Tulare County sees larger voter turnout during 2024 presidential election

TULARE COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) -- Poll sites stayed busy throughout Election Day in Tulare County.

The Tulare County Registrar of Voters expects the total number of ballots to reach around 160,000, about a 5% increase from the 2020 presidential election.

Many of those ballots are from young voters and those voting for the first time.

The registrar says this election's in-person voter count was about 6,000 more people than the roughly 22,000 people who voted in 2020.

Behind the scenes, between 350 and 400 volunteers are making it all happen.

"I just wanna say thank you to all our poll workers, inspectors for making yesterday an amazing day. We didn't have long lines after 8 pm, everyone got processed and through those lines quickly and that is due to all their hard work and dedication that they do out at the poll sites," said Tulare County Registrar of Voters Michelle Baldwin.

Baldwin says access to connectivity was improved this year thanks to Starlink satellite internet.

"Our laptops and our connectivity, that worked really well. In 2020, a lot of problems we experienced were due to slow connectivity at our polling places. We purchased Starlink for our sites, so as far as the connectivity that worked was awesome," says Michelle Baldwin.

She adds early technical difficulties with a tabulator machine were quickly fixed and did not impact the vote count.

Five of the ten volunteers assigned to the Exeter poll location did not show up, but Baldwin says this site processed 1,263 ballots, compared to the 831 ballots in 2020.

She also mentions all of the sites still ran smoothly and wrapped up with voters by the time polls closed at 8 pm.

"That is why it is so important for our poll workers when they commit to working on Election Day. They go through training, make the effort to do that and really show up on Election Day to support the election process," explained Baldwin.

Tulare County Election Clerk Daniel Gutierrez started in 2000 as a student clerk in high school.

He has been here for more than half a dozen elections and has seen every part of the process.

"I had the background of knowing what goes on at the polling locations and then brought it into the office, and it is more, getting to see the other side of preparing the ballots, making sure everything is drafted correctly how it's supposed to be done," said Gutierrez.

Employees will work through today and possibly through the week to complete the vote count, and they should be done certifying the votes sooner rather than later.

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