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How Orange County is making sure Garden Grove evacuees can still vote
There are multiple ways for evacuees to cast a ballot.
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Tiffany Ujiiye
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LAist
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Forced to evacuate, they left mail-in ballots behind. What happens now?
The Orange County Registrar of Voters is working to make sure evacuees from the Garden Grove chemical threat can still vote in the upcoming primary election. LAist's Jill Replogle has details.
The Orange County Registrar of Voters is sending teams to emergency shelters to make sure people can still can vote in the June 2 primary even if they are under evacuation orders because of the Garden Grove chemical spill threat.
The backstory
Some 40,000-50,000 people in and around Garden Grove were ordered to evacuate last Friday after a tank holding thousands of gallons of a toxic, highly flammable chemical threatened to explode. The evacuation area was sharply reduced Monday evening after public safety officials discovered pressure in the tank had been relieved.
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But many Garden Grove and Stanton residents in the immediate vicinity of the tank, owned by the aerospace company GKN, are still under evacuation orders. Some fled their homes without even the bare essentials, much less their mail-in ballots for next week’s election.
How evacuees can vote
If you left your mail-in ballot at home, you can go to any of Orange County’s 38 vote centers and request a replacement ballot. You can find the locations of those centers here.
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The O.C. Registrar on Tuesday also sent two teams to the emergency shelters in nearby Fountain Valley — at Freedom Hall and Los Amigos High School — to print replacement ballots for evacuees who need them. Those ballots can be mailed, dropped off at a vote center or placed in one of the county’s official ballot drop boxes. You can find the locations of those drop boxes here.
The drop box at Chapman Sports Park, which is within the evacuation zone, is unavailable. Registrar Bob Page said ballots were collected from the box when evacuations were first ordered. Page said his office has resumed retrieving ballots from two other drop boxes that were within the initial evacuation zone.
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You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
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