2022 Midterm Election: SF's voter information guide largest in city history as voting center opens

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- With Election Day now only four weeks away, mail-in ballots went out to voters across the state last week.

On Tuesday, San Francisco opened up its City Hall Voting Center.

"There's really not much of a line at all this early in the process, so if you want to vote and they don't want to wait in line, and they don't have a lot of time, they can come by City Hall, get their ballot and really be done within a half hour," John Arntz, the San Francisco Director of Elections said.

Arntz says City Hall is meant to serve as a universal polling place to drop off mail-in ballots, vote in-person, get a replacement ballot, get language assistance and even still register to vote through Election Day.

"You expect turnout in a midterm election to be somewhere in the 60's," he said. "They have been higher and they have been lower since I've been here," he said.

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He says San Francisco's voter turnout was around 72 percent in the last midterm election back in 2018.

That's way up from 54 percent back in 2014.

But this year, voters have quite a bit of reading to do before casting their five-page ballots.

"The voter information pamphlet that we've produced, it's rather large, it's over 250 pages which is one of the biggest, most pages we've had for a pamphlet in the city's history," he said.

That's why election officials are urging voters to start reading up now, so they're not caught in long lines on the day of Election Day.

"Just to go through all of that information, it's going to take time so even if people aren't voting early, if they at least engage with their ballot, engage with their voter information pamphlet early, it will put them in a better place when they do cast their votes," he said.

RELATED: National Voter Registration Day

October 24 is the deadline to register to vote if you want a ballot in the mail, if you wait any longer than that, you'll have to pick up your ballot from a voting center like San Francisco City Hall.

If you're sending your ballot through the mail, it must be postmarked on or before Election Day on November 8th and it needs to be received by November 15 to get counted.

For a list of San Francisco polling places or for more information about this year's election, click here.

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