Ananda
11-05-2004, 07:42 AM
Million-plus ballots still to be counted statewide
By Sam Stanton and Clea Benson -- Bee Staff Writers
Published 5:37 pm PST Thursday, November 4, 2004
Statewide, voter registrars are sifting through more than 1.4 million ballots that have yet to be counted and that, in some cases, may still determine the outcome of Tuesday's voting.
The lag in counting may affect the outcome of one statewide ballot proposition, Proposition 72, which would require businesses with more than 50 workers to provide health insurance for their employees.
That measure was losing by only 160,000 votes as of the latest official tallies on Thursday, a margin of 2 percent.
In Sacramento County, at least four races - a Sacramento supervisorial seat, a Citrus Heights council seat and two Sacramento City Unified School board seats - remain up in the air because of the lag in counting 125,000 ballots.
In Yolo County, a supervisorial race remains undecided, and several races in Los Angeles County may be tipped once the more than 300,000 uncounted votes there are tallied.
In those races, the margins of victory are razor-thin - so the uncounted votes are being closely watched. Where margins are wider, observers don't believe the additional votes will necessarily bring surprises.
Counting new ballots after election day is hardly a new new phenomenon.
"It happens every time," said Yolo County registrar Freddie Oakley, who on Thursday still had more than 7,000 ballots to count.
Many of the ballots in affected counties are absentee votes that were dropped off at various polling places on election day, while others are provisional ballots that were cast after would-be voters found they were not listed as being registered or were at the wrong polling place.
Most absentee ballots are mailed in prior to the election, giving officials time to process them and enter the information into computers in advance of the election or on election day.
Those results are not divulged until registrars report the first returns after the polls are closed.
In Sacramento, the first returns included 50,000 absentee ballots that had been mailed back in the days and weeks before the election, registrar Jill LaVine said.
So, when her office tallied election results and posted the final precinct count at 2:46 a.m. Wednesday, those were among the total 707,253 ballots cast in the county's 926 precincts.
But there were still plenty left to count.
By Thursday, LaVine said, she still had 60,000 absentee ballots that workers had processed but not yet counted, 33,000 absentee ballots that were dropped into ballot boxes at polling places on election day, 7,000 provisional ballots and 25,000 absentees that had trickled in by mail in the last days before the election.
By contrast, in the 2000 presidential election, 102,049 of the 438,884 votes were cast by absentee.
By Sam Stanton and Clea Benson -- Bee Staff Writers
Published 5:37 pm PST Thursday, November 4, 2004
Statewide, voter registrars are sifting through more than 1.4 million ballots that have yet to be counted and that, in some cases, may still determine the outcome of Tuesday's voting.
The lag in counting may affect the outcome of one statewide ballot proposition, Proposition 72, which would require businesses with more than 50 workers to provide health insurance for their employees.
That measure was losing by only 160,000 votes as of the latest official tallies on Thursday, a margin of 2 percent.
In Sacramento County, at least four races - a Sacramento supervisorial seat, a Citrus Heights council seat and two Sacramento City Unified School board seats - remain up in the air because of the lag in counting 125,000 ballots.
In Yolo County, a supervisorial race remains undecided, and several races in Los Angeles County may be tipped once the more than 300,000 uncounted votes there are tallied.
In those races, the margins of victory are razor-thin - so the uncounted votes are being closely watched. Where margins are wider, observers don't believe the additional votes will necessarily bring surprises.
Counting new ballots after election day is hardly a new new phenomenon.
"It happens every time," said Yolo County registrar Freddie Oakley, who on Thursday still had more than 7,000 ballots to count.
Many of the ballots in affected counties are absentee votes that were dropped off at various polling places on election day, while others are provisional ballots that were cast after would-be voters found they were not listed as being registered or were at the wrong polling place.
Most absentee ballots are mailed in prior to the election, giving officials time to process them and enter the information into computers in advance of the election or on election day.
Those results are not divulged until registrars report the first returns after the polls are closed.
In Sacramento, the first returns included 50,000 absentee ballots that had been mailed back in the days and weeks before the election, registrar Jill LaVine said.
So, when her office tallied election results and posted the final precinct count at 2:46 a.m. Wednesday, those were among the total 707,253 ballots cast in the county's 926 precincts.
But there were still plenty left to count.
By Thursday, LaVine said, she still had 60,000 absentee ballots that workers had processed but not yet counted, 33,000 absentee ballots that were dropped into ballot boxes at polling places on election day, 7,000 provisional ballots and 25,000 absentees that had trickled in by mail in the last days before the election.
By contrast, in the 2000 presidential election, 102,049 of the 438,884 votes were cast by absentee.