By Jennifer Sawhney

Penngrovians will travel farther to vote in person in the Nov. 3 election, drawing concerns from at least one resident about voting accessibility. Meanwhile, voting officials say they’ve tried to find local accommodations to no avail.

From December 2025 to mid-August, Chuck Lucas, 80, a resident of Penngrove for 34 years, emailed the Registrar of Voters office to secure a local voting site in the upcoming election. He hoped for two booths.

Instead, this year, the closest ones will be at Kenilworth Junior High School in Petaluma and the Cotati Veterans Memorial Building.

“There's a lot of (people with disabilities) here, elderly people, that – number one – can't drive or don't drive, or it's not accessible to drive,” Lucas said while seated at a table outside the popular Penngrove Market as children played the piano near the market’s sliding doors. On the table was a folder of printed emails and election material he brought.

“And that's important to me. They should be able to exercise their vote,” he said.

In the community of approximately 2,600 residents, about 32% of Penngrove’s population is 65 and older, according to the Census Bureau.

Past voting locations included Penngrove Elementary (November 2024), the Penngrove Social Fireman Clubhouse (June and November 2022), and the Rancho Adobe Fire Station on Main Street (2018 and earlier). There was no voting location in the June primary.

Meanwhile, the Registrar of Voters Department finalized the decision in August, wrote Wendy Hudson, chief deputy registrar, in an email to Petaluma Voice. This came after staff searched for locations that met the 14 criteria listed in Elections Code 4005.

Parameters include considering the proximity to public transportation, communities with disabilities, and traffic patterns. Also, elections staff must survey the location to make sure it meets accessibility standards, Hudson wrote.

Even if a location meets all that criteria, it may be a matter of being welcomed.

“We prefer to use locations where we are welcomed by those who are in charge of the location as well as by the voters in the area,” she wrote when asked how much say the local school district had over such decisions.

Voters cast their votes at Penngrove Elementary in 2024. That year, a parent threatened the school, leaving families worried about strangers on campus. The school has not hosted since then.

“We did receive a great deal of concern from families around having the school open to the public for safety reasons,” wrote Davina Goldwasser, superintendent of Petaluma City Schools. 

In recent weeks, two students were hit by cars en route to two elementary schools, adding to traffic safety concerns, Goldwasser said. 

Budget reductions have also meant fewer campus supervisors, and the school couldn’t host on a nonstudent day, she said.

Not “a done deal”

Since the school wasn’t an option, Lucas began communicating with leaders of the fire station on Main Street.

By mid-August, he presumed that site was “a done deal” for Election Day.

He made that conclusion after exchanging emails with the registrar’s office and a deputy chief with the Sonoma County Fire District, which oversees that station.

But to Lucas’ surprise, he learned in mid-September the fire station was off the table.

“We were open to the idea of having a voting station there," said Robert Johnson, deputy chief of administration with the Sonoma County Fire District. "We weren’t sure why it didn’t work out."

Hudson said the registrar’s logistics team met with the fire chief, and “the Penngrove resident” – Lucas – in mid-August and they reached an agreement to host at the fire station.

The registrar’s office would host a pop-up voting site on Oct. 25 for four hours, which Lucas later found “insufficient.”

Voting was to be held on a Sunday, nine days before Election Day.

“Now that's bad enough, but it's also 49er game day. And I'm a rather rabid fan,” he said. “And I just thought that was ridiculous. So I got into it a little bit with one of the staff members there. And I was just pretty much dismissed.”

Hudson, from the registrar’s department, said the department tried to hold the pop-up during early voting, “but that plan did not meet the approval of the person who wanted a voting location in Penngrove.”

Hudson said the resident “became extremely insistent” the registrar provide a vote center on Election Day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. However, that was not in the registrar’s initial agreement with the resident and fire staff, and it was too late to change to a center, as staff was in the midst of preparing equipment, finding staffing, and gathering supplies for the one-day event – so they withdrew the pop-up.

Questions around mail-in voting

Now that the U.S. Postal Service can’t guarantee a postmark on ballots dropped off on Nov. 3, Lucas is even more concerned about voting accessibility.

“A lot of people just vote by mail,” he said. He worries that, “with the current administration fighting voting by mail, something could happen.”

The county must host 32 voting locations based on voter registration numbers. Vote center and drop box locations are finalized about two months in advance to account for the printed materials, like the ballot packet inserts and the voter guide, which lists these locations, Hudson wrote. “We are also required to provide our locations to the Secretary of State.”

Lucas has a tradition of dropping off his ballot in-person and thanking the many volunteers who oversee the voting site. He isn’t looking forward to the longer drive – nearly nine miles round trip.

“Democracy is very important, especially in this election," he said. "And I think we need to do everything we can to facilitate people voting. I don't care if it's 10 people. The vote counts.”

Jennifer Sawhney is a reporter and co-founder of Petaluma Voice. She can be reached at jsawhney@petalumavoice.org.