San Joaquin County supervisors deny election advisory committee's push for fewer ballot boxes
SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY – The election advisory committee for San Joaquin County wants fewer ballot boxes. They say the more there are, the more risk for fraud.
There are 25 ballot drop boxes around San Joaquin County. But the state only requires there to be 13. The election advisory committee for the county asked the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors to get rid of 12 of them to meet that minimum requirement, but it was shot down.
"You have to monitor them with cameras, all of these are costs. You have to locate them. You have to buy them," said county election advisory chairman Antonio Amador.
The election advisory committee wants to cut the number of ballot drop boxes around the county in half. The committee says there only needs to be 13 to satisfy state requirements. The current number of drop boxes is 25, partly due to COVID rules when voting needed to be socially distanced. The election advisory committee says that many are no longer needed.
"Cameras and monitoring. We had problems with that. It really wasn't that successful, and being able to, from a security standpoint, monitor these things. So we thought let's do the minimum that's all we need," Amador said.
"Who is going to take care of them? Where are they going to be?" said county resident Genevieve Macias.
The added costs and risk of fraud are reasons the election advisory committee brought forth a proposal to reduce the number of boxes to the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors. They voted this past Tuesday to keep the boxes, rejecting the election advisory committee's request. But not everyone is happy with their decision.
"We have voter places, we have mail-in, we've got all kinds of things to help people to vote and I don't see why they need so much accommodation," Marilyn said.
Another idea brought forth in the request was to place the boxes at fire and police stations.
"I think people would be reluctant, if you're a bad guy, to go drop illegally obtained ballots at drop boxes at a police station or a fire station," said Amador.
"Instead of going to the place, I could go to the box, yes. If it's available and everywhere and I don't have to go to a fire station, yes," Shakeeb Meherzad said.
Meherzad says he doesn't have a car and reducing the number of boxes would be inconvenient and discourage people from voting if they don't have easy access. He also said the added cost shouldn't matter if it's something as important as voting.
"If voting is about the people the cost should be for the people too,you know. I think you should pay extra for the people to vote. And it's not every day, it's every once in a while," Meherzad said.
CBS13 could not get ahold of any supervisors to discuss their decision before publishing this article.
