A massive wave of mail ballots is flooding into election offices across the state, foreshadowing what could be a huge California turnout for next week’s election.
As of Wednesday, nearly 8 million of the state’s voters, or 36% of all those registered, had already returned their ballots, with some of the biggest return days still ahead. Nationally, nearly 75 million ballots have been turned in, well over half the 136 million total votes cast in the 2016 election.
“It’s staggering how many ballots we’ve received,” said Lynda Roberts, Marin County’s registrar. “Just removing all those ballots from the envelopes takes time.”
More than 57% of the county’s 175,220 registered voters have already cast their ballots. In San Francisco, it’s 48%.
It’s a similar situation in Alameda County, where 46% of the nearly 1 million ballots sent out are already back.
“This is incredible,” said Tim Dupuis, the county registrar. “We’ve been getting 30,000 to 35,000 ballots every day.”
The county has a steady stream of cars using the drive-through ballot drop-off service at the Fallon Street election center in Oakland, as well as people lining up on the street outside, waiting to vote in person.
That early voting number is only going to grow when the county opens its 100 vote centers on Saturday, Dupuis said.
“Our hope is that people will take advantage of them and not wait until election day to vote,” he said.
Efforts to beat back the spread of the coronavirus pandemic are part of the reason for the boost in mail voting. In an attempt to keep people from having to jam into crowded polling places, every active California voter received a ballot in the mail under a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in June.
But the partisan battle over the safety and security of mail ballots, as well as concerns over whether the U.S. Postal Service would be able to get those ballots to election offices in time for them to be counted, also contributed to the rise in early voting, said Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., which provides voting and election information to campaigns and other groups.
“Right now, it’s not only early turnout, but rapid turnout,” he said. “A lot more people are casting their ballots early because they want to be sure they’re counted.”
Now Playing:
In San Francisco, about 25% of the mail ballots are usually turned in at the polls on election day, with other counties seeing similar numbers. That could change this year.
“A lot of people who may have waited in the past likely have changed their minds after hearing on television or elsewhere about possible problems,” Mitchell said.
That’s not just happening in California. In Washington state, which has conducted all its elections by mail since 2011, 2 million ballots had already been returned by late last week. That compares to 763,934 at the same time in 2016, University of Florida Professor Michael McDonald said on his U.S. Elections Project site.
The speed of the Postal Service shouldn’t be a concern in California. Unlike many states where mail ballots have to be received by election day, this year county registrars will tally ballots that arrive by Nov. 20 as long as they are postmarked by election day, Nov. 3.
The question, though, is whether all those early ballots come from new voters or from people who would vote anyway, but are sending their mail ballots back more quickly.
A huge percentage of the ballots that were returned earliest “came from seniors, homeowners and other really, really likely voters,” Mitchell said. “Since then, though, we’ve started to see more young voters and Latino voters, with the trend swinging toward the less likely voters.”
In California, Mitchell’s company found that 42% of Democrats returned their ballots by Tuesday, compared with 32% of Republicans and 29% of independents. Among those 65 and older, 55% have voted early, against 24% of those ages 18-34.
About 40% of white voters have returned their ballots, along with 40% of Asian Americans, 31% of Black voters and 26% of Latinos. A September study by the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California found that while white people make up 41% of the state’s adults, they are 55% of the likely voters. By contrast, Latinos are 35% of the adult population, but only 21% of those most likely to cast ballots.
The number of Republicans who have already voted is surprisingly low, Mitchell said, and President Trump’s attack on mail balloting is probably a reason.
For months, Trump has been saying, without evidence, that mail voting is rigged in favor of the Democrats and that the California vote will be a disaster.
“There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” the president tweeted in May.
Republicans seem to have taken him at his word, since their slice of the early voting is smaller than would be expected, Mitchell said.
“The president has been telling Republicans to vote on election day,” he said. “That could be setting them up for a rude awakening when they show up to find long lines to vote, something we’ve almost never seen in California.”
While San Francisco is keeping all 588 of its neighborhood polling places open, most other counties have slashed the number of places to vote. In Alameda County, the 800 or so polling places for a traditional election will become 100 vote centers, each open to voters from anywhere in the county. Marin County’s 89 local polling places have been consolidated into 29.
Those in-person ballots are likely to be only a small percentage of the total vote, which could make for quicker results in California, Mitchell said.
The ballot totals released as soon as the polls close Tuesday could make up as much as 70% of the vote, he said, which would be bad news for any candidate or ballot measure that’s losing big early.
Despite its huge number of mail ballots, California is in better shape than many states with less early-voting experience. While this is the first time the state has sent ballots to every active voter, about 75% of the votes in the March primary were cast by mail.
“This is what our voters want to do,” said Dupuis of Alameda County, where more than 82% of those registered already had signed up to get their ballots by mail before the pandemic.
While total turnout is unlikely to approach the state’s record of 88% in the 1960 and 1964 presidential elections, it’s virtually guaranteed to set a landmark of its own, said Mitchell of Political Data.
“I’m confident we’ll have the largest number of voters we have ever seen in a California election,” he said. “Even if we match the 75% turnout in the 2016 election, we now have 1 million more registered voters.”
John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth
U.S. - Latest - Google News
October 29, 2020 at 06:21AM
https://ift.tt/2Ji9JSI
Bay Area’s early votes are pouring in: ‘It’s staggering how many ballots we’ve received’ - San Francisco Chronicle
U.S. - Latest - Google News
https://ift.tt/2ShjtvN
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Bay Area’s early votes are pouring in: ‘It’s staggering how many ballots we’ve received’ - San Francisco Chronicle"
Post a Comment