early evolution of in-person voting in the US and why Americans ultimately decided that the government should be responsible for ballot printing.