Official certification is expected to take place on Tues., Dec. 2 for the Nov. 4 Presidential General Election. The process, which began the first day after the election, is drawing to a close as staff members put together the final documents necessary for certification.
According to Elections Code 15372, “the elections official shall prepare a certified statement of the results of the election and submit it to the governing body within 28 days of the election or, in the case of school district, community college district, county board of education, or special district elections conducted on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of odd-numbered years, no later than the last Monday before the last Friday of that month.”
The Elections Office cannot certify results for any one jurisdiction before another. Cities may conduct their own elections, but if they opt to have the County conduct the election services, the election is consolidated and treated as one election for everything on the ballot.
Our teams are finishing up the 1% manual tally, but some staff members are working on the other parts of the certification process which includes creating a Statement of the Vote, Resolution and Memo for the Board of Supervisors, and certification letters to each jurisdiction.
The Statement of the Vote, which contains the official detailed results for the contests on the Nov. 4 ballot, includes a certification page signed by the Chief Elections Officer. It is distributed to the Board of Supervisors, County Counsel, Central Committees, and the California Secretary of State.
Copies of the Statement of the Vote are available for a nominal fee to the public. It will also be posted online at www.shapethefuture.org.
There has been much chatter in the news yesterday and today about the now-verifiable record turnout in California for the Feb. 5 Presidential Primary.
The numbers are all part of the California Secretary of State’s Statement of the Vote for the Feb. 5 Presidential Primary Election, a meta compilation of certified results from each of California’s 58 counties. It includes results from our Statement of the Vote issued on March 4.
Nearly 9.1 million votes were cast on Feb. 5, representing an unusually high turnout of nearly 58 percent. When you look at the numbers over time, that’s the highest turnout for a primary since 1980. But it’s by no means a record, as turnout was nearly 73 percent in June 1976.
Similar to what we saw in San Mateo County, it was the highest statewide turnout for a primary this century. As the Sacramento Bee noted, this election garnered about 1.2 million more votes than the presidential primary in 2000, which held the previous primary record for absolute number of voters.
The statement breaks how presidential candidate votes were cast by county and congressional district. You’ll note that San Mateo County voted 44.5 percent for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., 50.9 percent for U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and 51.1 percent for U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
There are couple of other interesting trends – for better or for worse – that the numbers further reveal that we think are worth pointing out.
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Well, we have some opening of the mouth and inserting of the foot to do.
Earlier this year we spouted all kinds of predictions about record turnout in San Mateo County for the Feb. 5 Presidential Primary. Elections Manager David Tom told the media he thought turnout would be more than 60 percent. Our own Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum predicted in a press release issued from our office that San Mateo County’s turnout” may reach as high as 71 percent.”
Yeah, so we were a little off.
Now that the Statement of the Vote is complete, we can officially say that turnout in San Mateo County for the Feb. 5 Presidential Primary was 59.29 percent. A very high number, certainly, but no record smasher. Kudos to the nearly 211,697 of you who made your choices heard in this historic election, but where were the rest of you?
To be fair, turnout far exceeded the 48.61 percent turnout seen in the 2004 Presidential Primary Election. It also surpassed the 55.12 percent turnout for the Statewide Special Election in Nov. 2005, and the 57.49 percent turnout for the 2000 Presidential Primary Election. That is definitely something to be proud of.
But we haven’t had turnout above 60 percent in a presidential primary in San Mateo County since 1980, and we couldn’t quite make it over that elusive threshold this time around either.
We have few answers as to why; do you?
It remains to be seen what official statewide voter turnout will be and whether it will, in fact, break any records. Now that all 58 counties have certified their votes (the deadline was today), the California Secretary of State has until March 17 to compile all that data into a meta Statement of the Vote and certify statewide results.
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Tuesday marked the nearly there point in closing the chapter on the Nov. 6 Consolidated Municipal, School and Special District Election.
That’s because our Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum put his John Hancock on the Statement of the Vote, certifying the results of the 41 local races and ballot measures. It’s a pretty weighty document, 147 pages in all, but it’s yours for the viewing.
Certification marks the end of the required one percent manual recount, which took about three days to complete last week.
Elections Manager David Tom said the recount revealed nothing out of the ordinary, with small discrepancies requiring reconcilliation that are common in every election.
“The machine votes were perfect,” Tom said, referring to recounted votes that were cast on eSlates, our electronic voting machines. “The paper ballots, there’s room for interpretation. One here, one there. It’s typically what we find in any election.”
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Official certification is expected to take place on Tues., Dec. 2 for the Nov. 4 Presidential General Election. The process, which began the first day after the election, is drawing to a close as staff members put together the final documents necessary for certification.