It’s the calm before the storm at the Ventura County Elections Office. Like a swan gliding on the surface, Ventura County Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters Michelle Ascencion is paddling hard under the surface to prepare for the statewide special election in November.
"Yeah, it was a little unexpected, but you know, we like conducting elections," Ascencion told KCLU.
She said she may be cool and calm now, but things will ramp up closer to the date.
"It's still early. See me in October, especially mid and end of October. It'll be a lot crazier. But for now, we're in a good place. You know we're checking the boxes that we need to check. So we're OK. We're not behind yet," she said.
The Senate Bill, which called voters to head to the ballot box to vote on Proposition 50, was passed on August 21, and Ascencion says she’s been here before with gearing up for an election with a compressed timeline.
"Back in 2021, shortly after I first got here, there was a similar situation," she explained. "The gubernatorial recall was called with 75 days' notice. Although we had seen it coming because we knew the petitions were coming in, there was a push among the proponents to make the recall happen. So we saw it coming from afar, but it wasn't official until 75 days before the election was to be held."
We asked if that experience paved the way this time.
"Sure, we have a formula," she acknowledged. "It's just where we may take normally weeks or a couple of months to work on something. It's squashed down to a couple of days or less than a week."
Ascencion said there’s much to do to confirm voting locations and distribute ballots early next month.
"We do still have to mobilize everything that we normally would, the people, the equipment, locating the sites," she said. "Normally, we can get these things decided several months in advance, even up to a year in advance. But now, with us having to scramble with less than three months to get set up, a lot of sites are available that we would typically use. So finding alternate sites that meet all the criteria as far as ADA access and sufficient parking and all those kinds of things is a little bit of a challenge."
Proposition 50, or the the Election Rigging Response Act, is a response to Texas's 2025 redistricting. Election day is November 4.
