Absentees’ Potent Presence

The frustratingly low turnout in the special election to fill the 3rd District seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors was another sign of the ho-hum times come election day. The really amazing statistic spun off by the controversial election was that 67.6% of voters cast absentee ballots.

Put another way, a majority of those who bothered to vote had their ballots in the mail well before the last-minute flurry of legal activity Jan. 27, when Orange County Superior Court Judge Andrew P. Banks ruled the election unconstitutional. The state’s 4th District Court of Appeal subsequently stayed Banks’ ruling and scheduled a Feb. 24 hearing to consider the legality of Measure V, a voter-approved initiative that calls for vacant supervisorial seats to be filled by election rather than through an appointment by the governor.

No hearing is needed to determine the growing effect of absentee ballots on Orange County elections. A quarter of voters used absentee ballots during the 2000 general election; the percentage rose to 28.8% during the 2002 gubernatorial election. The increases are part of a steady gain in absentee voting that began in the early 1980s and got a boost from a regulatory change that allows county residents to register for permanent absentee status.

Former state Assemblyman Bill Campbell, who won a landslide victory in the 3rd District election, with 75% of the vote, was the beneficiary of the heavy absentee voting, garnering 75% of 23,000 absentee ballots that were cast. Campbell and county voters now are awaiting the appellate court hearing to learn whether the former state assemblyman stays on the board.

Just 34,000 votes were cast Jan. 28. In contrast, former Supervisor Todd Spitzer earned 119,450 votes when he won the same seat in March 2000. The low turnout means political junkies can’t use the election as a template for future contests. That’s because absentee voters generally are more inclined to cast ballots than the overall electorate -- and carry more weight during special elections with just a single issue to be decided.

But the continued growth in absentee ballots does pose questions for election officials. County supervisors in late January approved the purchase of a $25-million electronic voting system to replace aging punch-card systems that have resulted in mistakes and delays in recent years. Growth in absentee voting means that more ballots will have to be counted the old-fashioned way.

The county also must determine if the window to obtain and vote an absentee ballot needs to be shortened or lengthened. And some political consultants suspect that steady growth in absentee ballots eventually will lead to a decision to switch from paper ballots to digital ballots cast online.

What is known about absentee voters is that they tend to be older, wealthier and better educated than the norm. The Task Force on the Federal Election System, which studied absentee voting nationwide, also determined that white voters are twice as likely to use absentee ballots as blacks, with Latino voters falling somewhere in between.

Though touted as an important way of making voting easier and more accessible, widespread use of absentee ballots has serious implications for society. The task force cautioned that “widespread voting before election day might alter the dynamics of election campaigns ... [and] undermine the public’s sense of participation in common in one of our few important civic rites.”