What you need to know to vote in Fresno County’s March primary election

You can check to see if you’re registered to vote in California here.

If you are at least 18 years old, you can register to vote up until Feb. 19 for the March 5 election.

Register to vote online here. New voters may need to provide proof of residency or a form of identification. California residents ages 16 and 17 can pre-register to vote in future elections.
If you miss the deadline, you can apply for same-day voter registration at county election offices. You can find your nearest polling location here.

No. California requires all voters to be U.S. citizens. In Fresno County, you have to be a U.S. citizen to vote in all elections.

Yes, as long as you are not currently serving a term in prison, formerly incarcerated people are allowed to vote in California.

Yes. Under California law, county officials are required to provide voting materials in commonly spoken languages other than English.

In Fresno County, this includes: Spanish, Chinese, Hmong, Korean, Cambodian/Khmer, Punjabi, Filipino, Laotian, and Vietnamese.

Under California law, you are allowed to bring up to two people to assist you in voting.

To request voting materials in a language other than English, show up at a Vote Center in-person.

Yes, everyone registered to vote in California is sent a mail-in ballot. Official ballots will be mailed out to voters on Feb. 5.

You can sign up for updates on your ballot – including when it is sent to you – here.

You can fill it out and put it back in the mail, without a stamp, for free, as long as it is postmarked by March 5.

Ballots postmarked or dropped off after March 5 will not be counted.

Reminder: sign your ballot, or else it won’t count! Sign your ballot in a way that is consistent with how you usually sign your name, since election officials use this to verify your identity.

Yes, you can either:

• Drop your ballot off at a Vote Center or Drop Box starting on Feb. 6 through March 8
• Surrender your mail-in ballot and vote with a new ballot at a Vote Center
• Vote with a provisional ballot at a Vote Center

Fresno County has an updated list of drop boxes here.

You can sign up for updates to your ballot here – including when it gets sent to your home. It’s an official government service.

But, once ballots are out, and you still don’t have one:

You can show up to a Vote Center and vote with a provisional ballot.

OR

You can request your official ballot electronically through Remote Accessible Vote By Mail (RAVBM) by contacting the County Clerk-Elections office through email, phone, or mail. You must provide a valid email address in order to access your ballot. You will still need to submit your ballot physically, either by dropping it off at a ballot drop box or mailing it to the County Clerk-Elections office.

Fresno County Clerk’s Office: 2221 Kern Street, Fresno CA 93721

You can check the status of your RAVBM here.

You can leave as many questions blank as you’d like.

In total, there are three countywide measures on the ballot for Fresno County residents, one for residents in Fowler Unified School District, and one on the ballot for Orange Cove residents.

In addition, county residents will be choosing supervisors to represent District 2, District 3, and District 5. Fresno city residents will be choosing council members to represent District 2 and District 6; and, will be voting for mayor again.

Measure E, a proposed county-wide 0.25% sales tax that would generate $63 million annually to benefit Fresno State. Voters will decide whether to support the measure, which would fund Fresno State for the next 25 years.

On Measure B, Fresno County voters will decide whether the Fresno County Board of Supervisors should have the exclusive authority to name or rename geographical features and locations within unincorporated communities in the county.

Measure A will let voters choose to keep the sheriff and district attorney elections on the presidential election cycle or return those races to the gubernatorial cycle.

Measure O is a proposed parcel tax for Orange Cove to fund its police and fire services. The funds from the proposed tax would stay within the city, with 80% going to police services  and 20% to fire services. There is no expiration to the tax.

Finally, Measure G will let voters decide whether Fowler Unified School District should issue bonds to raise funds to improve their schools. If approved by voters, the district will issue bonds for a total of $44 million to improve the schools.

The state’s official voter guide is out – you can access it here.

We’re working on a voter guide now at Fresnoland, which will focus on local issues and candidates. Sign up for our newsletter here to make sure you don’t miss it.

Do you have questions you’d like us to ask candidates? Share them with us in our survey here.

Many races, especially in local elections, are decided by just a handful of votes. Your vote can make all the difference on whether a measure or a candidate is elected.

Moreover, the people who are elected have an immense impact on the decisions made locally. For measures, millions of dollars are on the line, with voters deciding whether they want to give local government officials and institutions more authority and funding.

In the age of information and social media, it is virtually impossible to escape from all of the political campaigns and ads. The problem is: candidates and campaigns are allowed to lie, according to this report from NPR. You can tell if an advertisement is paid for by a candidate by watching the disclosure, usually at the end of the commercial, where it says “paid for by….”

Trustworthy media outlets do a good job of separating factual news reports from opinion. They usually have a clear code of ethics on their website and share information about their sources of funding or business model. A solid news story will typically have a variety of perspectives on the topic.

Read more about Fresnoland, our values, and our donors here.

No, you cannot vote twice. It’s illegal under both California and federal laws. Your ballot will not be counted if you cast it more than once.

In Fresno County, ballots are counted in two ways, according to county Registrar of Voters, James Kus, in an email to Fresnoland in 2022.

Ballots cast in person at Vote Centers are counted at the time they are cast, after a person inserts it into a ballot tabulator machine. When you insert your completed ballot into the machine, if the machine doesn’t detect any issues with the ballot, you should hear a chime and see the number on the screen increase by one. If there are issues, the machine will tell you what they are and how to fix them.

On Election Day (March 5) a memory card from the ballot tabulation machine is securely transported to the county election warehouse after the Vote Centers close, Kus said.

Mail-in ballots that are either sent via mail or dropped off at official Drop Boxes or Vote Centers are securely transported to the county’s elections warehouse where envelopes are counted and run through a signature comparison process (where the signature on the ballot is compared to the signature in the voter’s registration file).

Once signatures are deemed valid, the ballots are then moved to a table in a secure, fully observable room and counted by staff from the Fresno County Clerk/Registrar of Voters IT Department.

The counting of mail-in ballots can begin as soon as ballots are returned, Kus said, but the results aren’t reported until after 8 p.m. on Election Day. It usually takes about five workdays after Election Day to finish counting most of the mail-in ballots, according to Kus, but they continue to count ballots as needed until 30 days after Election Day.

You can sign up to receive text, voice call, or email alerts about your ballot status here. It’s an official service provided by the State of California, Secretary of State through BallotTrax.

Different media outlets have specialized staff with expertise in election rules, local campaigns, and past history of certain races, which helps them understand how to predict results even if the total amount of votes have not been counted yet. Local election officials also have information on how many ballots have been submitted by people from different political parties and neighborhoods, which helps with predictions.

California recently moved to universal mail-in voting, which means that counting votes takes even more time than it did in the past, as local election clerks wait for ballots postmarked by election day to arrive. It’s increasingly difficult to call winners of races in California on election night, or even the day after.

According to Kus, the Fresno County registrar of voters, the first reported results at 8 p.m. on Election Day (after the Vote Centers close) are just the results of all the mail-in ballots sent in and received before March 5. Later that evening, they will likely provide two additional updates, as memory cards with results from ballots cast in-person at Vote Centers are sent in.

Since voters are allowed to mail in ballots as late as Election Day (March 5), as long as they are postmarked that day, it could take several days for the elections office to receive and count the ballot. If a race is close, this could further push out how long it takes to declare a winner.

For more information about how the Associated Press (AP) calls elections, see here.