LARGE NUMBERS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS DELAY ELECTION DAY CLOSURE
Election Day has come and gone. Election Month is just starting.
Because so many people in San Diego County (and throughout the state) now use mail ballots, and because so many of those were cast at the last minute, final results won’t be known for a while. On Wednesday afternoon, an estimated 350,000 ballots had not been counted here, and that number could go up if voters mailed their ballots Tuesday instead of taking them to a polling place.
Those postmarked by Tuesday that arrive at the Registrar of Voters office by Friday will also be counted.
“All that extends the life of the election,” said Michael Vu, the registrar.
On Wednesday, his office listed the turnout for the election at 28 percent. After all the projected remaining ballots are counted, turnout could jump to 47 percent or higher, he said, close to what happened in the 2016 presidential primary, when about 51 percent voted.
That’s why the election results are listed as “unofficial.”
It didn’t always take this long. Mail voting used to be a rarity. “Absentee ballots” were available only to those unable to vote in person on Election Day. But the rules have changed, and the numbers have exploded: From 212,000 permanent mail voters in the county in 2004 to 1.3 million now, a sixfold increase, according to Vu. More than 70 percent of the voters here got mail ballots for this election.
They got them 29 days before Election Day, and in an orderly world most would have been returned before Tuesday. Instead, people held on to them longer this year, especially Democrats (and independents who signed up for a Democratic ballot). Many were undecided about their presidential choice in a crowded and evolving field of candidates.
At the end of last week, only about 20 percent of the mail ballots had been returned.
By Election Day, that had increased to 25 percent, but that still left more than 1 million ballots out there. Vu said Wednesday that about 44 percent of the mail ballots were in, which means a lot were hand-delivered to polling places on Tuesday. More are expected to arrive in the next two days.
Mail ballots take longer to count. Election officials must confirm each voter’s registration status, verify each voter’s signature on the vote-by-mail envelope, and ensure each person did not vote elsewhere in the same election, according to the California Secretary of State’s office.
It’s unclear what, if any, impact the ongoing tabulations will have on the final outcomes this year. In the 2018 midterm elections — when about 43 percent of all county ballots were tallied post-election Day — several local races flipped. Escondido Mayor Sam Abed was overtaken in his re-election bid by Paul Mcnamara. East County state Sen. Joel Anderson saw his fortunes reversed by Mike Schaefer, a former San Diego City Council member, in the battle for a seat on the state Board of Equalization.
State law requires counties to report their final results by April 3 to the Secretary of State’s office, which has until April 10 to certify them.
john.wilkens@sduniontribune.com
Results by vote total and percentage of votes. 100% of precincts partially reporting as of Wednesday night.