Merced County registrar hopes for 55 percent voter turnout

The Merced County Registrar of Voters is “optimistically” estimating a 55 percent turnout of registered voters by the end of Election Day, Tuesday.

A crew of elections employees gathered at the registrar’s warehouse in Merced on Thursday to tally the 11,469 vote-by-mail ballots that had come in by that day, the first day of the count. The last gubernatorial election, which was in 2010, saw a turnout of 51 percent of registered voters.

“I’m hopefully being cautiously optimistic that we’ll exceed that,” Registrar Barbara Levey said. “There’s some things that people have taken a high level of interest in on the ballot, so I’m hoping that’ll help encourage the voter participation.”

She said the Merced County sheriff’s race has drummed up significant interest, as well as highly contested local races in Los Banos, Atwater, Delhi and Livingston, to name a few.

Area nonprofits have used phone banks and social media pushes to try to get people involved in the democratic process.

Crissy Gallardo, a community organizer with Merced Organizing Project, said her organization worked through October with a two-part focus. The group tried to register and educate young, low-income and minority residents, and get infrequent voters to use their voting rights.

Gallardo used her own story as an example of how voters can slip through the cracks. As the daughter of undocumented parents who were never allowed to vote, she said, she never got the message that voting matters.

“It wasn’t until later on that someone took the time to talk to me and engage me and educate me on how policies, and all these things that we can vote on, impact our daily lives,” she said. “And not just my life but those of my loved ones.”

The effort used volunteers, she said, most of whom were younger than 21. Those manning the phone bank tried to educate more than 9,600 people who were not likely to vote.

She said volunteers often find that young people, English learners and people of color are not being told or targeted by advertisements telling them that their vote matters.

The California Endowment, which funds nonprofits such as Merced’s Building Healthy Communities, has also been using the Twitter hashtag #2young2vote to let young people voice their opinions and educate them on the importance of voting when they come of age.

On Thursday, elections employees ran the Merced County absentee ballots through counting machines, keeping them bunched by districts. Levey said the ballots are kept sorted even after they’re put into storage in order to keep a paper trail and make any possible recounts easier.

She said it is likely too late to mail absentee ballots, because they have to be in the hands of election workers by 8 p.m. on Election Day. Postmarks will not be a consideration.

She encouraged absentee voters to turn in their ballots as soon as possible, because they take an extra effort to be verified and processed before they can be counted.

The city halls in each of the county’s six cities, as well as the Merced County Elections Office, provide secure, designated ballot receptacles for vote-by-mail ballots during business hours. Absentee voters can drop their ballots at any of those locations anytime or at polling places on Election Day.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday. Voters should check their sample ballots for the location of their polling place.

Voters who cast a vote-by-mail ballot prior to Election Day can check the status of the ballot at www.mercedelections.org. Once on the site, click “Vote by Mail Ballot Tracker.”

This story was originally published November 2, 2014 at 6:18 PM with the headline "Merced County registrar hopes for 55 percent voter turnout."