Forget who you should vote for — how you should vote has become a hotly debated decision in the 2026 midterm election.
The election is officially underway with mail-in ballots arriving at San Diego County homes amid a barrage of reassurances and renewed skepticism about voting by mail. Even President Donald Trump can’t seem to make up his mind on the issue.
A critic of both early voting and voting by mail whose administration has been trying to restrict the mail ballots that Trump himself uses, the president is now urging Republicans to vote early — and by mail if they choose to do so.
His contortions come as activists cast doubts on voting by mail and top California officials like the attorney general and secretary of state say that it’s fine.
So what’s a voter to do? Relax and take voting seriously, experts say.
“There is no reason California voters should avoid the mail. The most important thing is for voters to return their ballots early, if they can” said Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor and former White House voting rights adviser. “But how a voter chooses to return the ballot — by mail, by dropbox, dropping the ballot off at a voting center – is entirely up to the voter’s preference. They’re all good choices, and they’ll all mean that the ballot gets where it’s supposed to go,”
San Diego County voters have several ways to return ballots before Election Day on Nov. 3. They can mail them (postmarked by Nov. 3), take them to an official ballot drop box or bring them to a vote center.
A slew of California politicians have sought to reassure voters in recent weeks that everything is OK.
“I know some Californians may be wondering whether everything coming out of Washington has changed how they can vote,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement Monday. “The answer is no. We successfully secured a U.S. Supreme Court order that protects your ability to vote by mail.”
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the San Diego County registrar of voters and others have also told voters that they can vote as usual.
Their assurances have come after Trump pushed for voting reforms to address his long repeated but unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, despite substantial evidence that it is rare.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month rejected the Trump administration’s emergency request to impose new mail-ballot rules before the November election. The blocked rule would have had the U.S. Postal Service refuse to mail local ballots unless voter data was uploaded to a federal database and envelope designs met new requirements.
The proposal was just one of several Trump administration attempts at election reform that led Democrats like California Treasurer Fiona Ma and Rep. Mike Levin to tell San Diego voters to use secure drop boxes rather than the U.S mail.
Find a secure ballot box near you
The county maintains a list of ballot drop box locations that operate until 8pm on Nov. 3.
On Monday, a coalition of local activists including SanDiego350, Alliance San Diego and CBFD Indivisible, gathered at the county Registrar of Voters’ Office and urged voters to use secure drop boxes and to vote early.
“To ensure your voice and your fight counts, we ask you to vote early and deliver your ballots by hand,” Maria Echevarria, a volunteer at SanDiego350, said.
“We don’t want the post office deciding if our vote is valid,” Emmy Jordan, an activist in the group CBFD indivisible, said. “The post office doesn’t want to decide if our vote is valid.”
The warnings are also circulating online, where some San Diego County residents are explicitly telling voters to avoid Postal Service collection boxes.
Eduardo Santiago, a member of the U.S. Postal Service postal workers union, also spoke at Monday’s rally. He didn’t echo the sentiment that mail-in voting is insecure.
“The administration has made this doubt in the vote-by-mail process,” he said. “If something has worked, why should it be politicized?”
Yet Jack Shu, one of the rally’s organizers said that even though Postal Service employees do what they can to keep the vote secure, the administration can’t be trusted.
“We have an administration that will break the law,” he said. “Knowing that it’s against the law. Only to test it out through the court system, hoping that maybe the Supreme Court will flip and side with them. That’s a very dangerous situation.“
Shu said he’s seeing a shift in messaging to push voters to drop off the ballots at a secure ballot box as opposed to putting them in the mail, but he acknowledges mailed ballots “should be fine.”
Everyone does seem to agree on one thing — vote, and vote as early as you can.
