Riverside to Tally Ballots for Council

Not one Riverside resident will go to the polls to vote in today’s City Council runoff election. For the sixth time, the city is holding an absentee-ballot-only election, and votes for three members of the seven-person council will be counted only if they arrive by mail today or are delivered to election officials by 8 tonight.

In the November 2003 election, none of the candidates running for three wards won 50% or more of the vote, triggering runoffs between the top two finishers in each race. In all three races, the top vote-getters were within a few percentage points of each other and campaigned aggressively through the holidays to replace retiring incumbents Chuck Beaty, Joy Defenbaugh, and Laura Pearson.

The race in Ward 1, which covers downtown Riverside, pits Dom Betro, a local businessman who owns a Riverside nightspot, against Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Fick, who has been endorsed by council members as well as the local police officers association.

Art Gage, a consultant, and Mike Goldware, a lawyer, came out of the November election nearly tied for the seat in Ward 3, a residential and semi-industrial district. At the westernmost edge of the city, Steve Adams, a retired police officer, is vying for the Ward 7 seat against Terry Frizzel, a former City Council member and mayor.

By last Tuesday, more people had submitted ballots than voted in November’s election, according to the Riverside County registrar’s office, which administers city elections.

Voter turnout statistics suggest that mail-only balloting may increase voter participation across the board, including in local elections, which generally attract limited attention.

Riverside’s first mail-only election was a 1996 runoff in Ward 7, in which turnout jumped from about 21% in the general election to 33% in the runoff. Subsequent mail-only runoffs have generated similar increases in voter participation.

In earlier runoff elections when voters cast their ballots at polling places, turnout usually dropped 10% or more from the general election. “What it does is make it easier for people to vote,” said Priscilla Southwell, a professor of political science at the University of Oregon.

Oregon voters decided in 1998 to vote by mail in all elections, and turnout has gone up and stayed up in all age, gender, race, and economic groups since polling places were abolished, according to Southwell.

Riverside is one of the few California cities to take advantage of a state law that allows special elections to be conducted without traditional polling stations -- which cuts the cost of municipal elections by as much as a third. The city will pay the registrar’s office about $50,000 for this election, instead of $73,000 for the first round of conventional voting in November.

Despite those savings, council members Ed Adkison and Frank Schiavone, both of whom were elected in mail-only runoff elections, have said they prefer elections with polling stations.

Schiavone pointed out that four years ago, when Pearson won her Ward 7 seat, her official margin of victory was only 24 votes -- fewer than the number of ballots declared invalid because of voter error.

“Ten times the number of votes that she won by were thrown in the trash,” Schiavone said. “It’s the city’s responsibility to make sure that every vote counts, and the emphasis should be on that rather than on voter turnout, which should be up to the candidates.”

Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend said that only about 1% of absentee ballots, in mail-only and in regular elections, are disqualified. he most common problems are missing signatures on envelopes, multiple ballots returned in a single envelope, or forged signatures -- sometimes, Townsend said, scribbled by well-meaning family members.

Neither Adkison nor Schiavone voted against allowing today’s election to proceed by mail. But Adkison, a member of the city’s charter review commission, has asked that the mail-only runoff system be reconsidered as part of the current revision process. The issue will be heard in February, according to Eric Haley, the commission’s chairman.

Townsend said voters who miss going to the polls are welcome to observe the vote tally tonight at the registrar’s office in Moreno Valley.

Last-minute voters may drop their ballots off today between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. at any of the following locations: City Hall, 3900 Main St.; Janet Goeske Community Center, 5257 Sierra St.; Marcy Branch Library, 3711 Central Ave.; University Heights Middle School, 1155 Massachusetts Ave.; and La Sierra Community Center, 5215 La Sierra Ave. The county registrar’s office is at 2724 Gateway Drive in Moreno Valley.