With 44,000 absentee ballots already cast, for many the election
is over
Gilroy – For more than 44,000 Santa Clara County voters, the election is over. That’s the number of absentee votes already returned to the county Registrar of Voters. If 50 percent of registered voters cast ballots – a high turnout – that means almost 12 percent of votes countywide are already in.
Thirty-five percent of registered voters were mailed absentee ballots this year, according to estimated figures provided by Elma Rosas, the county registrar’s media officer. Of the roughly 262,000 absentee ballots mailed in the county, 206,000 were sent to permanent absentee voters, who are automatically mailed their ballots each election.
“We now have a month-long election day,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “People are busy, and a lot of them have a hard time getting to the polls.”
Margaret Ryan, a Gilroy Senior Center volunteer, said she signed up as a permanent absentee voter three or four years ago. She’s handicapped, and sometimes walking can be painful. Ryan plans to send in her ballot this weekend.
Absentee voting has stretched the timeline for electoral campaigns, once an endgame blitz of advertising and door-to-door pleas. The last few weeks are still crucial, said Mark Zappa, a Republican campaign activist, but “when absentee ballots are first mailed, you have to hit it hard.
“If you don’t,” he cautions, “you’ll be out in the cold.”
That’s what Tom Bundros has learned this year. Bundros, a candidate for Gilroy Unified School Board, said that as when hits the streets, many Gilroy residents tell him they’ve already voted.
“That’s telling me that next time [I run], I need to get the message out earlier,” he said. “It’s not like four years ago … with everybody going to a voting place on a specific day, you organize your campaign to get most of the information out a week, two weeks before voting day. Now, everything should be done earlier. ”
On a longer timetable, campaign tactics may change, too. Some classic gambits have lost their force — like “dropping a bomb on your opponent the weekend before the election, so your opponent doesn’t have time to respond,” said Alexander.
In the past, absentee voting favored Republicans, Zappa said. Before 2002, voters seeking absentee ballots had to provide a specific reason for being away from the polls, such as a medical condition. Many were older voters, and most voted Republican.
But state laws now permit anyone to sign up as a permanent absentee voter, and many counties are encouraging it. The shift is considerable: with the past restrictions, absentee voters made up only 17 percent of the electorate in the March 2000 primary, said Rosas, but in this June’s primary, 44 percent of participants voted absentee.
“It’s attractive to elections officials,” said David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University. “It’s less of a crush on elections day.”
But the shift to absentee voting raises other issues, he added. Dill is the founder of VerifiedVoting.org, a nonprofit that advocates for reliable U.S. elections. His organization has been skeptical of electronic voting machines, especially those that don’t leave a verifiable paper trail, but Dill says that paper ballots, sent by mail, are still cause for concern.
“It’s much harder to make it secure,” Dill explained. “Your husband or wife can look over your shoulder while you’re filling out your ballot.” Then, when the ballot is mailed, “it’s really easy for something to get lost or misappropriated along the way.”
Or, for that matter, not sent at all. Santa Clara County’s ballot is bulky, and requires two stamps to make it to the ballot box, said Rosas. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has expressed concern that some voters will lick only one stamp, and not get their ballot sent in time. Rosas said the registrar is working with the post office to ensure that even under-paid ballots land at the polls in time to be counted.
Others say going to the polls is a treasured civic ritual, and can’t be truly replaced by an absentee ballot.
“I myself really like going to the polls,” Zappa said. “There’s just something about it.”
But with a slew of propositions and races to mull over, some voters are happy to do so at home, rather than at the polls.
“People have the opportunity to sit down and go through the measures one at a time,” said Alexander, “without the pressure of a long line of people behind you, waiting to vote.”
As for Alexander, she’s voting in person.
“For the work that I do, I feel it’s important to experience what other voters experience in the polling place,” she said. Besides, “I like getting my ‘I Voted’ sticker.”
