Episode 100 – Protecting Your Vote: How Sonoma County keeps elections secure — with Registrar of Voters Evelyn Mendez

SPEAKER_1 (0:06)

Welcome once again to SoCo Chat, a podcast where we hear directly from county leaders, discuss the latest news, and talk about all things concerning our beautiful corner of California known as Sonoma County.

Matt Brown (0:20)

Welcome to SoCo Chat. I'm your host, Matt Brown, Deputy Communications Manager for the County of Sonoma. Thank you for joining us.

Well, we're just about a month out from the November 3rd midterm election, and there's a lot at stake. On the national level, voters will be deciding which party controls Congress. Locally, a slew of candidates and measures will be on the ballot, including two open seats on the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, city council and school board races, and several local tax and bond measures. Just to make things a bit harder, misinformation about election security has been circulating, attempting to sow doubt about the results. Here to talk us through the challenges of running a high-stakes election, and hopefully put our nerves at ease, is Evelyn Mendez, Sonoma County's Registrar of Voters. Evelyn is no stranger to administering elections. For the past 30 years, she's worked on more than 110 elections at the state and county level, most recently as division manager in the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Department.

Last year, she was appointed Sonoma County's first stand-alone registrar of voters. Until then, the position had been part of the elected Clerk Recorder Assessor's Office. The change created a separate department focused exclusively on administering elections. Evelyn, welcome to SoCo Chat. It's so great to have you on.

Evelyn Mendez (1:41)

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Matt Brown (1:42)

Yeah. Well, I know it's a very busy season for you, so we'll just jump right in. I want to start with the ever-changing rhetoric and legal challenges surrounding mail-in voting, which many Sonoma County voters utilize.

Where do we stand with mail-in voting right now?

Evelyn Mendez (1:59)

Okay. So a few weeks ago, we did issue a statement in regards to this. It was about all the news and everything that people are hearing. We want to encourage one, people, if they are hearing anything out there, is it coming from the elections official? So that is the news that you need to hear it from. So we issued that statement telling people it was going to be business as usual in Sonoma County when it comes to voting by mail. Same thing we would say today.

Vote by mail, you're going to get your ballot in the mail. Our ballots start going out on October 5th. They're going to start hitting the mailboxes. We just want to encourage our voters, if you are going to return it and to make sure to get it on time to our office, drop it in one of our drop boxes. You could drop it in the mail if you have to, if you don't have the luxury of coming into our office or go into a drop box. But we encourage them to vote early and get it to us as soon as possible.

In the last election, we did see ballots that didn't get to our office, that came through the mail, that were post marked. They didn't get to our office until two or three weeks later. So we want to make sure their ballots are counted.

Matt Brown (2:58)

Okay, good. So bottom line on that mail-in ballot, mail-in voting still works. It's still going to work as normal here in Sonoma County.

Evelyn Mendez (3:06)

I mean, it's going to work. All ballots in California, all of the vote-by-mail ballots will go out in California to the voters.

That hasn't changed.

Matt Brown (3:15)

Absolutely good. And so remind us again when ballots are going out to voters?

Evelyn Mendez (3:20)

Yeah, they go out October 5th to the voters in our county, but all of our military and overseas voters, those ballots went out last week.

So we're required to send those out earlier, needs to get overseas or wherever they are in the world. And those ballots already went out.

Matt Brown (3:33)

And what are the other ways to vote if not voting by mail?

Evelyn Mendez (3:37)

If you don't want to vote by mail, we encourage you to visit us at our new location. You can vote in person starting October 5th in our office. And then the two weekends before the election, which is October 24th and 25th.

And then October 31st and the 1st. You can vote in our any of our vote centers or in our office. We will be open on the weekends.

Matt Brown (3:56)

Great. What steps are in place to ensure the public that Sonoma County will have a safe and secure election?