Voters slow to send back language preference choice for sample
ballot
Gilroy – Political candidates have a favor to ask of voters who’ve received a postcard from the county registrar: send it back.
Earlier this summer, Santa Clara County Registrar Jesse Durazo mailed about 670,000 postcards asking voters to select the language they prefer on sample ballots and other election material. The idea was to eliminate bilingual ballots and save the county $300,000 or more a year in reduced printing and shipping costs, and then pass those savings on to candidates, who must spend as much as $4,000 to have their statements printed on a ballot.
But so far, only 200,000 – fewer than a third – of the postcards have been returned.
“They’re coming in very slowly,” Durazo said. “Hopefully they’ll increase in intensity because it’s very critical to get this information. We need the voters to tell us their preference.”
When voters register, they are asked to state a preference. Voters who don’t choose a language receive material in English that’s also translated into Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Tagalog, under federal election law.
Durazo has said that printing statements in five languages has fueled the rapidly escalating fees candidates must pay for their statements on the sample ballots. This year’s tab for Gilroy City Council candidates is $1,538. In 2001, it was $371.
The city writes the check, but earlier this month incumbent Councilman Bob Dillon said he would forego his statement to save city taxpayers the burden of $475 for handling, $350 for typesetting and $313 for printing. Friday, Dillon said the current system protects incumbents, who have an easier time raising money than first-time candidates.
“It’s always harder for a challenger to raise funds,” Dillon said. “If you’re an incumbent, you’re a proven equation. It is fairly routine to have money left over at the end of a race, perhaps they should reimburse the city.”
While Gilroy and the county pay for some ballot statements, many special district candidates are on their own. This year, the civil grand jury said the high cost of running for office prevents many people from running for school board positions. The report concluded that the statement fees, which ranged from $1,100 to $4,000, were a strong deterrent to running for office. Of the 74 candidates the grand jury interviewed, only eight said the fee was inconsequential. Eighty-one percent of the candidates called the fees an extreme or above average hardship. The report also said that two-thirds of voters draw negative conclusions about candidates who do not have candidate statements.
“It’s an issue,” said Edwin Diaz, superintendent of the Gilroy Unified School District. “Especially for getting parents and other community members involved. I think it creates an obstacle for some folks. We are a not in a position as a district to pick up the increased costs.”
In addition to printing and handling costs, fees have gone up in recent years because of a 2002 county policy requiring the registrar to recoup all costs associated with elections. The grand jury recommended that the policy be changed in the case of school board election, but supervisors balked.
“We have to recoup the costs or it’s going to come out of the general fund,” Supervisor Don Gage said this week, noting that candidate statements are just one cost of running a campaign. “We don’t have the dollars to pay for everyone’s statement. If you want to be a candidate and can’t raise the funds then probably you shouldn’t run for office.”
Countywide candidates and supervisors do not have to pay for their statements, but they do have to pay a filing fee equal to one percent of their salary. Gage earns about $110,000.
Alex Kennett, who has run two successful campaigns to sit on the board of directors for the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority, said he spent about $2,500 on his most recent statement.
“It’s become a new source of income for the county. Call it a user tax,” Kennett said. “Should they give up their source of income or should people who want to use it pay for it?”
Kennett said the high fees do have one benefit – they keep less serious candidates off the ballot.
“It keeps a lot of the gadfly candidates off the ballot. The ones that get on just to muck things up,” he said. “They know they’re not going to win. They don’t have a position. They just want to see their name in the paper.”
