High Absentee Vote Could Delay Mayor’s Race Results

As Los Angeles voters go to the polls today in the closest mayoral election in memory, experts say an unusually high number of absentee voters and potential confusion over late voter registration may postpone final results for days.

City election officials said they probably will not count as many as 45,000 absentee and contested ballots until after election day. That could leave the finish in the mayor’s race in doubt.

“I think it’s fair to say we know there are going to be a great number of ballots not counted on election night,” said Kristin F. Heffron, head of the Elections Division of the city clerk’s office. “We might not know the outcome immediately.”

The election appears to be coming down to a tight three-way struggle among City Atty. James K. Hahn, former legislator Antonio Villaraigosa and businessman Steve Soboroff, with Councilman Joel Wachs, state Controller Kathleen Connell and Rep. Xavier Becerra still hoping a late surge will put them into contention. The leading finishers are expected to fall short of 50% of the vote, forcing the top two into a June 5 runoff.

With election officials preparing to count the vote from 1,763 precincts, the six top candidates campaigned throughout the city Monday, each reaching out to friendly crowds.

Voters have until 8 p.m. to cast their ballots for mayor, city attorney and city controller and for City Council seats in eight districts. Term limits assure that the vote will produce the greatest turnover in leadership at City Hall in modern times.

Structural Changes in Voting Process

All that would suggest that a nerve-racking election night is in store for the candidates. And two structural changes in the way the city votes could prolong that uncertainty: An unusually high number of residents are voting by mail, and many ballots probably will not be verified until after election day because of the late recording of new voters on the registration rolls.

City election officials mailed out a record 208,964 absentee ballots and reported receiving more than 102,800 back by last weekend. That is on a pace to surpass the all-time-high 137,000 absentee ballots cast in the June 1993 mayoral election that put Mayor Richard Riordan in office, Heffron said.

Absentee ballots that arrive at the division’s post office box late in the day today and until the close of the polls will be counted Wednesday or later. Based on experience, that could involve 25,000 ballots or more, Heffron said.

The second factor delaying the final tally stems from a change in the state law that, as of Jan. 1, permits voters to register up until 15 days before an election, instead of the previous 30 days. That means more new voters than usual may find that their names are not listed when they arrive at their polling places today.

Those voters will have their ballots put aside and tabulated later in the week, after their registration has been confirmed. Heffron said the number of such “provisional” ballots increased substantially in Los Angeles County in the November 2000 election.

Using the county’s experience as a benchmark, the city projects that as many as 20,000 provisional ballots will be counted during the standard two-week canvas period used to finalize the outcome of the election, Heffron said.

The most intensive absentee balloting campaigns were launched on behalf of Soboroff and Villaraigosa. Becerra also made special efforts to reach absentee voters.

The Soboroff campaign targeted African Americans, Jews, political independents and moderate Valley Democrats with four mailers apiece. The voters were selected for the mailings because they habitually vote by mail, said Soboroff campaign consultant Ace Smith.

The California Republican Party sent tens of thousands of absentee ballot applications on behalf of the GOP businessman, who is endorsed by Riordan.

Villaraigosa’s campaign, meanwhile, sent out 123,000 absentee ballot applications to voters considered potentially sympathetic to the former Assembly speaker, but who do not have a record of voting in municipal elections.

Hahn’s campaign did not send out absentee voter applications, although it did send mailers and place phone calls to those with a history of voting by mail.

Despite the high number of absentee ballots, Villaraigosa consultant Parke Skelton said he expects to know the two candidates who will make the runoff by late tonight.

“The chance of another Florida happening is possible, but not likely,” he said, referring to the razor-thin margin between George W. Bush and Al Gore in November’s presidential election.

Last-Minute Campaigning

Meanwhile, the candidates raced through their last day of campaigning, trying to pump up energy among their supporters in the dwindling hours before the polls opened.

Connell visited voters at Farmers Market in the Fairfax district, her second appearance there in as many days, while Becerra rallied volunteers at three of his field offices.

In the afternoon, Villaraigosa addressed a group of about 100 North Hollywood High School students, many of them volunteers for his campaign. He asked them to consider his candidacy in larger terms than the chance to elect Los Angeles’ first Latino mayor of modern times.

“This isn’t about being first,” he said, speaking in a stuffy room packed with students, his voice hoarse after a weekend campaigning blitz. “This is about realizing that we have a shared community and the same hopes.”

Villaraigosa received a last-minute boost from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose recorded phone message for the former legislator went out to voters in South Los Angeles during the weekend. In the message, Jackson called Villaraigosa “a fighter for social justice.”

Soboroff scaled down his public appearances Monday after a weekend of events across the city. On Monday, he spoke at a retirement center in Tarzana.

At Pacific Gardens Heritage Park, residents murmured with excitement as they waited for Soboroff to make his second visit in less than a month. “Do you know who’s coming?” one 82-year-old woman whispered to her friends. “Mayor Soboroff.”

“It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Soboroff joked, shaking hands and greeting residents as they ate lunch in the dining room.

Hahn visited campaign volunteers in the Crenshaw district and then stopped at Philippe restaurant downtown to greet lunch-hour patrons. Hahn told one woman waiting in the long lines at the counter that he would fight to make sure the city is paid back the $193 million it is owed for electrical power.

While some struggling campaigns were hoping for a suppressed turnout, Hahn said hopefully: “I’m looking for good weather tomorrow. No rain. I think the turnout is going to be a lot bigger than some people think.”

Munching on a roast beef sandwich, Donald Robinson said Hahn’s in-person visit persuaded him to vote in the direction he had been leaning, for Hahn: “He’s still got the personal touch.”

Like Hahn, Wachs campaigned in his base, winning salutes from more than a dozen San Fernando Valley community activists who gathered Monday afternoon at the Los Angeles Police Department’s North Hollywood Division. They credited him with helping to strengthen community-based policing.

Following the pattern of the closing days of the campaign, the upbeat public appearances occurred against the background of emotional exchanges over the content of late campaign advertising.

Riordan on Monday condemned anonymous attack phone calls that went out to Los Angeles voters in the last two weeks as “divisive and sleazy politics.” Riordan asked Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley to investigate a recorded phone message that was placed Saturday. Purporting to be from Soboroff’s campaign, it contained an anti-Semitic message.

Prosecutors in Cooley’s office are already examining automated calls widely disseminated a week ago by someone posing as Supervisor Gloria Molina. Those calls accused candidate Villaraigosa of being soft on crime, even though Molina supports Villaraigosa.

Cooley, who did not attend Riordan’s news conference, acknowledged that it may be difficult to trace the source of the calls or even determine whether any laws have been broken.

But, he said, “Those of us in public life must be in the truth business. In this spirit, if our investigation discloses the name of a candidate, telemarketing firm or anyone else involved, we will disclose that to the public.”

*

Times staff writers Greg Krikorian, Jeffrey L. Rabin, Nicholas Riccardi, Kristina Sauerwein and Erin Texeira contributed to this report.