Nevada County Registrar of Voters Natalie Adona told an audience at Sierra College’s Grass Valley campus that she enjoys having visitor ask questions at the Elections Office. She said people should not be reluctant to stop by.
“I would prefer people to come in and see what we are doing,” she said.
Adona was the featured speaker at the Feb. 23 installment of the Nevada County Community Forum Series. She was interviewed by former Nevada County Superintendent of Schools Terry McAteer, who asked her questions about the March 5 Presidential Primary Election, the work it takes to run elections, and the challenge of collecting ballots in an area that has snow.
Adona was elected clerk-recorder/registrar of voters in June 2022 and previously served as assistant clerk-recorder/registrar of voters beginning in 2019. She is not a member of any political party.
The March 5 Presidential Primary Election is complicated to run because Presidential candidates are selected by party and therefore voters get different ballots depending on their party affiliation, Adona said. Moreover, there are local areas and measures that only go before voters who live in specific areas of the county.
Nevada County had to prepare 72 different types of ballots for this election, Adona said, drawing a gasp from the audience. “It’s actually kind of low,” she said, adding that she can’t imagine how many different ballots a big county like Los Angeles has to prepare.
Adona said she has grateful that she has a good crew of temp workers who return year after to year to run elections. One Vote Center manager, Cindy McIntosh, has worked every Nevada County Election since 1998.
The elections staff actually run two kinds of elections, Adona said – a vote-by-mail contest and an-in-person contest. All of the county’s estimated 75,000 registered voters receive ballots by mail; Adona estimates that 90-95 percent of them choose to return their ballots by mail as well. The remaining 5-10 percent vote in person at the county’s nine Vote Centers.
She is grateful to those voters who are able to return ballots before Election Day. “The longer you wait, the longer it will take us after the election to report all the results,” she said, adding that all ballot signatures must be verified and records checked to make sure the voter didn’t vote somewhere else.
Running an election in a rural area comes with challenges, Adona said. In November 2022, as an example, there was heavy snow the day before and the day of the election. She said a deputy sheriff had to drive her and other elections staff through near white-out conditions to collect ballots from Truckee. “I was thinking, ‘Don’t crash!,’” she said. “Fortunately, we got through safely.”
When she isn’t working, Adona said she enjoys yoga, running, watching movies and visiting her grandmother who lives in Vallejo.
Adona said the Nevada County Elections Office works hard to make sure the elections run as smoothly and fairly as possible. “I would hope we are continuing to evolve,” she said. “There’s always room to make stuff better.”
