San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
ELECTION’S HIGH TURNOUT POINTS TO MAIL-IN FUTURE
More than 1.6 million voted, a county record, with very few problems
ELECTION 2020
An election like no other ended with a record number of ballots cast in San Diego County.
More than 1.6 million residents voted in the state’s firstever all-mail election, the most in history, a milestone that can’t be attributed solely to growth in California’s second-most populous county.
Between the 2016 presidential election and the just-concluded one, the number of possible voters (all those who would be eligible, not just those who are registered) rose by about 23,000. Votes cast went up by 281,000.
“It’s not that more voters are living here now, because that number hasn’t changed much,” said Michael Vu, the county registrar of voters, who certified the results on Thursday. “It’s that more of them are voting.”
The election came close to another record, too — for voter turnout (the number of registered voters who actually voted). It was 83.5 percent, just off the 83.7 high point set in the 2008 presidential election, when Barack Obama won his first term.
“We missed it by two-tenths,” Vu said, “but even though we didn’t hit 83.7, we still had 380,000 more people vote in this election than voted in 2008.”
And this election beat 2008 in another key metric: participation among all eligible voters. That was 73.5 percent, up from 60.7 percent in 2008.
Why more people voted will be the subject of scholarly study and public discussion in the coming months as California contemplates making permanent the change to all-mail ballots. It was prompted this time by COVID-19 and concerns that large crowds gathering in polling places on Election Day would spread the virus.
Election officials believe much of the increase in turnout was due to the intense interest in the presidential race between incumbent Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and it wasn’t just San Diego County that saw a jump.
In California, with final results still pending, the turnout of registered voters was 80.7 percent — the highest it’s been since 1976 — and the turnout among eligible voters was almost 70 percent, the most since 1960.
Nationwide, the turnout of eligible voters hit 66 percent, the highest since the 1900 election, according to figures compiled by the Washington Post.
But officials think some of the increase, at least in California, was due also to the expanded opportunities afforded by the voting method: Every registered voter received a ballot in the mail weeks before Election Day and could return it through the postal service, at designated drop-off sites, or at voting centers that were open for multiple days up to and including Election Day. Those who needed or preferred to vote in person had that option.
The apparent success of the approach — high turnout, with few problems reported, in the middle of a pandemic — has Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-menlo Park, promising to introduce legislation making the switch permanent. Gov. Gavin Newsom has expressed support.
California voters have been heading in that direction for years — almost three-quarters of them already got their ballots in the mail — so it wouldn’t be that big of a leap for the state to join the handful of others (Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington) that already use the model for everyone.
‘Rampant’ misinformation
Discussions about moving toward an all-mail election will come against a backdrop of increasing partisan divide over the process.
For decades, both Republicans and Democrats supported mail ballots as a way to make voting easier and decrease costs. Now, led by Trump, Republicans are attempting to brand the system as fraudulent, even though there is no evidence of widespread abuse.
Last week, in Georgia, Republican state legislators began exploring ways to add a photo I.D. requirement to mail voting, a move they said would protect electoral integrity. Critics said it would lead to voter suppression in the wake of an election that saw the first Democrat win the race for president there in almost 30 years.
Vu said his office fielded phone calls throughout the election from an electorate awash in misinformation and confusion about mail voting. The number of calls increased after Nov. 3, Election Day, as Trump and some of his supporters made unsubstantiated claims about the contest being “rigged” against him.
“Unfortunately, we have had to respond to election concerns that did not relate to San Diego or were simply falsehoods that have been spread on a national level,” he said.
Calmatters, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site, surveyed 54 of the state’s 58 registrars and found “that misinformation in all forms was rampant” during the election.
“The phones were out of control,” Gregory Diaz, Nevada County’s registrar, told the site. He said his office dealt with misinformation “all the time. Every day.”
But Vu said one message his office sent out seemed to cut through all the noise and anxiety: Vote early. More than 1 million people turned their ballots in before Election Day, a huge uptick from previous years.
“If you look at the EKG of voters over time during an election, it’s pretty flat until the day before the election and then on Election Day, when it spikes,” he said. “This time it was pretty steady all the way through.”
That also meant lowerthan-expected use of the 235 polling places set up for inperson voting around the county.
They were open for four days, from Oct. 31 through Election Day, and officials anticipated that up to 350,000 people might vote that way — traditionalists, last-minute registrants, people swayed by concerns about the validity of mail ballots.
In 2016, about 500,000 county residents voted in person. This time? Fewer than 190,000.
“There is always going to be a place for in-person voting,” Vu said. “But for how long, and at how many locations — those are big questions that will need to be considered moving forward.”
Rejected ballots
Detailed breakdowns of data from the election — turnout by age, ethnicity, political party and so on — aren’t yet available but will be in coming months as officials comb through the final numbers. The cost of the election has to be tallied, too.
One thing sure to be examined, because of the kind of election it was, is how many mail ballots got rejected.
It’s a small but persistent problem. During the March primary, 102,000 ballots statewide got rejected, about 1.5 percent of the total cast. In San Diego County, 6,200 didn’t get counted, about 1 percent of the total. (It’s not known yet how many mail ballots got rejected in November’s election.)
The most common reason for rejection, here and statewide: The ballots arrived too late. By law, they have to be postmarked by Election Day and received at the registrar’s office within a specified time after Election Day (typically three days after, expanded to 17 days for the recent election).
The huge number of ballots returned before Election Day this time suggests that was probably less of an issue, and Vu said he expects there will be fewer rejections overall once all the dust settles.
But there are other potential pitfalls with mail ballots. As the counting went on through November, those showed up in the “still being processed” numbers reported on the registrar’s website.
On Nov. 25, for example, the registrar said there were 5,300 mail ballots still to be counted, which was by far the most reported by any county. Vu said most of those ballots had signature issues waiting to be corrected.
For a mail ballot to be counted, the voter has to sign the return envelope, and the signature has to match the one on file with the registrar. If there is a problem with the signature, state law requires the voter to be contacted and given a chance to “cure” it.
Those corrections had to be made by Dec. 1, two days before the election was certified. Vu said voters were arriving right up until the last minute with the necessary paperwork.
“That allowed us to include them in the count,” Vu said.
He and other officials like to say “every vote counts,” and this election in San Diego County included several races where that was particularly true, with razorthin final margins.
Or no margin at all, as was the case in the contest for seats on the Warner Unified School District governing board in Warner Springs.
Two candidates, Gene Doxey and Terry Cox, tied for the third and final slot with 352 votes each. By law, the winner will be decided by a “drawing of lots,” such as pulling a name out of a hat or bowl. The other board members will determine the method.
“That’s a first for me,” said Vu, who joined the registrar’s office in 2007. “I’ve never certified a tie before.”
San Diego County, 2008-2020
john.wilkens@sduniontribune.com