Gone are the old days when candidates and political onlookers alike went to bed on election night with final election results. On the contrary, unless a candidate has racked up a substantial lead by evening’s day end, it will be days (or maybe even weeks) before final results are known. This played itself out in the primary for Assemblyman Mike Villines who ultimately won the GOP primary for State Insurance Commissioner but didn’t know that for literally weeks after election day had passed. Now it is Steve Cooley and Kamala Harris’ turn to wait it out as the slow process of waiting for all of the ballots to be counted continues to take place.
Locally here in Orange County where I live, Neil Kelly, our Registrar of Voters, said that some 30% of the total votes to be counted in the general election were still being processed. I live in a small town in South Orange County called Rancho Santa Margarita. In our local city council races, the differential between several candidates is so small (less than a hundred votes) that the outcome is completely up in the air — with over 4,300 ballots yet to be counted.
California Republican Party officer Steve Baric, who is currently clinging to the barest of leads for the third (of three) seats here in RSM said it best when we spoke, "This is the equivalent of it still being 1030pm on election night."
So, for so many candidates around the state (including some very close Congressional races), everyone gets to wait on pins and needles.
But, we don’t have it as bad as some others. In Washington State, mail in ballots need only be postmarked by election day. So if you drop that ballot in the mail from say – Great Britain…
And then there is Alaska, where roughly 40% of the ballots case for United States Senate are write-ins. Imagine how long that ordeal will take?
November 4th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Mr. Fleischman:
We’re going through the same thing here in San Diego, but I
can offer some evidence which helps explain the delay.
Lots of people are “permanent absentee” voters and get their
ballots in the mail 3 to 4 weeks before election day.
But many of them procrastinate until it is too late to mail in
the ballot, so they walk down to the local precinct poll and
HAND it to a polling clerk.
In San Diego County there are 114,000 ballots of this type!
Not a typo there…114,000. State law requires Registrar
personnel to check the signature on the outside of the
envelope against registration records frist, as a proper
guard against potential fraud.
So those 114,000 hand-delivered mail ballots are now being
processed and gradually counted.
The rise of Mail voting has led to a longer count. When 95%
of votes were cast at local schools or libraries, the results
were counted much more quickly.
November 5th, 2010 at 12:00 am
What is wrong with a two month long Ground Hog Day???
At least they voted..