Voter turnout falls short in Merced County and statewide

While the final figure for voter turnout in Merced County won’t be finalized for another few days, county officials say it appeared to be lower than they hoped.

Merced County isn’t alone in the downward trend this Election Day. Political experts say statewide voter turnout was low because of a lack of competitive races and exciting measures on the ballot.

Registrar of Voters Barbara Levey set her goal at having 55 percent of the county’s 95,453 registered voters show up to vote. A similar election four years ago brought out about 51.23 percent of voters.

But Levey said Wednesday the county likely did not meet its target.

“It looks like the numbers are down from the 55 percent goal, but turnout was down statewide,” she said. “Some of our unofficial numbers thus far are better than our neighboring counties, but it’s still considerably down.”

The final turnout numbers won’t be available until all vote-by-mail and provisional ballots are tabulated, Levey said. As of Wednesday morning, elections staff had 5,757 vote-by-mail and 1,505 provisional ballots left to count.

Levey said Election Day ran smoothly with no reported glitches in voting procedures. But some residents, including Merced City Councilman Noah Lor, said they were turned away from the polls.

“I think the county lost my name through their transitional (computer) process,” Lor said. He took to Facebook on Election Day to post his frustration. “They went through their database and my name wasn’t there. I have no idea how it got lost.”

Lor said the issue was resolved later Tuesday, when he was directed to a different polling location to re-register and vote using a provisional ballot. Levey said she isn’t sure what happened in Lor’s case, but that voters sometimes go to the wrong polling place or forget to report a change in address.

Levey said the Elections Office is not using a new computer system, and she hadn’t heard about similar problems at other locations. She said she’ll look into what occurred in Lor’s case. “We don’t want anyone disenfranchised; we want everyone to be able to vote,” Levey said. “We are anxious to get all the facts of what happened so we could look into it.”

Despite the Nov. 4 gubernatorial election including statewide races such as lieutenant governor, state Assembly, state Senate and congressional seats, experts say the races weren’t exciting enough to garner high voter interest.

A new Field Poll released Tuesday predicted a 46.1 percent turnout in California, which represents only 8.2 million of the state’s 17.8 million registered voters. That’s a record low for the statewide general election in California, the poll stated.

One political scientist said the measures on the ballot, including a plan to finance relief efforts from the statewide drought, weren’t “sexy” enough to bring out the voters.

“In California, it looks like there really wasn’t anything to get the voters excited,” said Alexander Theodoridis, an assistant professor of political science at UC Merced. “The turnout tends to be a function of whether or not there’s something that’s getting a lot of attention on the ballot.”

“People tend to respond to things that grab their attention in terms of making the decision to take time out of their day to go out and vote,” he continued.

Although midterm elections tend to have lower turnouts than presidential elections, Theodoridis noted, this election didn’t have competitive gubernatorial or Senate races, despite candidates spending a lot of money.

“It’s not that turnout suffered from a lack of money that was spent,” Theodoridis said. “A lot of money was spent on this election.”

Merced County’s election results – which included congressional and Assembly races, in addition to local offices such as sheriff and District 3 supervisor – have to be certified within 28 days, Levey said. She estimated the results will be certified by the end of next week.

This story was originally published November 5, 2014 at 8:40 PM with the headline "Voter turnout falls short in Merced County and statewide."