UKIAH, CA., 11/6/24 —The morning after election day in Ukiah is surprisingly calm. The streets are largely empty, and the sun is shining as the temperature hovers around 70 degrees. Perhaps a sleepless night, the surprising results, or the wind whipping leaves along the sidewalks are keeping people inside.
Yet for Mendocino County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Katrina Bartolomei, the work is hardly over. In her role as assessor, county clerk and recorder, Bartolomei manages the county’s ephemera – from marriage licenses to maps, property records to death records.
She also serves as the county’s registrar, which means Election Day and night and the days afterwards are all hands-on deck – including hers. At noon Wednesday, the elections office on Low Gap Road is filled with county employees still processing ballots, with Bartolomei supervising it all.
At the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, Bartolomei stated that the Office of the Registrar had received around 23,000 ballots by the morning of the election. She emphasized that she had never seen that number of ballots submitted by that time on Election Day.
“Presidential elections are generally larger than other elections, but this so far is the largest,” she told the board Tuesday. “We still are going to get mail, and drop-off boxes, so we will have a good turnout.”
Bartolomei emphasized in an interview this morning that this election brought a diverse range of people to the polls late into the evening, ranging from young to old.
“It was a large increase from 2020. We served our last voter at 8:30 p.m. last night because they were inside the building before the 8:00 p.m. cutoff,” Bartolomei said. “We had a big variety of voters that came in, and we had a lot of young people out here voting.”
As of Tuesday, Bartolomei stated that the county had over 54,640 people registered to vote, more than she had ever seen. She believes that one of the main reasons for so many registrations and the large turnout was because of election advertising on television and social media.
“There was so much in-your-face election stuff,” Bartolomei added. “One thing I think is terrible is that [candidates] often badmouth someone else. When either party talks bad about the other, I don’t like that.”
Bartolomei said that she finds joy in making sure Mendocino County residents are able to vote.
“Our main goal is to make sure your vote is properly counted,” she said. “We are here for the voter.”
Bartolomei said that although it’s been an extremely hectic election season, she is able to stay calm during stressful moments.
“It’s a buildup, and we work through it,” she said. “We do take it seriously, but we try not to let it get to us.”
One question that hasn’t crossed Bartolomei’s mind in the last week was how she is going to spend her free time once the ballot processing and counting is finished.
“After the election, I am going to hang out with my new donkeys,” she said of a few animals she’s recently acquired on her ranch. “I have donkeys, horses, and cattle. I’ve had no time to be with them.”
Due to AB 3184, a new law stating that election results cannot be certified until every mismatched signature and every unsigned envelope are cured, the certified count may not be officially released until Dec. 3. Find ongoing election results updates via The Mendocino Voice’s election guide.