Election interest — or lack of it
Despite the continuous and sometimes bitter campaigning of candidates for office over the last weeks and months, voters in Imperial Valley thus far have not been exceptionally motivated to cast their ballots, according to one report.
Political Data reported that, as of Tuesday, 15 percent of the voters registered to participate in the elections had cast their vote.
According to the report, of the 81,650 local ballots mailed by order of the state government, 12,793 have been returned.
The report says registered Democrats and Republicans have made the biggest showing, with 18 percent and 15 percent of their ballots returned, respectively. Independents and those registered with other political parties have barely returned 12 percent of their ballots, equivalent to about 3,153 ballots.
Due to COVID-19, California’s electoral laws were modified in order to send ballots by mail to each voter, in order to avoid crowds at the polls on Election Day.
The report adds identifies voters between the ages of 50 and 64 as being the bracket with the highest percentage turnout thus far, at 18 percent. By contrast, 9 percent of voters 34 and younger and 11 percent of voters from 35 to 49 are accounted for at the ballot box. Those two groups account for 4,500 ballots returned to date.
The report states 20 percent of African American voters have already voted. White (19 percent) and Asian American (20 percent) voters have participated at similar rates.
Meanwhile, Hispanics, who are the largest voting bloc in the Valley, have accounted for barely 14 percent of their more than 64,000 voters so far.
In case you were wondering, these numbers are not in line with those for the state, where 34 percent of voters have already participated, with a total of 7.4 million ballots cast out of the 21.8 million sent to voters.
According to the report, 40 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans have already cast their vote statewide, as have 27 percent of independents.
As in the Imperial Valley, older voters have voted the most ( 53 percent), followed by voters ages 50 to 64 ( 36 percent).
Of the 12.6 million white voters in the state, 38 percent have already cast their ballots, as have 37 percent of the close to 950,00 Asian voters, 29 percent of African Americans and 24 percent of Hispanics.
Even though Latinos are the voting bloc that has been consistently growing in recent years, Hispanic voter turnout has not been increasing at the same pace, either locally and statewide, leaving ( unfortunately) that decision to other voters.