Typically Low Voter Turnout Forecast for Early Primary

Only about 43% of Ventura County voters are expected to cast ballots in Tuesday’s election, despite the importance of California’s early primary in deciding presidential nominees for both major parties.

Elections chief Bruce Bradley said Thursday that he expects a typically low primary turnout with only about 158,000 of 367,096 registered voters taking part.

That bleak projection contrasts sharply with that of Secretary of State Bill Jones, who predicted that 52% of California voters would go to the polls, the highest for a presidential primary in 16 years.

Jones said the state’s first open presidential primary will draw far more voters than usual, and he cited high turnouts in other states because of this year’s engaging presidential races. In particular, Republican Sen. John McCain is drawing interest from usually apathetic voters.

But Bradley said he had heard it all before.

Reform candidates and hot-button propositions, such as the anti-gay-marriage Proposition 22 on Tuesday’s ballot, haven’t made much difference in Ventura County, he said.

“The man’s optimistic,” Bradley said of the secretary of state. “A lot of election officials try to be optimistic. They think it encourages turnout. I try to fall in the middle.”

Historically, Ventura County’s primary turnout has been lower than the state’s overall, but the divide has not been as large as this year’s projections would indicate.

Bradley said he always bases projections on the number of absentee ballots requested before elections. This year’s total of 61,395 falls well short of the 66,177 taken out before the 1996 presidential primary, when turnout was just 43.7%.

“All I’ve got to go by is the absentees,” Bradley said. “[Jones] figures we’ll be up this time because we’re so early. But I don’t think John McCain is going to bring those nonvoters to the polls in California, especially since your nonaffiliated and Democratic votes don’t count for him here.”

Despite California’s new open primary system, only the votes of Republicans will be counted to decide who wins the party’s presidential delegates in this state. The same is true for Democrats. That is because the Legislature bowed to party wishes last year and agreed to count presidential votes by party. A separate overall tally will be kept, but it is not binding on the parties.

However, all state legislative races are truly open, which means that voters can cross over to select candidates outside their parties, and independents can vote for any candidate.

Jones said he expects California’s turnout to jump this time not only because the shift from a June to March primary makes the vote more important, but because its openness will draw 2 million voters who decline to register with any party. In Ventura County, there are about 55,000 independents, or 15% of all voters.

Jones noted that in the 1998 gubernatorial primary, the first held as an open primary, the turnout was up sharply, about 6% statewide.

Bradley said the change was more modest in Ventura County, up from 33.6% in June 1994 to 38% in June 1998.

“They attribute that to the open primary, but it’s still below 40%,” Bradley said. “And I just think that there is a hard core of people who come out in the primary here. And that core doesn’t seem to change based on any particular issue or candidate.”

He said other county and state officials predicted big turnouts in previous years when high-profile ballot measures sought to deny health and welfare benefits to illegal immigrants, require classroom instruction in English and eliminate the use of affirmative action criteria in admitting students to state universities.

Now the Proposition 22 campaign to make marriage legal only between men and women has caught the public’s attention, he said.

“But a sign on your lawn doesn’t mean you will take the time on election day to go vote,” Bradley said. “I hope I’m surprised, but after 20 years and a lot of propositions under my belt, I don’t think I will be.”

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County Turnouts

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Primary % County % State election voter turnout voter turnout 1984 43.9% 48.7% 1988 44.9% 48.2% 1992 46.5% 47.5% 1996 43.7% 41.9% 2000 * 43.0% 52.0%

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* Projected

Source: Ventura County Registrar of Voters, California Secretary of State