‘Tough decisions’: Mendota fights to open in-person vote center for California Special Election

MENDOTA, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – The rural City of Mendota has not had an in-person vote center for California’s special election.

Mendota Mayor Victor Martinez says being able to vote in person is patriotic and a right everyone should have. 

“Every community and every city in the county of Fresno should have a place to vote,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that don’t like to vote by mail, and they wait for that day so that they can feel the pride.”

There are ballot drop-off boxes, but the nearest in-person vote center is in Firebaugh. It’s about an eight-mile drive, but Martinez says every mile counts for a community already battling for access.

“A lot of people don’t have a car, and they are looking to go to that center here in the City of Mendota and vote right there,” he said.

He also expressed frustration with the communication with the Fresno County Clerk’s Office.

“The moment that the county clerk knew that we were not going to have a place here in Mendota, he should have communicated,” Martinez said. 

Fresno County Clerk James Kus points to staffing limitations as one of the main reasons for this decision.

“Non-availability of workers, locations, and no time to be able to make the replacements,” he noted. “We are effectively at 50% strength. And that does mean that a few locations or a few neighborhoods don’t have the vote center that they’re used to having.”

Kus says state law requires them to provide at least 53 vote centers during a regular election and 18 vote centers during a special election. Right now, Fresno County has 26 open centers.  

He says they just didn’t have enough time to open any more.  

“When there are limited resources, we have to sometimes make those tough challenges, tough decisions to provide that as evenly and equally as possible to the community,” Kus said. “We need to maintain accessibility. We need to maintain access. We need to maintain opportunities across the county.”

Kus explains how long they have to plan directly impacts the number of workers they have and which centers they decide to open.

“For a regular election, we start recruiting 180 days before the election. For this election, we started the election 75 days before; 75 days is too short a time to do a statewide election for any of our local communities,” he said. “When you have such a short time frame, you can’t fill any holes. There’s not enough time to recruit.”

The clerk’s office worked with the City of Mendota and Supervisor Brian Pacheco to open up a vote center.

“Supervisor Pacheco came up with four people. There were six people here from our community,” Mayor Martinez said. “Tomorrow, they’re going to be they’re serving here in the City of Mendota.”

The one-day vote center will be available at the Mendota Branch Library from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.