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Countdown to Voting

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Voting for the November 3, 2026 General Election will open in 27 days.

A Vote-By-Mail ballot will be mailed to all Orange County voters starting no later than Monday, Oct. 5, marking the start of the voting period. On that same day, 128 Ballot Drop Boxes will open and will remain open 24/7 through 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3. For locations, visit our website at ocvote.gov/dropbox.

Any voter who does not want to wait for a ballot to be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service can visit Registrar of Voters (ROV) in Santa Ana on Oct. 5 to receive and vote a ballot. Our office is at 1300 S. Grand Ave., Building C, at the corner of Grand Avenue & McFadden Avenue.

Make sure to check your registration status and visit ocvote.gov/registration to make any necessary updates before Oct. 19.



Bob Page
Registrar of Voters
 
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Registrar Bob Page recently sat down with Spectrum News' Amrit Singh on "Inside the Issues" to discuss ongoing litigation over voting by mail...
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Ballot Return Options/Ballot Tracking
Ballot Return Options/Ballot Tracking

Registered voters have four safe and secure options to return their ballots during the November 3, 2026 General Election. You can:

  • Send your Vote-By-Mail ballot using the U.S. Postal Service
  • Place it in any secure drop box located throughout the county
  • Drop it off at any Vote Center
  • Vote in-person at any Vote Center, scanning your ballot yourself

Did you know you can view and track the status of your Vote-By-Mail ballot with OC Ballot Express?  

Visit ocvote.gov/track to easily check your ballot status. Use OC Ballot Express to view when your ballot is: 

  • Mailed to you
  • Received by the ROV
  • Accepted for counting

You can also sign up for the Secretary of State’s Where’s My Ballot? ballot tracking service on the same page. Where’s My Ballot? sends ballot notification updates directly to you by phone, text, or email. 

For more information, call the Voter Assistance Hotline at 714-567-7600 or 888-OCVOTES (888-628-6837). 
Life of a Vote-By-Mail Ballot - Part 2
Life of a Vote-By-Mail Ballot - Part 2

ROV maintains the integrity of your Vote-By-Mail ballot throughout the election process. We recently shared that the life of a Vote-By-Mail ballot starts when we print, prepare, and mail the ballots, and how voted ballots are collected. The next phase of the life cycle explains what happens once the ballots arrive to our facility.

As each two-person ROV ballot collection team returns to our Santa Ana facility with the ballots they picked up, the numbered seal on every ballot collection bag is confirmed against the chain of custody form and logged to confirm the ballot bag has not been opened in transit.

The ballots are kept in batches based on the location they were cast and are then loaded into a mail sorter that captures an image of the voter’s signature and scans a barcode on the outside of the envelope to record that the voter cast a ballot.

If the voter uses OC Ballot Express, they can track the status of their ballot including when it has been mailed and delivered. Learn more at ocvote.gov/track.

If signature verification software or our trained staff find the signature on the envelope compares with the voter’s signatures in the registration file, the ballot is extracted from the envelope.

Once a ballot is removed from the envelope, the vote is now anonymous. There is no personal voter information on the ballot itself. The ballot is prepared for counting.

Watch part two of “How Ballots Are Collected and Processed” video on our YouTube page at youtube.com/ocrov.

Your ballot goes through many steps to ensure elections are accurate, secure, and transparent. Learn more at ocvote.gov/voting/life-of-a-vote-by-mail-ballot.
USPS Rules for Election Mail
USPS Rules for Election Mail

A new regulation recently published by the U.S. Postal Service would create some new rules for election mail, but the regulation has been stopped by a federal judge from being implemented. The U.S. Department of Justice has appealed the judge’s preliminary injunction.

Until this litigation is resolved, ROV is planning to mail ballots to all active registered voters in Orange County as we have since 2020, pursuant to direction from the California Secretary of State and existing federal and state laws.

If a federal court allows the USPS regulation to be implemented for the 2026 General Election, ROV will adjust our plans to ensure every eligible, registered Orange County voter can access their ballot and vote in the election.

There are two provisions in the new USPS regulation that ROV already complies with:

  • USPS approved our ballot envelopes design in mid-July, and the envelopes have been printed and delivered to ROV.
  • ROV has printed intelligent mail barcodes (IMBs) on our outgoing and incoming ballot envelopes for more than 10 years for as long as USPS has used IMBs

Local USPS officials are scheduled to pick up about 1.9 million ballots from ROV on Sat., Oct. 3 and to start delivering them to voters on Mon., Oct. 5. 

Media coverage of the USPS regulation including statements by ROV is posted on our website on the “In The News” page at ocvote.gov/media.
State Funds for Ballot Processing and Voter Education
State Funds for Ballot Processing and Voter Education

California allocated $3.2 million to ROV to expedite the vote counting process and to educate voters about early voting opportunities. ROV received the one-time funds on Aug. 27.

We have focused spending the funds for ballot processing on four areas:

  • Expand workspace and electrical capacity for processing Vote-By-Mail ballots and for observing that work
  • Purchase additional and updated equipment for teams that process ballots and for observation
  • Implement Automated Signature Verification software for conducting the first level of review of the signatures on ballot envelopes
  • Hire additional extra help staff to process ballots

For voter education about early voting, we:

  • Have increased our paid advertising budget for voter education
  • Are recruiting an additional extra help employee
  • Are purchasing equipment needed to produce social media video content in house
  • Are developing materials and plans for an early voting campaign called "Your Vote, Counted 1st"
  • Have ordered a professionally produced video for the early voting campaign
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