Election Day arrives in Merced County

Merced County election staff continued to count absentee ballots Monday, just hours away from Election Day 2014.

The polls open at 7 a.m. today across Merced County, and remain open until 8 p.m. Absentee voters who have not mailed their ballots in may drop them off at any polling place by 8 p.m.

The last gubernatorial election, which was in 2010, saw a turnout of 51 percent of registered voters, according to the county’s Registrar of Voters Office.

This year, in the 16th Congressional District race, Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, will face off against dairyman Johnny Tacherra. Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, will be challenged by write-in candidate and longtime Merced resident Jack Mobley.

Voters will also pick a new Merced County sheriff. Pat Lunney, the Merced County district attorney’s chief investigator, will go up against Vern Warnke, a veteran senior sergeant with the Merced County Sheriff’s Department.

In the race for Merced County District 3 supervisor, voters will choose between Tony Dossetti, a Merced city councilman and former police chief, and Daron McDaniel, an Atwater businessman and congressional aide to Jeff Denham, R-Turlock.

Council or mayoral seats are in the running in every city but Merced.

Both Los Banos and Merced have asked voters to decide if they want to change their current local elections systems to one that uses districts, a move brought on after each city was threatened with a lawsuit from different civil rights groups. Each group claims the cities’ current systems – one that elects city council members by a citywide vote – violates the California Voting Rights Act.

City halls in each of the county’s six cities, as well as the Merced County Elections Office, also provide secure, designated ballot receptacles for vote-by-mail ballots.

Voters should check their sample ballots for the location of their polling place.

Voters who cast a vote-by-mail ballot prior to Election Day can check the status of the ballot at www.mercedelections.org. Once on the site, click “Vote by Mail Ballot Tracker.”

For more information on voting or related issues, contact the registrar’s officer at (209) 385-7541.

This story was originally published November 3, 2014 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Election Day arrives in Merced County."