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Countdown to Voting – Vote-By-Mail Mailing
Voting for the June 2, 2026, Statewide Direct Primary Election will open in four days! The U.S. Postal Services will pick up about 1.9 million ballots on Saturday, May 2. Voters could receive their ballots as soon as Monday, May 4. As a state-certified ballot printer, the Registrar of Voters (ROV) started to print the ballots on April 3 and our team has been inserting ballots and instructions into envelopes since April 6. Any voter who does not want to wait for a ballot to be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, can visit ROV in Santa Ana on May 4 to receive and vote a ballot. Our office is at 1300 S. Grand Ave., Building C, at the corner of Grand Avenue & McFadden Avenue. Make sure to check your registration status and visit ocvote.gov/registration to make any updates. Neal Kelley Registrar of Voters |
| Current Tweet When preparing ballots for mailing, ROV feeds all ballot packets through a mail sorter to confirm that each voter will only receive one ballot. |
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| Ballot Sort for Mailing - Ensuring Voters Receive One Ballot A team of Orange County ROV staff feeds every ballot for the 2026 Statewide Direct Primary Election through high-speed mail sorting equipment utilizing a secure database to confirm that only one Vote-By-Mail ballot will be mailed to each registered voter. About 1.9 million ballots are being prepared to mail to voters starting Monday, May 4. The mail sorters scan the barcode on each ballot envelope to verify that a ballot has not already been issued to the voter. A sorter can scan up to 750 envelopes per minute. There is nothing on the ballot envelope that indicates the political party preference of the voter. The barcodes on the envelope simply identify each voter’s issued ballot and contain United States Postal Service mailing data. If a voter requests a replacement Vote-By-Mail ballot or requests an in-person ballot at a Vote Center after the original ballot is mailed, ROV will only count the first voted ballot received from the voter. If you receive a ballot for someone who no longer lives at your address, please write "Not at this address" on the envelope and give it back to the USPS. When ROV receives an undeliverable ballot back from the USPS, we inactivate the voter's registration. Your awareness and action help protect the integrity of our election. Short videos to learn about observable election processes are available on our Election Observation Page and YouTube channel at @ocrov. |
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| Open House ROV is hosting an Open House on Tuesday, May 5 from 4 to 7 p.m. at our headquarters, 1300 S. Grand Avenue, Building C in Santa Ana. The Open House will enable you to view the various steps we take when processing ballots during each election. Members of the Registrar of Voters team will demonstrate and answer questions about our processes to ensure elections are secure, fair, accurate, transparent, and accessible. We will demonstrate and answer questions about our secure processes, including:
If you are unable to attend our Open House, you still have the opportunity to observe election operations in person at ROV in Santa Ana or at any of the Vote Centers throughout the county. You can learn more at ocvote.gov/observe where you will find a Public Notice of Observation Schedule and Observer Guidelines Handbook for the 2026 Statewide Direct Primary Election. |
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| Ballot Drop Boxes Open On May 4, two-person teams of ROV staff will inspect and unlock 128 ballot drop boxes throughout Orange County for use in the 2026 Statewide Direct Primary Election. The ballot drop boxes are one of four safe and secure ways Orange County voters can cast their ballot. They:
Only teams of two election workers can collect the voted ballots from the drop boxes, following strict chain of custody procedures. ROV tracks the GPS location of ballot collection teams always and stays in radio contact with them while they are completing their routes. Find a ballot drop box near you by visiting ocvote.gov/voting. |
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| Is a Voting Mark on a Ballot Secret if It Is Returned in a Vote-By-Mail Envelope? Last year, claims circulated across social media about how a voter’s votes could be seen through a ballot return envelope. ROV wants our voters to know that the secrecy of every voter's ballot is extremely important. As a result of last year’s concerns, we have purchased envelopes with improved secrecy lining. We also do not attempt to determine how an individual voter marked their ballot, which would violate the voter's state constitutional right to vote a secret ballot. Additionally, ROV ballot envelopes include a privacy lining and do not have holes. And the California Elections Code provides that anyone who is not on our staff who examines another voter’s ballot to determine how that person voted could be fined up to $10,000 and imprisoned for up to three years. Our ballot processing is entirely transparent. Voters can visit our office to see for themselves that we do not individually review each ballot envelope by hand to detect how a voter marked their ballot and do not throw away any voted ballots. Voters have several secure options to choose from to return their ballot – mail their ballot, place it in a Ballot Drop Box, hand deliver it to our office or a Vote Center, or visit a Vote Center to vote an in-person ballot. We encourage voters to visit ocvote.gov/track to track their ballots and to confirm when we have received and counted your ballot. |
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