America First Republican Club

by Hope Horning

LW contributor

The Leisure World America First Republican Club will continue to host an information booth in front of Clubhouse 6 from 9-11 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday throughout October, as well as on Monday, Nov. 3, and Election Day on Tuesday Nov. 4. These times coincide with the Golden Age Foundation’s coffee hospitality hours.

Members hosting the booth will provide information about voting no on Prop. 50 and will collect ballots for those who choose not to use the U.S. Mail or the yellow ballot drop box near the Amphitheater. The ballots will be carried to the Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana by a club officer.

Voters can also vote in-person at the Fire Station 48 voting center located at 3131 North Gate Road near Seal Beach Boulevard. This Vote Center will be open Nov. 1-3 from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. and that includes Saturday and Sunday, as well as the Monday before the election. However, on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 4, the Vote Center will open an hour earlier at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.

Dropping off a mail-in-ballot at the Fire Station is not voting in-person. Ballots collected at the Vote Center are treated just like any ballot that is hand carried to the Registrar of Voters mailed, or put in the yellow drop box at the Amphitheater.

However, it’s easy to reduce the handling of a ballot to just the voter’s hands. Voters can mark their Vote-by-Mail ballot at home

REPUBLICAN, page 17 and take them to a vote center. After they check-in, they will sign their name. Then they will personally scan their own ballot to be counted on that scanning machine. Their ballot drops into a receiving box attached to the scanner. On election night, the thumb drive in the scanner the voter used that recorded the vote is carried by vote center staffers to the Registrar of Voters, where it is sent directly to the tabulation room to be included in the final count.