Traditional elections – having a single day to cast a ballot in a local church hall, fire station or neighbor’s garage – are so 2019.

On Tuesday, Nov. 5, voters in three cities (San Clemente, Santa Ana and Stanton) chose school board and council members and decided tax issues in an election that will be the last of its kind for Orange County.

Starting in 2020, the county will ditch smaller, one-day-only, neighborhood precinct polls in favor of centrally located vote centers. And instead of a single traditional election day, the regional centers will be open up to 10 days before the officially designated day. Along with that, every registered voter in the county will get a ballot in the mail, should they prefer to vote remotely.

Orange County’s shift is part of a larger, “quiet trend” that started with Colorado in 2004 and has since spread to about 15 (mostly western) states, where officials have found vote centers are more convenient for users and often provide savings for the local governments that fund them, said Wendy Underhill, director of elections for the National Conference on State Legislatures.

While some may have nostalgia for the election day they’re used to, “I’m definitely looking toward big changes that will improve the voting experience,” and make it easier and more convenient, Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said.

Opening the vote centers could also make holding elections easier for Kelley, who has struggled to find volunteer poll workers – more than 1,000 precinct locations had to be staffed for a major federal election. He’ll be able to offer more extensive training and pay people. He is planning to open 150 of the vote centers for four days and another 38 for a full 11 days.

He’s recruiting past poll workers for the new jobs. But longtime volunteer Cecilia Martinez, 43, said she won’t be applying because it would conflict with her day job in the county’s social services department.

Martinez, who staffed her 18th election on Tuesday, said she’s enjoyed seeing parents who would stop in to vote with their little ones and use the opportunity for a lesson on democracy, and how neighbors would call to remind others who hadn’t yet voted so no one was left out.

“They’re proudly going in and voting – putting their vote on whoever they believe in and hoping for great change to come,” Martinez said.

Tom Williams, 71, an accountant who cast his ballot Tuesday at the Sikh Center of Orange County in Santa Ana, said he worries about vote fraud and “ballot harvesting,” where people collect and drop off large numbers of mail ballots for other voters. But as long as elections are secure, he’s fine with however they’re conducted.

“It doesn’t matter to me if it’s over a period of a week,” Williams said. “I like the idea of having it spread out so more people can participate.”

Officials at the Sikh Center, which has been a polling place since about 2006, said they hope they can become a vote center to be part of the next generation of Orange County elections.

Nindy Mahal, who’s on the center’s board of directors, said the venue has the space, plenty of parking and free coffee and tea for refreshment – which he was offering to voters on Tuesday.

Serving the community is part of Sikh culture, Mahal said, and even if Americans don’t always seem as enthusiastic about voting as people in his native India, he thinks vote centers will be more convenient for people.

Underhill said she expects more states to make the shift to vote centers, between the desire for cost savings, difficulties finding poll workers and the general trend away from in-person voting in favor of casting ballots by mail.

“Many of us have the Norman Rockwell view of voting. There’s a tiny piece in my mind of loss, that we’re not going up to that church to vote together” like she did with her kids when they were young, she said.

But Kelley said there’s room for those traditions within the new system – Orange County’s not a big place, he said, so neighbors can still run into each other at vote centers.

He’ll hold a job fair this month to find vote center workers, and he plans to finalize voting locations in December. Starting in the new year, he’ll roll out a voter awareness campaign so people know about the changes by the March 3 statewide primary.

Rather than focus on possible drawbacks, Kelley said, “I really believe the only thing we’re going to have is gains.”