Some San Joaquin County families rely on early voting options ahead of primary election
California's statewide primary election is less than a week away, where pivotal races are up for a vote, including the governor's. Counties continue to give voters multiple options for voting early.
Every vote counts. It's what we often hear and it's what Olivia Hale and her team counting San Joaquin County's votes want to ensure. Hale was born and raised in Stockton.
Now, in her third year at the helm as the county's registrar of voters, she's keeping tabs on the tabulations.
"The opportunity to have grown up in this community and to serve the voters of this community, I know how important it is," Hale said. "I just really appreciate and I'm honored to do the work."
While Election Day is June 2, San Joaquin County, like so many others throughout California, provides multiple options to vote before then: by mail, ballot drop boxes, or at the Registrar of Voters office in downtown Stockton via a drive-through drop-off or early in-person voting. They saw almost 3,000 early votes in the 2024 election.
"They will give you an early voting ballot," Hale said. "They'll print it for you right here in our ballot on-demand printing room. And then once you've went in here, you can go ahead and cast your ballot. We have the privacy booths up, so you can go ahead and get your ballot all marked and then…we have our scan devices and the voter can actually scan their own ballot. So they're able to do that and tabulate it themselves."
Tisha Taimalelagi is a caregiver for her 89-year-old grandmother, Vao, and relies on early voting to get her grandma's vote in.
"For them back then, they had a fight to be able to vote," Taimalelagi said. "And so for her to be able to still vote as a person that's not able to go and drop off their ballot or even go to the polling location to vote, to be able to just send it off to somebody to drop it off is very convenient."
Taimalelagi decided to join the registrar's office to work temporarily in helping onboard people to work at polling locations. She said working at one of them in 2020 opened her eyes to the election system.
"I'm sad that I didn't know about it sooner," Taimalelagi said. "But now that I'm here, I'm trying to learn as much as possible and hope to be as close to an election nerd as our registrar is."
Early voting hasn't come without its challenges recently, though. Ballots for Prop 50 arrived late at an average rate of four times more than the 2024 election and rural counties had some of the highest increases, with San Joaquin County seeing late ballots increase from 3.3 per every 1,000 ballots in 2024 to 11.4 in 2025, according to the LA Times.
"If you're able to get that ballot in early, especially if you're going to vote by mail, get it to us early and you will ensure that that is in that first result that you see on election night," Hale said.
President Trump signed an executive order to "protect the integrity" of mail-in and absentee ballots. Hale said they're in a holding pattern to see what that could look like but for this election, it's running the same.
"It's important to look at the documentation of what's being proposed and not just what friends or neighbors or Facebook may be saying," Hale said. "So make sure you're clear on it and note that if there is a change that's going to impact our voters, we will be communicating effectively."
For Hale and her staff, transparency is key, with surveillance cameras "everywhere", showing the ballot's "whole path of travel", including down the hallway from the signature verification room to the inspection room.
"Something to note is when ballots come in here in our county, the minute a ballot enters our possession, it remains on camera," Hale said.
From the post office to the registrar's office, there's still time to make your vote count - early.
