Absentee Voting a Convenience and a Problem

One of every five California voters is expected to cast an absentee ballot in the Nov. 6 election, potentially a record and continuing a trend that could bring both higher voter turnout and new problems for election officials.

Absentee voting is growing in popularity because it is convenient and comfortable and because the two major political parties and other politically active groups are promoting it vigorously.

But experts warn that there are dangers, including coaching or even coercion of voters, fraud in the handling of applications and ballots and the possibility of double voting.

There also is an increasing prospect that Californians will have to wait days or even weeks to learn the outcome of an important statewide election because of the growing number of late absentee votes--those that arrive in the last three or four days and are not included in the returns reported the day after the election.

Despite these and other problems, absentee voting--or “vote by mail,” as many prefer to call it--generally receives enthusiastic support from election officials and others close to the process.

“Anything to try to stem the decline in voter turnout is a good thing, as I see it,” said Deborah Seiler, chief consultant to the Assembly Elections Committee. “I don’t see wholesale problems with it and many people have come to rely on it who otherwise wouldn’t go to the polls.”

Absentee voting has risen steadily since 1978, when state law was changed to allow anyone to cast an absentee ballot, not just those unable to go to polling places. In last June’s primary, a record 15% of the vote was absentee, and the secretary of state’s office expects about 20% this time.

Both major political parties, and other groups as well, have mounted intensive campaigns to persuade voters to cast their ballots in the comfort of their homes instead of at the polls.

The state Republican Party mailed absentee applications to about 4 million GOP households and followed with a second appeal to “casual voters” on behalf of Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete Wilson, said Marty Wilson, coordinator of the Republican get-out-the vote campaign.

The GOP official said the party has spent between $6 million and $7 million over the last 18 months on absentee voter appeals and voter registration.

With less money to spend, the Democrats are trying to counter with carefully targeted efforts to attract voters who are likely to vote Democratic, if they vote at all, said Larry Tramutola, who is organizing the absentee ballot effort.

For example, party workers are visiting about 2,000 churches in Los Angeles-area black and Latino neighborhoods, urging parishioners to cast absentee ballots.

Others have joined in the frenzied pursuit of absentee votes.

Peter Scranton, of the California Abortion Rights Action League, said his organization hopes to account for 200,000 absentee ballot applications. Scranton said the abortion rights organization is nonpartisan but is supporting Democrats in all of the statewide races.

Others soliciting absentee applications include the AFL-CIO, the Hispanic Caucus in the San Joaquin Valley and various local Lincoln clubs, made up of wealthy Republican contributors, as well as individual candidates in local and statewide races.

Voting officials in Los Angeles County have received more than 300,000 applications for absentee ballots so far, San Diego County more than 200,000, Orange County more than 110,000.

“They’re coming in like crazy,” said Karen Mathews, county clerk-recorder in Stanislaus County, where 55% to 60% of the vote is expected to be absentee.

In addition to heavy solicitation of mail ballots by the political groups and others, the main reasons for the rapid upswing in the absentee voting are its convenience and the long ballots that have become commonplace in California as more and more initiatives are presented for voter approval.

“We have a lot of two-job families and commutes are long,” Marty Wilson said. “I just think ‘vote by mail’ fits in much better with the way a lot of people are living today.”

“It’s a very comfortable way of voting,” said Mark DiCamillo, managing editor of the California Poll. “It allows you to consult outside sources while you’re voting and you don’t have to wait in line or feel pressure to finish fast.”

There are 28 statewide measures on the Nov. 6 ballot, in addition to local measures and races for statewide and local offices.

In San Francisco, a citizen who wants to cast a vote on every measure or candidate will have to make more than 100 punches on the Votomatic card, said Registrar of Voters Germaine Wong.

Officials in several urban areas said many voters, especially older people, feel safer casting their ballots by mail than walking or driving to a polling place.

However, as the absentee vote has grown and efforts to win it have become more sophisticated, abuses have crept into the system. Among them:

* Elderly voters, in places like nursing homes and senior citizen centers, sometimes are pressured by the parties or organizations that solicit the applications to vote a certain way. “There is a harassment and coercion problem that has developed because of these efforts,” said Charles H. Bell Jr., general counsel for the state Republican Party.

* Although state law says absentee ballots may be returned only by voters or by specified close relatives, some counties do not check the identity of these third parties very carefully and it is widely believed that some ballots are returned by unauthorized people.

* Double voting sometimes occurs when a voter casts an absentee ballot, then turns up at the local precinct to vote again. Names of absentee voters are supposed to be forwarded to the precincts by Election Day but occasionally there is a mix-up.

An investigation by the secretary of state’s office found that a handful of Stanislaus County citizens voted twice in the Sal Cannella-Richard Lang special state Assembly election but concluded that these were confused elderly voters and that their votes would not have affected the outcome.

Although voting officials hope the record jump in mail balloting will lead to higher voter turnout, so far that has not happened.

“It seems to be just the confirmed voter who is using that option,” said Mervin Field, director of the California Poll.

Even before the 1978 legislation made absentee voting easier, absentee ballots sometimes had decided California elections.

In the 1960 presidential race, John F. Kennedy won California at the polls by more than 20,000 votes but lost in the absentee count by more than 52,000, thereby losing the state to Richard M. Nixon.

Since the law was changed, mail ballots have become increasingly important.

In the 1982 governor race, the Republicans caught the Democrats napping by mailing absentee ballot applications to every GOP household in the state. The result: Democrat Tom Bradley won at the polls by almost 20,000 votes, but his lead was wiped out by George Deukmejian’s 113,000-vote advantage among the absentees.

A Los Angeles Times Poll survey of registered voters last week found that nearly 25% were expecting to cast absentee ballots in November. These people represented a cross-section of the California electorate, although they tended to be slightly more Republican than voters planning to go to the polls. In the gubernatorial race, the survey results thus gave a slight advantage to Republican Pete Wilson over Democrat Dianne Feinstein among absentee voters.

A study of the 1988 general election conducted by DiCamillo of the California Poll also found that absentee voters at that time were older, wealthier and more conservative than those who went to the polls.

“That vote is intrinsically Republican,” said George Gorton, campaign manager for Pete Wilson. “It could conceivably make the difference in this election.”

After the Bradley defeat in 1982, Democrats began to pay more attention to absentee voters, particularly in special elections.

When Cannella defeated Republican Lang, in a state Assembly race in the Modesto area early this year, the absentee vote was more than 50%. It exceeded 40% in Gary Condit’s victory over Republican Clair Berryhill in a special election for a San Joaquin Valley congressional seat last year.

Both parties have developed absentee voter campaigns.

They produce “voter files” by studying past voting records, then concentrate their efforts on those who have registered in one party or the other but seldom have bothered to vote.

Absentee ballot applications are mailed to these voters, bar coded for ease of tabulation when they are returned.

Although the secretary of state’s office disapproves, applications may be mailed back to the political parties or others who solicit them, but state law requires that the applications be forwarded to county voting officials within 36 hours.

Party workers follow up by phoning potential voters, or sometimes going door to door, to make sure they have applied for mail ballots.

As for possible fraud, Sacramento County Registrar of Voters Ernest R. Hawkins worries about the potential for a body of “ghost voters” that could be created by combining postcard registration, which is allowed in California, with absentee voting.

Officials routinely verify the authenticity of mail ballots by checking the signatures on the ballots with those on voter registration forms.

Hawkins pointed out that if the registration signature is false to begin with, then the verification system will not catch the discrepancy.

“The process is relatively simple and you’ve done all of it without seeing a living person,” he said. “What would prevent you from doing that for people who don’t exist?”

Other county clerks and voting registrars said such a scheme would involve so many people that somebody would discover the fraud.

But Bell, the Republican Party general counsel, said: “I’ve been concerned for a long time about the possible creation of wholesale numbers of non-existent voters.

“In a small election, if you were willing to risk jail, you could probably get away with it,” he added.

Late absentee votes present an additional problem.

In most counties, officials begin to open absentee ballots and prepare to run them through the vote-counting machinery five days before the election. When the polls close, these votes generally are the first counted and reported.

But the counting of absentee ballots usually stops at about noon on Election Day, when election workers are busy with other tasks. Substantial numbers of absentee ballots, including many that are brought to the polls on Election Day, are not counted until well after the election is over.

Of the 1.4 million absentee votes cast in the 1988 presidential race in California, more than 554,000, or 39%, were these “late absentees,” DiCamillo’s 1989 survey found. Those votes were not reported until the final canvass was completed 30 days later.

When newspapers and radio and television stations report, as they generally do, that “with 100% of the precincts counted,” Candidate A leads Candidate B by so many votes, that is true but incomplete. What is not known is how many uncounted late absentee votes have been cast for A and B.

“It’s inevitable that we’ll have a statewide election that comes down to those late absentee votes,” said registrar Hawkins of Sacramento County.

Absentee voting also is more expensive. Hawkins estimated that each mail ballot costs about $10 to process, against $2 for a vote cast at the polls.

In the Votomatic system used by Los Angeles County, and other punch card systems, absentee voters in their homes are provided with wire devices to hand-punch the ballot. But many voters use knitting needles, ice picks or staplers to mark their choices, sometimes mangling the ballots so they cannot be tabulated by computerized vote-counting equipment.

So many Monterey County absentee ballots were spoiled in the June primary that Registrar of Voters Bradley J. Clark wrote letters to local newspapers, pleading with voters to follow the instructions more carefully.

Despite these flaws, absentee voting is likely to remain a permanent part of California voting patterns because it is seen as a way to counteract the state’s declining voter turnout.

“Some people think that if you make voting easier, you increase the possibilities of fraud,” said Field of the California Poll, “but given the degree of disengagement by the voter that we have today, the prospect of fraud is quite unimportant compared with the possibility of getting a better turnout.”