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A familiar face has joined the race for Crescent City Harbor District this election, though Del Norters won’t find him on their ballot.
Harry Adams, who’s currently president of the Harbor District Board of Commissioners, announced Friday that he’s running as a write-in candidate. He’s running against Linda Sutter, Annie Nehmer, Dan Schmidt, Devon Morgante and John Evans. Adams said he submitted the signatures he needed to be an official write-in candidate.
“I just feel like my job wasn’t done yet,” he said. “Why quit when you’re just starting to get good at it? I don’t totally agree that three seats should be vacated at one time.”
The Crescent City Harbor District election is the only contested race in Del Norte County this year. However, voters will also be asked to approve facilities bonds for Del Norte Unified School District and College of the Redwoods.
Voters will also see the names of those who are slated to assume the three Crescent City Council seats up for election this year, Del Norte County Clerk/Recorder Alissia Northrup told Redwood Voice Community News. It’s not a contested race at this point, though write-in candidates have until Oct. 22 to run, she said.
Voters should start receiving their ballots soon. According to Northrup, they were sent out on Monday. Voters can also begin turning their ballots in at the Del Norte County Elections Office or they can visit the elections office to receive a ballot if they like, Northrup said.
“We’ve already sent out overseas and military ballots and we’ve already got a couple back,” she said last week. “It helps if [people] don’t hang onto their ballot until that very last day. The more ballots we have earlier the better those results are going to be on election night — those first set of election results.”
Northrup is in her third term as Del Norte County Clerk. Her office is up for election during the gubernatorial midterm elections typically, she said. Each term is four years long.
When it comes to voters’ confidence in the job she and her staff do, Northrup said the good far outweighs the bad. She mentioned Shasta County, which canceled its contract with Dominion Voting Systems last year and tried to implement hand-counting, according to the Guardian.
Northrup also mentioned Tehama County, whose elections department and district attorney’s office issued a warning about voter fraud, according to ABC affiliate KRCR.
Northrup noted that while some may be skeptical of a computer counting the ballots when election season comes to a close Nov. 5, any errors are most likely due to the humans involved, not the machines.
Northrup said she and her office does count “a random number of precincts” when the polls close.
“And rarely do we get it right the first time,” she said. “We have to go back and do it again. We made the mistake.”
The precincts slated for hand-counting are drawn at random, Northrup said. And two sets of people tally up the ballots. The goal is for those numbers to match and to match what the computer says. If not, Northrup said, you count again.
Northrup noted that many people often don’t understand the vote-by-mail ballot, though they will fill out a mail-in ballot and walk them into a polling place as opposed to casting their ballot in person. According to her, each ballot is handled by a human comparing the signature on the ballot to the signature they have on the voter rolls.
If there’s more than one signature or a significant difference between the two, Northrup said her office will send the voter a letter informing them that the signature is different. She said if someone is sent a ballot that doesn’t belong to anyone living in the household, they should return it to the elections office.
“If I get it back then I could do something with it, but if they don’t return it, there’s nothing I can do,” she said. “If you try to vote [that ballot], the likelihood of it making it through the process is very little.”
Northrup pointed out that there are several ballot tracking tools —there’s one here and here.
Though it varies, there are just under 15,000 voters in Del Norte County, Northrup said. She added that since it’s a presidential general election, she’s bracing for a bigger turnout even though there’s only one contested local race.
Northrup said she’s also in need of poll workers. Any registered voter 18 years and older can be a poll worker.
Students age 16 and older with a 2.5 or greater GPA and with permission from their school and parents can also be a poll worker. They’ll have to take a class, but there’s a $100 stipend involved, Northrup said.
“I think it’s really good for them,” she said of the students that work the polls. “And I think it’s good for voters. I get a lot of comments from people going into the polls. I think it gives them hope. It makes them excited when they see young people there.”
For more information on being a poll worker in Del Norte County, click here.
