AB 2540: State facilities and public buildings: vote centers and polling places.

Existing law, the California Voters Choice Act, authorizes certain counties to conduct any election, after a specified date, as an all-mailed ballot election if certain conditions are satisfied, including conditions related to ballot dropoff locations, vote centers, and plans for the administration of all-mailed ballot elections.

Existing law requires, with certain exceptions, that state-owned buildings, parking lots, and other facilities be made available free of charge for use as polling places.

This bill would extend this requirement to vote centers.

Existing law authorizes the governing body with jurisdiction over school buildings or other public buildings to allow its buildings to be used for polling places on any election day, or to store voting machines and other vote-tabulating devices.

This bill would authorize school buildings or other public buildings to also be used as vote centers beginning up to ten days before the election and continuing through election day. The bill would require an elections official requesting the use of a public building to include a list of the buildings from which the use of a building for polling places or vote centers is needed, and would require that request to be made sufficiently before election day for the governing body to adequately plan for the public buildings use as a polling place or vote center. The bill would define public building as a building owned or controlled by a city, county, or other local governmental agency.