Orange County Register

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Early indications show unusually voter high turnout for the Nov. 4, and Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley is eager to feed that all he can. Not only does he want to spur turnout - he’d like it if as many people as possible cast their ballots before Election Day so the polling places don’t get clogged up with lines running around the block.

To that end - and to commemorate the last day to register to vote in the election - Kelley is holding drive-through registration and voting today only from 5 p.m. until midnight. I just got back from giving it a try myself.

“I’m always looking for ways to increase participation and I thought about Southern California being such a car culture,” Kelley told me in the parking lot of his building at 1300 S. Grand Ave., Santa Ana. “You can drive through for a flu vaccination, for food - you used to be able to do it for church too. It’s an extension of that.”

He said it’s the only place outside of Vermont that has drive-through voting.

The system there is pretty simple. You drive into the parking lot. If you’re going to register, they hand you a form and you park and fill it out. If you’re going to vote, you get directed into one of four lines. They make sure you’re a registered voter, check your name off, give you a code to sign into the machine, and then you vote like you would at the polls.

The first voter to pull in little after 5 p.m. had a big SUV, so she had to get out of her vehicle to reach the voting machine. The second voter, with the dog above, just opened his door. I was the third voter and I have an old Volvo wagon. I could reach it easily through the window. I typically like going to the polls on Election Day - I like the ritual - but this one was worth a try.

I’ll be posting more photos here shortly.

As for the huge turnout expected, Kelley said that two weeks before the 2004 general election, he’d sent out 330,000 mail ballots to permanent mail voters and to those who made a one-time request. Already this election he’s mailed out 600,000.

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