Benicia Voters Mail It In For 2020 General Election

BENICIA, CA — Solano County saw sky-high numbers for voter registration, but exceptionally low in-person voter turnout in the 2020 general election, including among registered voters in Benicia.

Mail-in ballots were particularly popular this year amid the coronavirus pandemic. The night before Election Day, more than 2.7 million Bay Area voters had already cast ballots.

Solano County reported receiving 135,969 total ballots by mid-day Tuesday.

"Not too bad of a day," said John Gardener, Solano County's assistant registrar of voters, said mid-afternoon Tuesday. "Fairly slow at most polling places. No lines to report — nothing longer than five to 10 minutes this morning, upon opening. I would definitely expect more traffic later tonight, but we are well below where I would have expected to be at this time today."

Some 259,000 Solano County residents were registered to vote as of Tuesday night. The county issued 258,850 ballots for Tuesday's election, and as of 5:20 p.m. Wednesday had processed and counted 151,977 vote-by-mail ballots and 24,476 in-person ballots.

The Solano County Registrar of Voters Office still has more mail-in ballots to tally, but overall turnout for the Nov. 3 presidential election was about 68 percent as of 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Among Benicia voters, 15,622 ballots were received and counted as of 5 p.m. Wednesday, 13,793 were vote-by-mail ballots, while 1,829 ballots were cast in person before or during Tuesday's election. The city of Benicia has 20,393 registered voters; as of Wednesday, the city's voter turnout for the Nov. 3 presidential election was 76.60 percent.

Roughly 9 percent of registered Solano County voters opted for in-person polling places for the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Statewide, more than 11.2 million of California's more than 21 million registered voters had already voted. Nationwide, the number exceeded 100 million by Monday evening — almost 70 percent of the 136.5 million people who voted in 2016.

Elections officials have 30 days to certify the results of the election. During those 30 days, election officials continue counting vote-by-mail and provisional ballots.

Solano County still has somewhere between 18,000 and 25,000 vote-by-mail ballots to process, and another 4,000-6,000 provisional ballots to process. The potential number of vote-by-mail ballots issued but not received by voters or not cast was somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000, the registrar reported just after 5 p.m. Wednesday.

The Registrar's Office will process ballots with a valid postmark date of Nov. 3 or earlier, as long as the ballots are received by Nov. 20.

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Bay City News Service and Patch editor Courtney Teague contributed to this report.