Your Ballot Is in Your Hands

Today your ballot arrives.

Not tomorrow. Not next week. Today. It will come in an envelope that looks easy to set aside. Easy to leave on the counter while you take care of everything else life is asking of you right now. I am asking you not to set it aside. I am asking you to open it, read it, and use it. This one is different from what you may be used to, and what you do with it in the next few weeks genuinely matters.

Let me explain how this primary actually works.

California uses a Top-Two Primary system. That means every candidate running for this seat, regardless of party, appears on the same ballot. Republican, Democrat, Independent, all of us together on one page. Every registered voter receives this ballot and can vote for any candidate they choose, regardless of their own party registration. The two candidates who receive the most votes on June 2nd advance to November. That is it. Party label does not determine who moves forward. Votes do.

This matters more than it might seem. In a district where neither major party has fully served the people who live here, the Top-Two system creates a genuine opening for something different. It means a registered Republican can vote for me without leaving their party. It means a Democrat who is frustrated with the options can vote their conscience. It means an Independent like Jason, who has spent his whole voting life feeling like he has no real choice, finally does. The rule is simple: vote for who you actually believe in. The math takes care of the rest.

The hard reality.

This district has been held by career politicians who have been in Washington longer than some of your children have been alive. The money flowing into this race from party machines and special interest PACs is real and it is significant. I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I have that they do not is this: I am the only candidate in this race whose first obligation is to you. Not to a party apparatus. Not to a donor who wrote a check expecting something in return. Not to a national agenda that has nothing to do with the cost of groceries here at home. I am the only candidate in this race not taking money from AIPAC or corporate PACs. No foreign policy lobby. No corporate interest. No check written with strings attached. What you see is what you get.

I have spent months on this trail listening. The young husband who told me no politician had ever talked to him, not at him. The woman who left her party because she no longer recognized what it had become. The veteran whose home was sold out from under him. The teacher carrying an entire community on her shoulders every single morning. The small business owner watching tariffs eat his margins. Karen, running the numbers on her family’s health insurance and wondering what she is doing wrong. I have sat with all of them. I have heard them. That is not a talking point. That is why I am running.

Here is what I need from you right now.

Fill out your ballot. Sign the envelope. Return it. You can drop it in the mail, take it to any official drop box, or bring it to a vote center on or before June 2nd. If you vote by mail you can track your ballot at California’s official ballot tracker to confirm it was received. Do not assume someone else will carry this. In a primary election, turnout is everything. Low turnout means the loudest, most partisan voices decide who represents everyone. Your vote does not cancel someone else out. It adds your voice to what this community decides it deserves.

If you have already decided you are not going to vote because you do not believe it changes anything, I understand that feeling more than you might expect. I have met enough people at enough doors to know that cynicism about this process is not laziness. It is the earned result of watching the same promises get made and broken by the same system for decades. I am not here to tell you that one vote fixes all of that. I am here to tell you that staying home guarantees it stays exactly the same. The only way anything changes is if the people who want change show up.

This is the moment. Right now. Ballot in hand.

I came to this country with nothing. A refugee who did not speak the language, who sat in a public school classroom and dared to believe the promise this country makes. The promise that here, your voice counts. That here, the kid nobody expected anything from can stand up and ask to serve. That here, the 80 percent of people exhausted by the fighting and the rhetoric and the broken promises can send someone to Washington who actually works for them.

I am asking for the chance to be that person for you. Not because I have all the answers. I will ask the right questions. I will listen. I will show up and take courageous action- and most importantly—--I will never forget who sent me there or why.

Your ballot is in your hands. The decision is too. Vote for Change. Vote Independent.

Primary: June 2, 2026. Vote by mail deadline: June 2nd postmarked. Drop box and vote center: through June 2nd.

With gratitude and determination --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40