NewsClicks

April 23, 2016 - What used to be called “party affiliation” is now called “party preference” according to California law. If you did not choose a political party when you registered to vote, you are a No Party Preference voter, or NPP for short (previously known as “Decline-to-State”). If you fall into this category you have three choices for the upcoming June 7th election: 

April 15, 2016 - We are proud to be working with the Council of State Governments and the Federal Voting Assistance Program on a pilot project to track military ballots through the USPS and militatry postal system (and back). Why is this important? Members of the military are sent their ballots starting at 60-days before an election. Currently they can track their ballot up to the USPS, but not through the military postal system.

April 15, 2016 - Orange County voters who have not voted or had any registration activity in the last four years - we are looking for you! Alternate Residency Confirmation postcards, green in color, were sent to voters (in the last few days) who have no voting history or registration activity in four years. These voters have been made inactive.

April 9, 2016 - The California Secretary of State recently released data that shows that 600,000 online voter registrations have take place in California since January 1, 2016. Here in Orange County we have seen our fair share of that surge, with nearly 35,000 (or 5.8% of the statewide total) new registrations alone since the start of the New Year. We thought we would share with you how these new registrations breakdown by party:

April 2, 2016 - As a part of our on-going, critical voter maintenance, we have identified nearly 108,000 voters who have not cast a single ballot in the past four years. This means that they missed a presidential primary, presidential general, governor's primary and governor's general election.

March 25, 2016 - The Orange County Election Academy, an 8-week long academic program designed to teach participants about elections in Orange County, California began earlier this week. Our unique education program, open to the public, is designed to teach participants about elections.

March 24, 2016 - We've pioneered the use of making real-time voter data available to the public on our website since 2011.  Anyone interested in viewing trends in registration, ballot production, mailings and returns, petition data, poll worker recruitment, maps and more can do so by visiting our Data Central pages.  We generate a lot of data. Why not make it available to the public has been our philosophy.

March 21, 2016 - We are preparing to send out ballots for the June Primary to Orange County citizens living overseas. This includes 1,345 active duty members of the military as well as 3,191 non-military citizens living abroad. Ever wondered what the top 5 countries are where Orange County citizens receive their ballots? 1. U.K. = 322, 2. Canada = 312, 3. Australia = 180, 4. France 174, and 5. Germany = 159.  We will begin to send these ballots out 60 days before the June 7th election and must be finished no later than 45 days before the election.

March 17, 2016 - We receive questions about how the order of candidate names is determined on the ballot. For every election a random draw of letters is conducted, which is then used to determine the order that candidates will be listed. Today a random draw was conducted by the Secretary of State - here's the order:

1. Y, 2. L, 3. Q, 4. B, 5. E, 6. V, 7. J, 8. Z, 9. O, 10. F, 11. N, 12. T, 13. S, 14. W, 15. D, 16. U, 17. C, 18. K, 19. H, 20. M, 21. A, 22. X, 23. G, 24. I, 25. P, 26. R

March 16, 2016 - In the last few days we have mailed postcards to voters who have listed their party preference as decline to state, or No Party Preference (which means they are not affiliated with any political party). In particular these postcards, bright pink in color, have been mailed to hundreds of thousands of permanent vote-by-mail voters giving them the option of choosing a specific ballot for the June Primary election.