A new way to drop off your ballot is taking to the roads here in San Luis Obispo County with the brand new Votemobile.
San Luis Obispo County voters have a new way to drop off their ballots for the upcoming midterm elections. The county clerk-recorders office introduced the vote mobile Saturday morning at Arroyo Grande High School.
Erin Clausen is a spokesperson for the San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder’s office.
For this election, we’re going out,” Clausen said. “We’ve got a secure drop box that’s exactly the same as one of our stationery drop boxes. It’s the same interior equipment, and it’s locked in there. There’s a slot on the outside. People can just deposit their ballot and then it gets logged in dual custody, same as one of the other drop boxes and taken right back to the election center.
Clausen said the vote mobile has been a long time coming. They finally ordered the van after the county was given funds from the state to be used for voter outreach and speeding up the ballot counting process.
She said there has been $150,000 allocated for the van. Most of the money will be going to interior outfitting after the current election wraps up. After the election season, they plan to add a service window, canopy, storage, WiFi, a sound system, work stations and a printer.
She said they picked up the van at 8:30 Saturday morning, just hours before the vote mobiles first scheduled stop.
It truly took a team,” Clausen said. “Now we’re here and we’re super excited to be able to finally have it be live in person.
Its no coincidence the vans first stop is at Arroyo Grande High School. Noah Werner is one of SLO Countys Student Election Ambassadors and a student at AGHS. He said he was planning an early voting pop-up at the school to help his peers get exposed to the voting process.
I think doing this event today hopefully will bring more outreach and more awareness to younger kids and communities at my age about about voters and elections,” he said.
Werner said events like this and the vote mobile will help accessibility and voter awareness across the county.
We need to have more voter awareness because I strongly believe that if we have younger kids being more aware in voting and elections in general, I think that’s going to just benefit the community entirely,” Werner said.
To find out where the Votemobile is planning to stop next, visit the Clerk-Recorder’s website.