Low San Mateo County voter turnout a symptom of "voter fatigue"
Lack of presidential or gubernatorial candidates results in participation of less than 15 percent

By Michael Manekin
San Mateo County Times
06/03/08

REDWOOD CITY — A statewide primary election without a presidential primary race produced an unsurprisingly low voter turnout in San Mateo County.

At last count, 13 percent of registered voters participated in Tuesday's "direct primary," the new vocabulary chosen to describe an election-year primary sans presidential or gubernatorial candidates, according to county elections manager David Tom.

"We've never done this type of primary before," Tom said. "The participation has been very, very light."

Election officials, who projected a turnout of about 35 percent, are still counting provisional ballots, so final numbers for Tuesday's direct primary are not yet available.

But the low voter participation was a far cry from the 59.3 percent turnout for the Feb. 5 presidential primary election, the highest participation in decades for a presidential primary, Tom said.

The conspicuous absence of a presidential race on the ballot wasn't the only reason for voters to shun polling places and ignore absentee ballots, Tom said.

For one thing, he said, county voters might be suffering from elections fatigue. The direct primary on Tuesday was the fourth election in six months, causing voters to "kind of lose interest" in the democratic process, Tom said.

In addition, the only remotely controversial state ballot initiatives Tuesday were the property-rights Propositions 98 and 99, Tom said.

According to Tom, the battle for the 12th Congressional District, held by Tom Lantos before his death in February, would have attracted more voters if the contest weren't essentially settled during a special election in April, when Jackie Speier scored a landslide victory over her Democratic and Republican opponents.

The beginning of the summer season and its jam-packed schedule of vacations and graduations didn't help matters much, Tom said.

"All of these different factors may play a role in low turnout," he concluded.

The nail-bitingly close 19th Assembly District race, in which county Supervisor Jerry Hill holds a slight lead over Millbrae Mayor Gina Pappan, "should have caused some pretty good excitement" among voters, but the low turnout indicates "that does not seem to be t/he case," Tom said.

Perhaps the low voter participation contributed to a nearly problem-free day at the polls, Tom said. The only known snafu occurred at the Selby Lane School in Atherton, when a custodian failed to show up on time to help prepare the building for the primary, Tom said.

While Tom couldn't say exactly when the school opened for business, he explained that in general poll workers are always on hand with paper ballots in the event that a voting facility doesn't open on time.

Not that paper ballots were necessary at the polls, where the county's electronic voting machines "worked the way they're supposed to," Tom said.

"We've been using them the last six elections, and poll workers are very familiar with our machines now, and so are most of our voters," he added. "So we don't have the issues that we had in the past. In every election we've done, it's gone better."

As in other recent elections, more county voters continued to trade their pilgrimages to the polling booth for absentee ballots. Nearly 140,000 county voters now prefer to vote by mail. At last count Tuesday night, 41,039 of the 71,071 voters had stated their preference in the mail.

"It's a phenomenon that has changed the dynamics of the election completely," Tom said.

Staff writer Michael Manekin can be reached at 650-348-4331 or mmanekin@bayareanewsgroup.com.

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