Alameda County voters in California's 14th Congressional District are being asked to vote twice in close succession, with one ballot for Tuesday's statewide primary and another for a special election set for June 16. The unusual setup follows Eric Swalwell's resignation in April, which left officials scrambling to separate the race for a full two-year term from the contest to fill the rest of the current one through January.
That is why Eric Swalwell is drawing attention now: voters in the district are not just deciding one contest, they are navigating two elections on two different timelines. The June 2 primary ballot includes multiple races, and the top two candidates will move on to the November general election for the full term that begins in January. The June 16 special election, by contrast, has just one race on a single 8.5-by-11-inch card.
For Marietta Reagan, the mailings were hard to sort out. She said she got ballots for today and for the 16th and did not know why, a reaction election officials in Alameda County said they expected. The county used targeted messaging and explanatory letters with voter materials to make the ballots and voter guides look different, but some voters still received multiple guides and ballots close together and were left with questions anyway.
Cynthia Cornejo, speaking for the county, said voters had been calling in after getting a special 14th congressional district voter guide and then a June 2 guide for the primary. She said the planning was meant to clearly distinguish the elections and that the timing forced the special election after the primary materials were already out. The county also said voters are taking longer to return ballots, a pattern officials now expect in this kind of overlapping election calendar.
The practical result is that one district is processing two separate decisions at once: a June 2 primary that sets up the November race for the next full term, and a June 16 special election that will decide who serves the remaining months of the current term through January. For voters like Reagan, the question is no longer whether there are enough explanations in the mail. It is which ballot belongs to which race, and whether they return both in time for the deadlines that matter.
