[EL] FW: Cal primary turnout; anyone know how the six counties fared that mailed a ballot to every voter?

[Douglas Johnson]

I would agree that PDI’s estimate of 31.5% statewide turnout will be close, though possibly a bit high.

 

To give a sense of why CA counting takes so long, LA County counted 952,000 ballots on election day, and they announced yesterday that they have 499,000 provisional and by-mail ballots left to count (plus whatever mail ballots arrive today but were postmarked on Tuesday – California law says mail ballots postmarked on election day and arriving within 3 days must be counted). Orange County counted about 380,000 ballots on Tuesday and had 195,000 ballots left to count (plus whatever mail ballots arrived Wednesday and Thursday). California won’t even post the statewide report of how many ballots are left to count until later today or Friday at the earliest.

 

This is not a slam on the very hard-working County Registrar staff who are putting in extremely long shifts and hard hours to get everything processed and counted. It’s the result of all the election reforms CA has passed to increase voter participation and CA voters’ decisions to overwhelmingly prefer the slower-to-process by-mail voting and to tend to wait until the last possible moment to send in mail ballots. Most mail ballots received by last Friday or Saturday were counted first on election day – what’s left are last-minute mail ballots and provisional ballots.

 

Side note: I suspect lots of influential Sacramento people are scrambling for their rule books today to see what happens if a State Board of Equalization member is indicted, given Santa Monica Councilmember Tony Vasquez’s apparent “top Democrat” finish <https://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/board-of-equalization/district/3>  in the heavily-Democratic District 3 despite the pending LA County District Attorney investigation <http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-santa-monica-da-review-widens-20180129-story.html>  of him.

 

*	Doug

 

Douglas Johnson, Ph.D.

Fellow, Rose Institute of State and Local Government

at Claremont McKenna College

douglas.johnson at cmc.edu

direct: 310-200-2058

 

 

 

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> On Behalf Of Eric McGhee
Sent: Thursday, June 7, 2018 1:53 PM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: [EL] FW: Cal primary turnout; anyone know how the six counties fared that mailed a ballot to every voter?

 

Accidentally left off the rest of the list from this response.  Forwarding in case the answer is of general interest.

 

From: Eric McGhee 
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2018 1:37 PM
To: 'Richard Winger' <richardwinger at yahoo.com <mailto:richardwinger at yahoo.com> >
Subject: RE: [EL] Cal primary turnout; anyone know how the six counties fared that mailed a ballot to every voter?

 

Hi, Richard:

 

It was 5 counties (Madera, Napa, Nevada, Sacramento, and San Mateo).  See here for all the gory details:  http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voters-choice-act/

 

As for whether turnout increased, Thad Kousser, Mindy Romero and I are going to be looking at that very question.  But it’s too early to offer an answer now, especially for all-VBM county that have more than the usual burden of validating signatures.  And the vote center counties may have a few more conditional (i.e., same-day) registrants than a normal county, since they make it easier to take advantage of that option.  So that will delay counting as well.

 

Cheers,

Eric

 

From: Law-election [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Winger
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2018 10:28 AM
To: Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu <mailto:law-election at uci.edu> >
Subject: [EL] Cal primary turnout; anyone know how the six counties fared that mailed a ballot to every voter?

 

At the California primary two days ago, I believe that six counties mailed a ballot to every registered voter.  That included Sacramento and San Mateo Counties, I believe.  Does anyone know any information about whether turnout was higher for those six counties than for the state as a whole?

 

I saw a news story that says Political Data thinks the statewide primary turnout was 31.5% of registered voters.  Has anyone seen any other figure?  Thank you.

 

Richard Winger 415-922-9779 PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147

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