With fewer than 90 days to go until what may become Election Day across California, Orange County registrar of voters Bob Page isn’t waiting around for the official call.
He’s setting plans in motion, should Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature move forward with an emergency election on Tuesday, Nov. 4, where voters would be asked to approve new congressional districts for the state.
It’s not easy, Page said, to prepare for something that may or may not happen.
But there’s so much that goes into holding an election — vote centers must be secured, a list of those centers has to be printed for voters to consult, staff need to be hired and trained, among a bevy of other things on the election to-do list — that Page said he cannot afford to wait.
“I have a responsibility to expend Orange County taxpayer resources efficiently and wisely,” Page said.
Still, “If I wait for the state to officially call this special election to start working on the election, there will not be enough time to secure all of the facilities we need for vote centers and to hire the extra help we need to operate the vote centers,” he said.
“We cannot lose most of August to wait for the election to be called.”
Newsom has said redistricting efforts would be “triggered” by Texas or other Republican-led states moving ahead with alternative plans to redraw their own congressional boundary lines, an effort promoted by President Donald Trump in those states to shore up Republicans’ margins in the House in the 2026 midterms. California legislators — Democrats control both branches of the statehouse — would draw up the new maps and pose them to voters in November.
It’s unclear just how much this will all cost the state — or Orange County, for that matter.
Jim Patrick, a spokesperson for the California secretary of state, said counties generate cost estimates for elections.
But without an official directive for a special election as of yet, certain details are still up in the air, including how many vote centers the county will need to operate and for how long.
State statute requires the county to operate one vote center for every 60,000 voters for the 10 days leading up to a special election, and one for every 30,000 voters on Election Day. In Orange County, that would look like 32 vote centers for the first 10 days and 64 on the day of the election. (In comparison, the county has to operate even more vote centers for regular elections.)
The state has authorized “hybrid” requirements for vote centers in recent past elections, including the 2021 effort to recall Newsom and the 2020 presidential general election, held in the midst of the pandemic.
But based on the statute for special elections, Page offered a rough estimate of $13 million to operate a special election for redistricting in November.
For context, the 2021 recall effort cost the state about $200 million. Orange County, meanwhile, spent nearly $8.6 million to administer it, according to a 2022 report from the secretary of state.
California’s secretary of state held a meeting with county officials on Monday, Aug. 4, telling them a special election “was very likely and that we should start preparing for it,” Page said.
The secretary of state’s office, in an email, said it did not tell counties what to do, but rather “let them know what they should consider logistically in planning for an election.” There was also time for county officials to ask questions during the meeting, according to the office.
“If a special election does take place, our office will work within our scope to provide guidance and support to counties,” the secretary of state’s office said.
Page said his office will need to have the final ballot language in English no later than Sept. 8 — and will need the next 12 days to translate voter information guides into nine languages, proof it all and mail or email links to those guides and ballots to military and overseas voters by Sept. 20, which is required by the U.S. Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act.
In the meantime, the registrar’s office has begun securing facilities for vote centers and recruiting community members who could work in them, he said. In a regular election year, Page said, all of this prep work would already have been well underway.
“County elections officials are called upon to overcome difficult challenges,” Page said. “If we start preparing for this potential election now, I am confident we can successfully conduct a free and fair election, that Orange County voters will receive their election materials in time and that they will have places to vote in their communities.”
The secretary of state doesn’t impose “deadlines” on legislators, Patrick said, but it has “advised them about what needs to happen in our office and county clerks’ offices to run a potential special election.”
Friday, Aug. 22, is “close to the edge of what is technically possible, but it is not a deadline we set,” Patrick said.
Legislators are on break until Monday, Aug. 18.