Public Urged to Use Official County Election Ballot Drop Boxes

Update by the County of Santa Barbara
October 15, 2020
 

Santa Barbara County Elections is responding to recent reports of groups promoting unofficial ballot drop boxes not affiliated with Santa Barbara County Elections. In some instances, these ballot drop boxes are promoted as “official” or “secure.” However, the use of unauthorized, non-official ballot drop boxes is prohibited by state law. 

Voters who want to return their ballot via a drop box should only use official county drop boxes that are clearly recognizable, designed to meet state standards for security, and bear the official Santa Barbara County Elections logo, as shown [above].

The public can view an image of each of the 30 official Santa Barbara County Elections drop boxes shown installed at each location and the address at SBCVote.com.

County Elections installed 30 secure ballot drop boxes throughout the county to assist voters in the safe and secure return of their voted ballot directly to the Elections office. Additionally, each of the official 35 polling place locations open starting October 31 through Election Day will have a ballot reception station located outside the polling place entrance to provide another safe option for voters to return their ballot.

Elections staff are asking for the public’s assistance in identifying potentially illegal ballot drop boxes by calling 800-SBC-VOTE or (800) 722-8683. Please help protect the rights of all registered voters to cast their ballot.

Again, locations of official Santa Barbara County Elections drop boxes can be found at SBCVote.com, then click on “Elections” and another click on the “Drop Box Locations” image displayed below. In addition, the Secretary of State website lists official ballot drop boxes at https://caearlyvoting.sos.ca.gov/.


Ballot Drop Box Locations

Source: County of Santa Barbara
October 12, 2020
 

Voting in the Presidential Election in November may look a little different than in previous elections due to the pandemic. Being an informed, prepared voter can help make the process simple.

Ballots were mailed to all voters in Santa Barbara County on September 28. If a voter does not receive their ballot by Friday, October 9, they should contact the Registrar of Voters office at (800) 722-8683 or 800-SBC-VOTE.

The process of voting the ballot is simple, safe and secure since a voter can make voting decisions and mark the ballot comfortably at home. The ballot is then signed and sealed in the postage paid envelope, and can be dropped in the mail or returned to one of 30 ballot drop boxes located throughout the county and listed below.  

If the ballot is placed in the mail, the U.S. Post Office suggests doing so by October 27 in order for it to be postmarked by November 3, Election Day, in order to be counted.

For those who prefer in-person voting or for additional services including language assistance or a replacement ballot, 35 polling places will be open Saturday, October 31 through Election Day, Tuesday, November 3.  Facial coverings are required, and there may be a socially distanced waiting line. A list of all polling places are in the County Voter Information Guide and on the website at sbcvote.com. .

To register to vote, forms are available online at sbcvote.com or RegisterToVote.ca.gov and paper applications can be found at most US Post Offices, Registrar of Voters Offices or the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The three election offices in the county listed below are now open for voting, voter registration and voter questions through Election Day, November 3. 

Santa Barbara
4440-A Calle Real
8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday – Friday, except holidays
 
Lompoc
401 E. Cypress St, Room 102*
8 a.m. to noon, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Monday – Friday, except holidays
*To better serve voters, the Lompoc Office will move to the Lompoc Veteran’s Memorial Building at 100 E. Locust starting October 22, 2020
 
Santa Maria
511 E. Lakeside Parkway, Suite 134
8 a.m. to noon, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Monday – Friday, except holiday

Ballot Drop Box Locations for the November 3, 2020 General Election

Secure ballot drop boxes are located throughout the county to return voted ballots 24 hours a day until 8 p.m., November 3. The locations of ballot drop boxes were selected based on the following criteria:
  • Geographic distribution throughout the county

  • Where possible, placed in locations in areas not covered by Polling Place locations

  • Proximity to underserved voter population and lower permanent Vote by Mail registered populations

Each Drop Box has been identified as a Drive-Up, Walk-Up, or both, and whether the box is accessible, please see below for details at each location.

Buellton

Buellton City Hall  – Accessible/Drive-Up/Walk-Up
107 W. Highway 246

Carpinteria

Carpinteria City Hall – Accessible/Drive-Up/Walk-Up
 
Casa de las Flores – Walk-Up
4090 Via Real

Goleta

Goleta City Hall – Accessible/Walk-up
130 Cremona Dr.          
 
Goleta Valley Community Center – Accessible/Drive-Up/Walk-Up
5679 Hollister Ave
 
Isla Vista Foot Patrol Sheriff Substation – Accessible/Walk-Up
6504 Trigo Rd.         
 
Southcoast Church – Accessible/Walk-Up
5814 Cathedral Oaks Rd.          
 

Guadalupe

Guadalupe City Hall – Walk-Up
918 Obispo St

Lompoc

Lompoc City Hall – Accessible/Drive-Up/Walk-Up
100 Civic Center Plaza
 
Lompoc Public Library – Accessible/Walk-Up
501 E. North Ave.
 
Santa Barbara County Department of Social Services/Public Health – Accessible/Walk-Up
1100 West Laurel Ave.
 
Vandenberg Village Library – Accessible/Walk-Up
3755 Constellation Rd.
 

Los Olivos

Los Olivos Branch Library – Accessible/Walk-Up
2374 Alamo Pintado Ave.
 

Montecito

Manning Park (Lower Manning Park Area 9) – Accessible/Drive-Up/Walk-Up
449 San Ysidro Rd & Santa Rosa Ln.

New Cuyama

Cuyama Valley Recreation District (Montgomery Hall Building) – Accessible/Walk-Up
 

Orcutt

Oak Knolls Shopping Center – Accessible/Walk-Up
Directly in front of the State Farm Office – across the Parking Lot from Coast Hills Federal Credit Union.
1108 E. Clark Ave., Santa Maria
 

Santa Barbara

County of Santa Barbara Administration Building – Accessible/Walk-Up
 
County of Santa Barbara Elections Main Office – Accessible/Drive-Up/Walk-Up
4440-A Calle Real
 
Eastside Branch Library – Accessible/Walk-Up
1102 E. Montecito St.         
 
MacKenzie Park – Accessible/Drive-Up/Walk-Up
3111 State St. (corner of State and Las Positas)
 
San Andres Hardware – Accessible/Walk-Up
635 W. Micheltorena St. (Corner of San Andres and Micheltorena)

Santa Barbara City College (West Campus Drop-Off) – Accessible/Drive-Up
721 Cliff Dr

Santa Maria

Atkinson Park – Accessible/Walk-Up
1000 N. Railroad Ave.
 
Joe Centeno Betteravia Government Administration Building – Accessible/Drive-Up/Walk-Up
511 E. Lakeside Pkwy. (parking lot)
 
Minami Community Center – Accessible/Walk-Up
600 W. Enos Dr.         
 
Santa Maria Animal Center – Accessible/Walk-Up
548 W. Foster Rd
 
Santa Maria Elks – Accessible/Walk-Up
1309 N. Bradley Rd.
 
Santa Maria Public Library – Accessible/Drive-Up/Walk-Up
421 S. McClelland St. (City Library Parking Garage)

Santa Ynez Valley

Stuart C. Gildred Family YMCA – Accessible/Walk-Up

Solvang

Solvang Veteran’s Memorial Hall – Accessible/Drive-Up/Walk-Up
1745 Mission Dr. (Parking Lot near Library Drop Box)

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59 Comments

  1. The GOP in California has purchased “vote here” mailboxes and stationed them at various places. One for sure was at an evangelical church. The minister says he is only trying to help his people vote!! The plan here is obviously a part of the Trump attack on absentee/vote by mail ballots. I assume that those who vote at these locations will be Trump heavy and the ballots will be then disallowed as being cast late “proving”that vote by mail is a fraud. It is so dirty and so obvious. How soon can we cleanse ourselves of this blight?

  2. Roger – you are correct. It’s on KEYT too. It’s truly hilarious that the same people screaming and crying about an unfair election and voter fraud are the same folks who got busted putting illegal ballot boxes out! T

  3. VOR 10:19 AM – your “research” on returning ballots in SB County is incorrect. One only needs to read the instructions on the back of the ballot envelope (upper left corner). You write the name of the other person returning your envelope and their relationship to you, have them sign, then you sign.

  4. Also, the GOP stance on ballot collection is unsurprisingly hypocritical. They did it in 2018 in Orange County and nationally have been planning to do it for over a year now …. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/we-got-our-clocks-cleaned-gop-quietly-works-to-expand-ballot-harvesting-in-california-while-criticizing-democrats-for-the-practice/2019/03/13/a432d902-41b7-11e9-922c-64d6b7840b82_story.html

  5. Keeping things on topic with ballots and ballot harvesting, both sides step to the line and sometimes over what is legal in their efforts to grab more power.
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/beware-the-fall-ballot-harvest-11592607662
    https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/pacei-voterfraudcases.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0kPCSmTRe6j8wTeMdI73IljE5xLkOQAk_L31lnbIBmh9Jnn5CJDt9Esvk

  6. Only people completely detached from reality would think that they could legally make a ballot box in their garage and mark it “official”, and who refer to a pandemic that has killed well over 200,000 in the US alone as “mild”. Amazing ignorance!

  7. Lotsa talk about this one.
    I cannot believe we allow “ballot boxes” to be setup here and there for clueless individuals to fall prey and drop their votes into them. Really? Anyone else ever heard of this before? I haven’t. This is crazy. No “ballot boxes” should be sitting around weeks ahead of the election because people will be suckered.
    Maybe I’m just old school but I’ll never waste my vote by dropping it into a random bin somewhere. You either show up and vote in person on Election Day or mail your vote in wellahead of time by dropping it into a USPS mailbox. Isn’t that about it?

  8. RHS and Scajon you’re both not accurate on this. The boxes were placed on private property and comply with the law, it is no different than someone going door to door collecting ballots (legal) or someone hosting a ballot party where everybody comes completes there ballot and lets one person collect and take in (also legal). The democrats passed the ballot harvesting laws that allow this, the republicans opposed it and would happily do away with it. But as it was signed into law by Gov. Brown they follow the law. Your comments make it pretty clear you need to diversify your news sources (not easy to do here in CA) or at least do a little research when you read something.

  9. It is our gov. that turned his back on the poor with these continued lockdowns rather than isolate the at-risk and elderly. I know you’re a rational thinker so please stop pretending any other president could have prevented this. Let’s go back to early 2020, if Trump did a hard close on all boarders what would your response have been? Honestly? You most likely would have criticized and called him racist. And it wouldn’t have done any good either because many signs already points to covid making its rounds in the US at the end of 2019. Trump is an easy scapegoat, but true blame lies in our response: the failure of our leaders from the Federal level all the way down through city council when they abandoned 15 days to flatten the curve for an never-before-tried total shutdown. that shutdown experiment failed miserably.

  10. VOICE – saying no other president could have prevented the spread in the USA is absolutely laughable. Trump did everything he could, even while knowing how deadly it is, to make it seem harmless. He teased those who took precautions, called it a liberal hoax, told his followers not to wear masks and to go back to work and school. Guess were most of the outbreaks were? In places that took little to no preventative measures – southern schools, conservative churches, bars, Sturgis, THE WHITE HOUSE. I mean come on. It’s an absolute joke to sit here and tell us no other president could have done better to stem the flow. Do you think none of us have ever picked up a paper or watched the news?

  11. Voice of Reason (?) is not correct. California law allows a designated 3rd party IDENTIFIED BY THE VOTER to collect and transport ballots to the official place of voting but these boxes did not instruct people to identify anyone to do this and since they are left anonymously it is completely inappropriate to claim that anyone knows that the voter intended anyone else (much less any specific person) to actually carry the ballot to the registrar’s office.

  12. The designated 3rd party is the party who is holding the box on their private property. From what I’ve read, CA law doesn’t require the voter to write the name of the harvester on their ballot. I don’t like this law, nor do I like ballot harvesters are allowed to go door to door, and even less how harvesters can get paid (as long as it isn’t per ballot), but that is the law California democrats enacted, opposed by republicans.

  13. UNBELIEVABLE hypocrisy of the GOP! It goes on and on!! I saw that article, a Baptist church in Castaic had that fake drop box out front. UNCONSCIONABLE and illegal! Those responsible should be in jail! Make sure you know you are dropping off your ballot at a real and official ballot box. Trickery and cheating is afoot in spades in the Trump administration.

  14. Byzan dislogic again. Per state law, collecting votes in person is legal and they have to sign the ballot. You have to write their name and relationship to you, the way I read it. How can that happen if you have dropped your ballot in an unofficial box?

  15. trump and his postmaster general have effectively slowed down service so much that nobody I know is putting their ballot in the mail. Everyone is putting their ballots in Elections Dropboxes that are listed on County Elections websites.

  16. An attorney for the California Republican Party sent a letter Wednesday afternoon California to Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Attorney General Xavier Becerra asserting that the party’s ballot drop boxes are perfectly legal under the election laws enacted by Democrats in the state Legislature. The GOP letter says the party has no intention of removing the boxes as the state has ordered. TRUMP 2020 LANDSLIDE COMMING ! lol

  17. @Chelsea – you do know that attorney’s are literally paid to say their clients are not breaking the law, right? Just because the attorney of the accused says it’s “legal,” means absolutely nothing. Hey, I can say it’s “legal” to sell guns to kindergartners, doesn’t make it so.

  18. WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?????
    Geez,,,,,
    So much anger!
    Sacjon and Pitmix and Voice of Reason, and a few more…
    KNOCK IT OFF!!!!
    I’m over your veiled political tirades.
    Run for office or SHUT UP!!!!!
    We used to be a mellow surfer community with friends in different neighborhoods and ride our bikes and skateboards down the street to be the first one to touch the light pole.
    Going to 7-11 for a slurpee and read a comic was a bonus.
    Look what you did to us.

  19. Tip: everyone received an “Official Ballot Box Locations Guide” with their ballot. Go only to locations outlined on that guide, and you will be fine. If you find a ballot box that is not on this guide, report it immediately.

  20. AG Becerra responded in the interests of his client too- the Democrat super-majority in this state. He is beholden to Democrat interests and the powerful public employee unions like any other Democrat. The courts will have the final say and weigh the GOP arguments against the Democrat “vote-harvesting” abuses in 2016 – were they the same thing?

  21. Before in the good old days, local elected officials were not partisan, government was not the biggest industry in town, and the Democrat party was not merely an extension of the public employee union bosses . “Since about 20 years ago, politics became existential for a huge number of persons in town who now feed generously off the taxpayer trough. Can’t put that genie back in the bottle. so the lines are drawn between tax dollar makers and tax dollar takers. Guess who is winning, but no one wins after the takers eat all the maker’s seed corn. They need to declare truce and get back in their corner and the takers need to say thank you to the makers.

  22. See, LCP? No one can be happy just having a calm conversation about the schools and our kids. Remember playing “pin the tail on the donkey” when we were kids and feeling lucky if we got some Jax, or a jump rope and the boys got a pirate patch or kite ? (yeah, I really wanted a darn kite).
    Oh well,,,
    These tirades have been going on for days upon days Between certain folks and I would imagine they have to kiss their babies, take a shower, or make friends with their neighbor.
    We all have fun reading your tyrannical rants and all, but we have lives and assume that you do too and you better get back to your babies.
    Bye by now!!!!
    (Hater comments welcome)

  23. Courts decide the law when there is ambiguity; not paid elected partisans. It is a good law very ripe for non-partisan judicial review. And a lesson why we need strict constructionist judges; not political activist judges.

  24. @3:23 not sure I’m buying that as the DNC rules California. @ Bzatntium, you aren’t wrong. @ all those who freaked out and accused a political party of major voter fraud off a single picture, relax, don’t freak out over everything your read, they write it specifically to make you freak out.

  25. JENCE – This is comment section, no one did anything to you. My kids still ride bikes and skate to 711 and play ball in the street just like the “old days.” We have the right to speak our minds and disagree with each other. If you can’t handle that, I’m sorry, but I will not “shut up” about issues that affect me personally.

  26. Is there a fake drop box near here? I missed that…… But of course national politics affect us. Still, I was under the impression that we weren’t supposed to get into trump/anti-trump discussions here. Aren’t there enough other venues for that?

  27. An attorney for the California Republican Party sent a letter Wednesday afternoon California to Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Attorney General Xavier Becerra asserting that the party’s ballot drop boxes are perfectly legal under the election laws enacted by Democrats in the state Legislature. The GOP letter says the party has no intention of removing the boxes as the state has ordered. +1 for the GOP 🙂

  28. Trump just had another super spreader event, last night. Look at the pictures–very few masks. Why? Because Trump’s administration has been undercutting public education and encouraging people to put themselves and others at risk for the last six months. Trump’s not a scapegoat, he’s a failed and dishonest leader who has made the entire Pandemic much much worse–because he thinks he benefits.

  29. AHCHOOO – The president, any president, affects all things from the federal to local level. In this case, it’s relevant since he has been constantly saying the election is already rigged, and then the CA GOP puts out illegal ballot collecting boxes, some near SB/Goleta. Seems relevant to me.

  30. VOICE – which CNN article do you keep “quoting?” The one from yesterday where the CA GOP attorneys are saying they’re doing nothing wrong, but the CA Sec of State is saying they are? You can provide the link easily by pressing “ctrl c” then “ctrl v.”

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