Orange County Registrar of Voters

Early Voting

Early voting for the 2026 Statewide Direct Primary Election is underway! Since ballots were mailed to all registered Orange County voters, more than 53,557 voters have already marked and cast their Vote-By-Mail ballot.

You can vote your ballot early by:

Placing your completed ballot in the ballot-return envelope and mailing it in (no postage is needed)

Dropping it off at one of 128 secure ballot drop boxes located throughout Orange County

Bringing it to our office at 1300 S. Grand Ave., Bldg. C, Santa Ana, 92705

On May 23, SELECT Vote Centers will open across the county for in-person voting. On May 30, all 191 Vote Centers will open.

You can mail or drop off your Vote-By-Mail ballot at any ballot drop box, Vote Center, or our office until 8 p.m. on June 2. If mailing your ballot, make sure it is postmarked no later than June 2.

You can find out when your ballot is counted by visiting ocvote.gov/track.

Bob Page
Registrar of Voters

Current Tweet
Registrar of Voters has received Honorable Mention recognition in the U.S. EAC's 2025 Clearinghouse Awards...

View Tweet

How to Complete and Fold Your Ballot

To ensure your Vote-By-Mail ballot is counted, here are some helpful tips when filling it out:

Use black ink to vote your ballot.
Check your ballot for any damage, tears, or unclear marks.
Refold it exactly as you received it to ensure it fits in the envelope, place in envelope, seal and sign your name.
Mail ballots must be postmarked by June 2, so submit your ballot on or before that date.

For more information on completing your ballot, visit ocvote.gov/voting.

Warning: Creating new folding creases on your ballot can damage your ballot or cause it to be damaged when your return envelope is sliced open.

The existing creases are created to avoid voting target rectangles to ensure proper scanning of your ballot. Also, the existing folds allow your ballot sits low enough in the return envelope to ensure the envelope can be sliced open safely without the blade touching your ballot.

Voter Registration Deadline

The deadline to register to vote in the 2026 Statewide Direct Primary Election is Monday, May 18.

If you need to register to vote for the first time or update your address, name, or political party, it's easy and can be completed online at ocvote.gov/register.

If you re-register now to update your address, you will have to ask the Registrar of Voters to send you a replacement ballot to your new address.

To request a replacement ballot, visit ocvote.gov/replacement.

Ballot Barcodes

There are several barcodes on Orange County's ballots that help ROV process ballots quickly and accurately. The barcodes identify the ballot page number, print sequence number, and language, as well as the voter's precinct.

All of this information is critical for the efficient preparation of 1.9 million ballots for mailing, remaking damaged or mismarked ballots, and tabulation of votes.

A ballot tabulator reads the marks made by the voter filling in the voting targets with black ink in each contest. The barcodes ensure the tabulator knows which precinct ballot it is scanning so the votes are tallied for the right candidate.

But the barcodes do not contain the voting choices of the voters.

In the 2026 Statewide Direct Primary Election, Orange County has 2,367 precincts and 79 ballot styles the tabulators must identify. Each ballot style has a unique set of contests located in the same place on the ballot card.

To review a diagram that explains each barcode on Orange County's ballots, visit ocvote.gov/ballot-barcodes.

Your Votes Are Not on the Internet

In compliance with California law, all voting equipment used by ROV in Vote Centers and our office is not connected to the internet, which includes our ballot-on-demand printers, accessible ballot marking devices, ballot scanners, and tally room servers and workstations.

Our voting equipment and voting system are air gapped from all other systems and networks used by ROV. And, the equipment lacks any hardware that would allow it to connect to the internet.

The separate election management system contains the voter registration database, candidate filing information, voting locations, and petitions. It does send and receive encrypted voter registration information over secure cloud servers connected to the statewide voter registration system VoteCal and to the poll books used in Vote Centers to check in voters.

The tracking and sharing of voter participation data in the election management system helps us prevent voters from successfully casting two ballots within Orange County or one within Orange County and another in a second county in the state.

The election management system and the voting system are two separate and distinct State-certified systems that are not connected to each other.

The election management system tracks whether a voter cast a ballot in an election. But it does not contain ballot data, votes, or results.

The voting system contains ballot information, including ballot images, cast vote records, and vote tallies. But it does not contain voter information to ensure the votes on every voter's ballot remain secret even to ROV.


F O L L O W U S


S H A R E N E W S L E T T E R

Current Voter Registration
1,905,937

Registration | Data | Results | Contact Us | Media