Record Turnout Forecast Along With Delays in Naming Winners

Ventura County election officials on Friday predicted a record voter turnout in Tuesday’s election, but cautioned that determining a winner in some close races could be delayed for days as clerks dig out from under an avalanche of late-arriving absentee ballots.

County Clerk Richard D. Dean predicted it will take his election staff until Friday to count an anticipated 25,000 absentee ballots that are expected to be turned in at the polls Tuesday or arrive at the last minute by mail.

“I wouldn’t call any tight races on election night with this many absentees,” Dean said. “They could make a difference in a tight race.”

Dean projects that 282,989 voters will cast ballots in Tuesday’s election, a record number driven up by the county’s population growth.

The number of Ventura County’s registered voters has also swelled to a high of 382,417, in part due to a new federal law that nudges all citizens renewing their driver’s licenses to join the voter rolls.

The result is a larger group of infrequent voters who don’t bother to exercise their franchise, Dean said.

So even though officials forecast a record number of voters, the percentage of registered voters who actually cast ballots is expected to fall to 74%, continuing a three-decade downward spiral.

Nevertheless, the predicted turnout is dramatically higher than that of the March primary. Only 44% of registered voters bothered to cast ballots on March 26.

Presidential contests traditionally draw the biggest turnout because most Americans hold strong opinions about their nation’s leader. Four years ago, Bill Clinton won this conservative county by a 2% margin over then-President George Bush, with Ross Perot claiming a whopping 27% of the vote.

Perot’s popularity has dropped dramatically, and local leaders of the major parties are eagerly waiting to see who emerges on top in Ventura County.

“Bob Dole, of course, is going to win,” said Karen Kurta, the county’s Republican chairwoman. She notes that the county has 12,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats.

“A large percentage of Republicans are going to defect,” said county Democratic Chairman Robert L. Gallaway. “The president will have the highest percentage.”

No matter who wins, the extra voters drawn by the presidential race could slow down Tuesday night’s count, particularly if many people postpone voting until just before the polls close at 8 p.m., said county elections chief Bruce Bradley.

“It takes a little longer to close the polls when more people have voted,” he said.

But the biggest challenge remains the trend toward voting by absentee ballot. With each election, more voters prefer to punch their ballots at their convenience at home rather than travel to the polls on election day.

Elections officials have issued a record 75,000 absentee ballots and predict 64,250 of them will come back. That would set another record in sheer numbers, representing about one in five participating voters.

A team of workers has been processing these ballots for weeks. It’s a time-consuming and labor-intensive procedure that involves weeding out ballots with missing information, sorting them by precinct, checking voters’ signatures to prevent fraud and inspecting ballot cards for tape, tears or other problems that would jam the computer.

So far, the workers have kept pace with incoming mail, Bradley said.

If past elections are any guide, he expects his office to be swamped with 14,000 ballots arriving by mail on Monday and Tuesday and another 12,000 turned in at the polls on election day.

“It will take awhile to recover from that many,” Bradley said. “We are shooting for Friday to count them, and that’s working all day Friday to finish them.”