As Election Day gets underway in a handful of special elections around San Diego County, supervisor candidates Monica Montgomery Steppe and Amy Reichert are vying to fill the vacant District 4 seat.
Tuesday is Election Day — the final day to cast a ballot, whether by voting in person, dropping one’s mail ballot in a drop box or mailing it.
Beyond the supervisor race in District 4, voters in Chula Vista are electing a city attorney, and voters in two North County water districts are considering whether to withdraw from the county water authority.
More than 20 vote centers around the county are open for in-person voting Tuesday from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m., along with one at county election offices in Kearny Mesa. Ballot drop boxes are also open, and mail ballots can still be dropped in the mail.
Voters in District 4 are choosing between Montgomery Steppe, a San Diego City Council member, and Reichert, a ReOpen San Diego leader, to replace Nathan Fletcher.
The seat has been vacant since Fletcher stepped down in May, in the wake of a lawsuit accusing him of sexual misconduct.
The District 4 supervisor represents just over 675,000 residents in an area encompassing central San Diego neighborhoods such as Clairemont and City Heights as well as the cities of La Mesa, Lemon Grove and beyond.
At stake are not only the District 4 seat but also control of the five-member Board of Supervisors, which is currently split between two Democrats and two Republicans.
Whoever is elected will serve through January 2027.
Partial election results will be released Tuesday evening after the polls close, but counting all the ballots cast could take weeks.
This process may be more complicated in this special election, after the county registrar of voters alerted nearly 7,500 voters in District 4 last month that they may have mistakenly been mailed two ballots.
The registrar’s office suspended the duplicate ballot in its system, notified voters and told them to return either ballot and destroy the other.
If a voter returns a suspended ballot, it will automatically be set aside. It will then be manually counted only if it is the only ballot that voter returns.
Under California law, the registrar has 30 days to certify election results, although the process is expected to conclude sooner in this election. The new supervisor is expected to be sworn in by early next month.
Recent special elections in San Diego have typically received a fraction of a typical election’s turnout.
In April of last year, only 16 percent of the 246,000 registered voters in state Assembly District 80 voted. The year prior, 21 percent of the 302,000 registered voters in state Assembly District 79 turned out.
As of Oct. 31, there were 391,549 registered voters in District 4.
Eligible residents who wish to vote in any of the November elections and missed the deadline to register can still conditionally register and vote in person at a vote center.
People who vote by mail are advised to remember to sign and date the ballot envelope to ensure their vote will count. They can track it by signing up for “Where’s My Ballot?”
Voters can check their registration status or locate vote centers and ballot drop boxes online at sdvote.com. They can also call (858) 565-5800 or (800) 696-0136 for information.
