It was lonely at the polls on May 19
While the results aren’t completely tallied, most of them are. By a two to one margin the turnout came from voters who voted by mail – 62% of them and that number is still climbing.
In San Mateo County, we have 360,782 registered voters – and not quite 25 30.67% of them voted in the May 19th Consolidated Special Statewide Election (just updated results at 4:30 p.m.). When you look hard at the polling place turnout, you must remember, we consolidated precincts – so some precincts were designed to serve as many as 1,400 voters, not just the usual 1,000 voters. That means that our precinct boards served about 82 92 voters at each precinct over the course of a 13-hour day. That’s a little over 6 7 voters per hour. That’s tedium. Even with a slightly higher turnout. The two-to-one margin didn’t move with this update.
A few years ago, I worked in a San Carlos Special Election as an election official. Warren Slocum, our Chief Elections Officer, thought it would be a good thing for me to experience working at the polls firsthand. I loved it, but I wanted more action. We had a total of 99 voters that day in our precinct—and it was painfully slow.
According to the Secretary of State’s preliminary county by county data – there are 33 counties that had 50% or more of their voter roll voting by mail in this election. With the state budget in shambles, tons of money could be saved if counties were given permission to decide locally if they wanted to conduct elections by mail. It’s not unheard of –counties decide in the state of Washington.
