A stack of vote-by-mail ballots | Getty Images Some California voters receive ballots days before Iowa presidential kickoff

SACRAMENTO — Days before Iowa voters are set to caucus in what’s traditionally billed as the first 2020 presidential contest, some voters in California have already started receiving their Super Tuesday ballots.

More than 180,000 ballots have already gone out in Solano County, which has 240,000 registered voters, the county registrar's office confirmed. Assistant Registrar John Gardner said Tuesday that the office began mailing ballots last Wednesday and voters started getting them on Saturday.


The San Francisco Department of Elections confirmed that it will start mailing some ballots Saturday, meaning that voters could start casting ballots Monday, the same day as the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses.

A spokesperson for the California secretary of state's office says the early mailings are permitted under state law, which requires counties to send ballots no later than 29 days before an election. Counties have already transmitted ballots to military and overseas voters, the secretary of state's office said.

"We’re hearing a few other counties might be getting ballots out on Saturday," said Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., who tracks polling data in California. He explained that some registrars are thinking that “ballots don’t do anybody any good just sitting in the registrar’s office.”

Mitchell said the early mailings aren’t expected to deliver “any big surprises” to the registrars, and it appears most — such as Santa Cruz County — will stick to mailing the ballots on Feb. 3, one month before the March 3 Super Tuesday primary.

A University of California, Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll released Tuesday found that Bernie Sanders has a clear lead in California with support from 26 percent of likely primary voters. Elizabeth Warren is in second with 20 percent, while Joe Biden has 15 percent. Mike Bloomberg, who has blanketed the state with ads for weeks, has 6 percent, just behind Pete Buttigieg's 7 percent. The poll taken Jan. 15-21 has a 2.5 percent margin of error.

The secretary of state’s office said as of October, there were 20.3 million registered voters in California eligible to cast ballots in the primary.