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California officials say the state will be ready for the November general election, despite the coronavirus pandemic. But questions remain about key issues, including whether groups pushing ballot measures will be able to collect signatures before the June deadline given current social distancing requirements.

It also remains unclear whether traditional polling places will be up and running by the fall, given concerns about the virus. In the March 3 primary election, 75 percent of registered voters in California received a vote-by-mail ballot — and Secretary of State Alex Padilla said he is confident that counties can expand that number to all voters by the fall.

Padilla said his office is working with counties to ensure that by November, anyone who wants a ballot in the mail gets one — and safe opportunities will be available for people to vote in person if they prefer.

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Chuck Yates arrived at his Palm Springs polling place on Super Tuesday, prepared to vote by paper ballot as he always has. But things didn’t go as he had planned.

“I showed up, I gave my name and they said, ‘you voted by mail,’’ he said. “I said, ‘no, I didn’t.’”

A poll worker handed him a provisional ballot, which he begrudgingly filled out.

Two other longtime Coachella Valley voters told The Desert Sun they had similar experiences. They said they went to their polling places on Election Day, intending to vote in-person, only to be told they had received a mail-in ballot at home. They said poll workers offered them the option of casting a provisional ballot.

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A series of changes in California meant to boost voter turnout and smooth its new Super Tuesday primary election led to a surge in last-minute voters, computer problems and short-staffing that appeared to catch elections officials by surprise, triggering scathing criticism Wednesday. 

Long lines, sluggish computer connections and general confusion plagued polling places statewide — raising serious questions about the ability of the most populous state to handle November's general election, when millions more voters are expected. Critics called for an overhaul before then.

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Voters in Los Angeles and Orange counties are trying out something new: Vote Centers.

Instead of traditional neighborhood polling places, these centers let voters cast a ballot in-person at any location in the county -- as many as 11 days prior. Early returns show that more than 200,000 people in L.A. County have already used the new centers to cast a ballot, Mike Sanchez of the LA County Registrar-Recorder’s told me.

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The new system has its advantages, says Kim Alexander of the California Voter Foundation, a voter outreach and research nonprofit. She said there have been bumps as the new system has been rolled out, but called the vote centers “a good fail safe for a place like Los Angeles where we have millions of voters.”