Close races, long waits will persist
Increased number of vote-by-mail ballots, postmark rules mean fights will drag on
Eight days after Election Day, Santa Clara County has seven races so close that if results stand they’ll qualify for an automatic recount, with four more a bit more spread but still too close to call.
That’s far more than have been seen in previous years, even taking into consideration the biggest-ever ballot: 93 local competitive races and measures were placed before voters this year. And it’s more than in neighboring jurisdictions — even in Alameda County, where just a handful of races out of 110 remain nailbiters. There are a few close ones in Contra Costa and San Mateo counties — one school district there has a race separated by a single vote. But nothing beyond what they usually see, officials said.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, who led the charge for an automatic recount pilot program, called what’s happening in the South
Bay an “anomaly.”
“When we looked at past elections, there were only four in the past three general elections that would have qualified,” he said. “I’d be hard-pressed to tell you why that may be . ... But we do have some this time that are see-sawing every time I look at results.”
In Santa Clara, Police Chief Michael Sellers is barely hanging onto his post — 18 votes out of more than 33,000 counted separate him from challenger Sgt. Pat Nikolai. In San Jose’s City Council District 8, Jimmy Nguyen regained pole position over Sylvia Arenas — he’d lost an early lead as more returns came in shortly after the election — by 75 votes. The Los Altos and Monte Sereno city council races both have divisions that can be counted on two hands’ worth of fingers.
Experts say there’s been a change in the composition of what’s on the ballot and a switch of voter preference from going to the polls to voting by mail, which means that instead of a final tally on election night, there’s more often a prolonged process of verifying stacks of late mail-in ballots and provisional ballots that must be verified by election officials. And that raises the profile of close elections.
Santa Clara County registrar spokesman Philip Chantri said that because “a lot of jurisdictions have switched from off-year elections to general elections,” there are more races now on those general-election ballots, increasing the number of close contests in those elections.
“But the mechanism of vote by mail, how people cast their vote, doesn’t affect whether the race is close or not,” Chantri said.
Results are noticeable. Voters hoping for a quick resolution are often chagrined as champagne remains corked on election night more and more often. Just last June, a recount was called when San Jose Councilman Manh Nguyen lost to challenger Lan Diep by a hair’s breadth — 12 votes — after originally being up 193. And the 2014 San Jose mayor’s race dragged on for a week before Sam Liccardo declared victory over Dave Cortese.
Retired San Jose State University Political Science Professor Terry Christensen recalled a time when the place to be on Election Night was the registrar’s office when the atmosphere was charged and anyone with a dog in a race eagerly awaited the latest tally to be scrawled on a chalkboard.
“Everyone went to the same place,” said Christensen. “Candidates, media, the cafe people stayed there until 2 a.m. or whatever and you’d know the results at the end of the night.”
But today, “once you see what’s revealed at 8:05 you might as well go to bed,” he said, referring to the time that the registrar drops an initial tally of mail-in ballots received before Election Day. Christensen added that his “general rule — that when you see those numbers, that’s going to be the outcome — hasn’t proved true in a lot of cases lately.”
Kim Alexander, founder and president of the California Voter Foundation, called the current election results lag “the new normal,” and one that’s not going to change. This year saw the introduction of a new state law requiring registrars to accept ballots postmarked on election day, meaning more trickle in long after polls close. In Santa Clara County, envelopes were still coming in early this week.
“As we’re moving toward increasing the voter rolls, there’s going to be more to count,” she said. “I think it’s a good problem to have but it can be frustrating to those who want fast results. But the most important thing is that they take the time to get it right and do it in the public eye.”
Santa Clara County leads the state in terms of percentage of mail-in voters, with an estimated 75 percent going that route this year. That rate has been steadily increasing but went up in leaps starting about a decade ago.
Guy Ashley of the Alameda County Registrar of Voter’s Office said they’ve seen the number of absentee voters “go through the roof,” with expected results.
“It does tend to make things drag out longer,” Ashley said. “It used to be that the polls would close and we’d count the ballots and know the results, but now there’s a lot more post-Election Day work for us to do.”
And don’t expect things to get expedited again. Just ask them up in Seattle, where King County election officials are still waiting to finalize a couple of close races despite having switched to an all-mail system in 2009 and modernizing their tally facilities and quadrupling the number of drop-box locations.
“We still have that problem,” said Kendall Hodson, elections chief of staff in King County. “We’re always going to have it with the postmark by Election Day rule.”