By Niki Cervantes
Lookout Staff

June 2, 2017 -- Santa Monica is joining other cities in Los Angeles County for a new Will Call pilot project that allows voters to pick up ballots early for the June 7 primary and hand them in at one of a dozen new locations throughout the county, City officials announced Wednesday.

Voters can request a Vote by Mail ballot online at www.lavote.net or on the phone at (562) 466-1323 from the LA County Clerk’s Office and then retrieve the ballot two days later at various City Halls and other public buildings across the county.

Voters have until Saturday to request the ballots, which will be available until Monday. Locations will be open during the weekend.

In Santa Monica, the mail-in ballots can be picked up at the City Clerk’s Office in City Hall, 1685 Main Street in the Civic Center, Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and this Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the City Hall lawn in Ken Genser Square.

The City Clerk's Office also will operate a Will Call booth on Sunday, during the COAST Open Streets Event downtown, which takes place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“Voting tables will be setup by the City Clerk’s Office to allow voters to mark and complete their ballots, if they choose,” said Santa Monica City Clerk Denise Anderson-Warren. “Or they can simply pick up the ballot and return it by mail or at a polling location on Election Day.”

Hundreds of thousands of new voters registered in California between mid-March and mid-May, according to data from the office of Secretary of State Alex Padilla.

The Democratic Party’s numbers rose nearly 3 percent with the addition of more than 220,000 new registrations, for a total of 7.7 million members, the statistics show.

Republican registrations increased by almost 70,000, a 1.45-percent increase that gave the GOP a total of 4.8 million members.

Reversing years of fast growth, non-partisan voters fell by 20,000 to total 4.1 million, a drop of half a percent, the numbers show.

Under the new Will Call system, all of the new ballot locations will also serve for dropping off ballots. The completed Vote by Mail ballots can be returned to any one of eleven locations in the county.

Voters can get Ballots at locations in East Los Angeles, Long Beach, Florence/Firestone, Pasadena, Redondo Beach, Downtown Los Angeles, Pomona, Van Nuys, Lancaster and Lennox.

For more information on the June 7 Presidential Primary, visit the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s site at www.lavote.net.