CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 2020 OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 2020 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“PRIMARY EXPOSES PROBLEMS WITH EARLY VOTING”
In
a simple world where every election contest involves two contestants, early
voting is terrific. Not this month in California.
It’s plain why
things have long gone well for early voting in November runoff elections where
the state’s top two “jungle primary” always puts the primary election’s top two
vote-getters into runoffs for every state office.
Other
electoral choices like ballot propositions and runoff races for city and county
offices also don’t change during the month before the fall vote.
While
November presidential choices can involve multiple parties, the two major
parties always choose their nominees long before mail ballots go out a month or
so before the vote. Which explains why early voting works just fine in the
fall.
Not so
much in a primary.
Early
primaries like this year’s in California can be very different. Because this
state doesn’t make all the choices during the presidential primary season, the
field of candidates can change considerably during the time between when
ballots are printed two to three months before Election Day, and their mail-out
date.
This
reality exposed a big weakness in the state’s early voting this year. Ballots
were printed in December, when the Democratic presidential field included the
likes of Andrew Yang, Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, John Delaney, Michael
Bennet, Pete Buttegieg, Beto O’Rourke and Tom Steyer.
Those
names were included on the 15-plus million ballots mailed to Californians Feb.
3, although some dropped out before then. They also appeared on voting machines
and ballots used on Election Day.
Which
created a host of ballots cast for candidates who departed the race
either long before the vote or in the few days leading up to Election Day.
It’s
the first time early voting caused significant trouble in California, where a
preliminary version of today’s system began in the early 1980s, when absentee
ballots became available to anyone requesting one rather than only to folks who
knew they’d be away on the official voting day.
In
their first statewide use, easily available mail ballots helped Republicans
defeat Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley for governor in 1982, giving
the job to Republican George Deukmejian despite polls predicting an easy
Bradley win.
Democrats
quickly caught on. They now see early voting as a means to increase turnouts –
and it’s a political truism that the larger the vote, the better Democrats will
do. That's why the Democrats who dominate Sacramento mandated motor-voter,
where voter registration is easy for U.S. citizens getting drivers licenses.
They also set up
pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds, plus same-day voter registration for
adults. And California’s newest voting system, used this time in 15 counties,
encouraged early voting not only by mail, but at voting centers open almost two
weeks before Election Day.
It’s a system
designed to make voting as easy as possible, Democrats believing the larger
numbers produced will help them and hurt Republicans. It’s also the complete
opposite of the voter limitations set up by Republican-controlled legislatures
in more than 20 other states.
But a lot of
Democratic voters now find themselves resenting the system set up by lawmakers
they elected, which produced more than 4 million early votes. That’s because –
if polling in the week before the primary was accurate – at least 12 percent to
15 percent of those early ballots favored Minnesota Sen. Klobuchar, former
South Bend, IN, Mayor Buttegieg or financier Steyer.
Some
of those voters would have liked to take a mulligan and vote over again once
their candidates dropped out shortly before Election Day. But they could not.
Since
all the dropouts were among the Democrats’ moderate candidate grouping, votes
they got very likely would have gone to former Vice President Joseph Biden if
voters had known who would quit. This greatly handicapped Biden’s eventual
performance in California, where he finished a distant second to the far more
radical Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
It
represents the first time early voting in California likely misrepresented some
voters’ eventual Election Day preferences. Which may produce more tinkering
with California’s voting system before the next presidential primary arrives in
2024.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His
book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and
the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover
fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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