Deluge of Absentee Ballots Could Delay Tally

Worried about the prospect of long lines at the polls next week, nearly 256,000 San Diego County voters--one-fifth of all registered voters--have requested absentee ballots, a deluge that has altered campaign strategies and could delay some election results for several days.

Attributing the heavy demand for absentee ballots to the length and complexity of this year’s local ballot, county election officials view the 256,000 requests received by Tuesday’s deadline--more than 2 1/2 times the previous record--with a mixture of satisfaction and trepidation.

‘Voter Gridlock’ Possible

Although pleased that so many people heeded their call to vote absentee in order to avoid “voter gridlock” at the polls, election officials were also alarmed Tuesday that fewer than one-third of the absentee ballots had been returned.

Registrar of Voters Conny McCormack said ballots not mailed by Friday probably will not arrive at the registrar’s Kearny Mesa office in time to be counted by Tuesday, creating an unpleasant situation for election officials and candidates alike. With the absentee count not scheduled to resume until Thursday, the outcome in some close races conceivably may not be known until two days after the polls close.

“We’re calling it ‘Son of Election’ or ‘Election II,’ ” McCormack said, referring to her staff’s plans to count late-arriving absentee ballots later in Election Week.

Besides having the potential for prolonging traditional Election Night suspense, the unexpected number of absentee requests also dramatically changed the dynamics of this fall’s campaigns. Hoping to capitalize on the phenomenon, a number of candidates and advocates of ballot propositions acknowledge that they tailored their strategies specifically to reach absentee voters.

Usually, candidates’ mailers and TV and radio ads peak in the closing days of a campaign. However, with the 256,000 absentee requests this year, candidates and campaign consultants realized that eleventh-hour appeals might not reach tens of thousands of local voters until after they had cast their ballots.

As a result, some campaigns kept close tabs on absentee applications, often sending mailers touting their positions to people who asked for absentee ballots within days of their requests.

“For our strategy, we basically were forced to run two campaigns--an October and a November campaign,” said Sara Katz, the consultant to the Coalition for a Balanced Environment, a group working for passage of Propositions B and H, growth-control measures sponsored by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and San Diego City Council, respectively.

Absentee Voters Targeted

“The reality is that anything done in the last couple weeks (before the election) might be too late to reach a lot of absentee voters,” Katz added. “You can’t afford to miss 90,000 or 100,000 voters. We wanted to make sure they had something in their hands from us before they voted.”

A similar strategy was employed by San Diegans for Regional Traffic Solutions, a building industry organization that hopes to defeat Propositions B and H, as well as two stricter slow-growth initiatives proposed by a citizens’ group, Propositions D and J.

“If you’re a campaign that’s only hitting late, the absentees won’t hear your message because they’ll already have voted,” said Jean Andrews, the builders’ campaign consultant.

Some candidates, at least those with the funds necessary to target mailers to absentee voters, followed the same game plan.

For example, John Wainio, the campaign manager of Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego), explained that the Bates campaign sent special letters to all 44th Congressional District voters who requested absentee ballots. Republican Carol Bentley did the same in her 77th Assembly District race.

As of Tuesday, only about 80,000 completed absentee ballots had been returned to the registrar’s office, McCormack said. With more than 170,000 other absentee ballots still in local voters’ hands--about 80% of which are expected to be returned, based on past patterns--election officials are concerned that those ballots could cause the outcome in close races to remain unknown until late next week.

Signatures Are Compared

To guard against fraud, election officials verify signatures on absentee ballots by manually comparing them to voter registration records that are stored on microfiche. More than 100 election workers have been assigned to check the absentee ballots, but the process is tedious and time-consuming. For that reason, absentee ballots postmarked after Friday probably will not be counted by Tuesday night, McCormack said.

By law, the registrar’s office has 21 days from Election Day to count absentee ballots, which must be actually received by the registrar--not simply postmarked--by Tuesday to be counted. To ensure that their vote is not invalidated by arriving after Election Day, absentee voters who do not mail their ballots by Friday should personally drop them off at the registrar’s office or at any county polling place Tuesday, McCormack said.

If an unusually large number of absentee ballots are not delivered until Monday or Tuesday, the count may not even be completed by Thursday, McCormack said. However, should that occur, she hopes to have enough of the ballots counted “so that we can be confident of the result” in even the closest races by Thursday.

Early Mailings Urged

Hoping to preclude what would be tantamount to a 48-hour Election Night, McCormack has mounted a high-profile public relations campaign to persuade absentee voters to return their ballots by Friday.

“We don’t want races to be undecided for several days, and the candidates certainly don’t want that,” McCormack said. “If people just get those absentee ballots in this week, we can avoid that.”

The county’s previous record for absentee ballot requests was 93,000 in the November, 1984, presidential race.

With dozens of complex local and state propositions appearing on this year’s ballot beside an equally large number of candidate races, McCormack and her staff began encouraging voters months ago to vote absentee. By voting absentee, they said, voters not only could avoid Election Day delays but could spend more time pondering their choices and marking their ballots.

That message succeeded far beyond even McCormack’s optimistic projections. She had hoped to attract 140,000 absentee voters, a number that her staff “thought I was crazy to suggest,” she recalled Tuesday.

The final figure was nearly double that, and is expected to increase slightly by Election Day because so-called “emergency” absentee ballots--those necessitated by personal emergencies or other last-minute conflicts that prevent the person from voting Tuesday--are available through Monday. Normal absentee ballots require no such explanation.

McCormack’s success can be measured by matching the San Diego County figures against those for Orange County, which has about the same number of registered voters. Although 20.3% of San Diego County’s 1.26 million registered voters sought absentee ballots, only about 90,000, or 8%, of Orange County’s 1.2 million voters did so.

“Everyone on the staff is just astounded,” McCormack said. “Of course, it did increase the workload for everyone. Now, everybody on the staff thinks I should go into marketing--as long as it’s not dealing with absentee voting.”