Early voting begins in Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties
SALINAS, Calif. (KION-TV): The presidential election is less than a month away, and early voting started in California on Monday.
People who live in Monterey County arrived to the polls at the Monterey County Elections Office on Monday.
"We had a very busy start to our early busy voting season yesterday," said Gina Martinez, registrar at the Monterey County Elections. "We had our first voters here sharp at 8 a.m. and we saw over 50 people come in."
The Monterey County Elections office said voters will receive instructions on how to submit their ballots. First-time voters should be aware they're assigned a polling place based on where they live.
The Monterey County Elections office has started mailing more than 214,000 ballots. Election officials said the voter turnout is higher for presidential elections than primaries.
The voter turnout is also higher in presidential elections compared to the primaries in Santa Cruz and San Benito County.
"The primary election we actually increased from there to now," said Francisco Diaz, county clerk and recorder for San Benito County Elections. "About 3,000 more registered voters. We're sending more ballots now. In the primary election were about 34,000 registered voters, now were above 36,000."
The County of Santa Cruz said they started mailing out about 171,000 ballots to their registered voters. The Monterey County Elections office said they're urging people to vote and they're willing to help.
"We have a number of resources to assist our voters and we can work with them to find the one that is going to work best for them, so they can exercise their right to vote," said Martinez.
