Primary elections tend to have a low turnout, but a rising trend
in people voting by mail led to a particularly dismal turnout at
the polls Tuesday.
Primary elections tend to have a low turnout, but a rising trend in people voting by mail led to a particularly dismal turnout at the polls Tuesday.
At the Crossroad Christian Center polling place, where 927 Morgan Hill residents are registered to vote, only 40 people cast ballots on-site today, a 4.3 percent turnout, according to precinct volunteer Lennox Joyce.
On the eastern side of town at the Jackson Oaks clubhouse, the polling place for about 2,400 voters in three voting precincts, only 158 people walked in to fill out ballots, a 6.4 percent turnout, according to Lynn Liebschutz, volunteer inspector for the Jackson Oaks community precinct. At the Paradise Valley Elementary polling place on La Crosse Drive, where 1,025 Morgan Hill voters are registered, only 52 people cast ballots throughout the day, a 5.1 percent turnout.
But these numbers are deceiving, as they don’t include voters who dropped off filled-out ballots in sealed envelopes at 22 polling places in Morgan Hill. Paradise Valley election volunteer Fran Scalzo said the vote-by-mail box contained at least four times as many mail-in ballots as walk-ins – or about 200.
“I’m impressed with the walk-up absentee ballots,” Scalzo said.
Most precincts in Morgan Hill estimated at least 70 percent of those who voted Tuesday either already mailed their ballots to the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters in the weeks leading up to the primary election, or stopped by to drop them off on election day.
The Morgan Hill residents who did show up at the polls to vote the old-fashioned way mostly did so because they think it’s their duty to do so. Others were motivated by what they see as a need for changes in the country, and in California.
“This election, I picked anybody who is not an incumbent,” said Richard Rice as he walked out of the ballot booth at Crossroads Christian Center Tuesday night.
Rice has been an avid voter for the last five years or so, not missing a single election. He said the governor’s and congressional races were more important than local offices in Tuesday’s primary.
Armando Abella cast his ballot at the Jackson Oaks polling place Tuesday morning.
“If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain,” said Abella. “And you have no right to blame the government for what’s going on.”
Also voting in the east Morgan Hill neighborhood was Gerrie Kammelaar, who identified herself as a “constitutional conservative” who participates in local “Tea Party” demonstrations.
“California is run by extremely liberal democrats, and they’ve run the state into the ground,” Kammelaar said, noting the governor’s and senator’s races were the most important issues to her.
Voting and peacefully demonstrating are “about the only thing I can do,” she said.
Election officials and volunteers hadn’t heard any reports of long lines, faulty equipment, campaign violations or other complications at polling places throughout the county earlier in the day.
“The precincts are all staffed very well, the signage is very good, nobody’s irate, and nobody’s been turned away,” said Kathy Andrade, volunteer field inspector for Morgan Hill’s polling places.
A turnout of between 35 and 45 percent is expected countywide for Tuesday’s election, according to Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters spokeswoman Elma Rosas. Of that turnout, about 22 percent have already voted by mailing their ballots to the county office.
Countywide, a total of 547,126 mail-in ballots were issued, including 12,650 in Gilroy alone, where there are 18,327 registered voters, according to Rosas. In Morgan Hill where there are 18,149 registered voters, 13,043 mail-in ballots were sent out, she said.
At the Morgan Hill Bible Church, a polling place for about 780 local voters on the southwest side of town, only about six people voted in the booth before 9:30 a.m., according to volunteers there.
One of those was Lubeomira Busistei, who has voted in every election since she became a U.S. citizen in 1974. Her native country is Poland, now a democracy, but once heavily influenced by the former Soviet Union.
“I understand how important voting is,” Busistei said. “I study every vote, and I try to do my best.”
Across town at El Toro Elementary School, voter Jeff Reid said, “It’s good to vote. I have a couple of young kids, it’s important to take the opportunity to vote so they see the importance.”
Diana Galloway said she has voted since she turned 18 – something she has tried to instill in her children.
“I’m always harping on my kids to vote,” Galloway said at P.A. Walsh Elementary School this morning. “I need my opinion to be heard.”
Robert Collins of Morgan Hill said fiscal responsibility is high on his list of issues that he is monitoring. California is much too deep in debt, Collins said, “I want to see us act more responsibly.”
Voting should be taken seriously, Collins said.
“I think if we don’t vote, it mocks the graves of the people that have fought to give us our freedom. Without voting we give up our right to complain when we don’t like the way things are going,” he said.
The precinct at Ann Sobrato High School only saw three voters before 10 a.m. Even Janet Jeske, a resident of Hacienda Mobile Estates, showed up to deliver her neighbor’s ballot.
“She’s 91 years old. She filled it out, and I’m taking it over. She would not have been able to do it if she didn’t have some help,” said Jeske, who mailed her ballot in before election day.
“It’s my civic duty to vote,” she added.
As of 10 a.m. in Gilroy, most polling places had fewer than 20 voters, although several people came to drop off their mail-in ballots.
Precinct inspectors noted that most people are voting by mail, causing polling places throughout Gilroy to remain mostly empty.
“We may be the dinosaurs of the past,” said Dennis Hite, precinct inspector at the Gilroy High School polling place.
About 60 percent to 70 percent of the people in the Gilroy High School precinct vote by mail, Hite said, adding that the trend seems to be on the rise.
Those who did show up to the polls tended to come out of obligation rather than for a particular passion.
“I just vote all the time,” said Ernie Bellezza, who dropped off a mail-in ballot at the Masonic Temple.
M.A. Bowe, who showed up at the Gilroy High School polling place, said she looked into the various candidates, but she still stressed that it was only a primary election.
“It’s just a step, and you’ve got to do it,” she said.
Diana Bentz, precinct inspector at the Sunrise Fire Station polling place, said she is an avid supporter of Dolores Carr for district attorney. She felt free to discuss her views, as there were no voters in the fire station at the time.
“That’s a big deal,” she said of the DA’s race. “The DA is the chief law enforcement officer in the county.”
Jerry Seelie, who dropped his ballot off at the Sunrise station, wanted to see change, although he would not elaborate.
“I feel we need a bunch of changes,” Seelie said. “I just know what I like and what I don’t like.”
Most poll workers throughout the morning sat along long tables, casually chatting with each other while looking at empty voting booths.
“It becomes a long boring day after awhile,” said Frank Valencia, an election officer at the Masonic Temple.
On Tuesday’s primary ballot are five state constitutional propositions, South County’s Supervisor District One race, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s race, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s race, party primaries for both the 27th and 28th state assembly districts, the 11th and 15th U.S. Congressional districts’ Republican primaries, Republicans vying for a U.S. Senate seat, and a host of Republicans, Democrats and independents running for governor.
After volunteers locked the polling place doors at 8 p.m., they gathered all the ballots and all records of votes cast, including memory cards from electronic voting machines, and placed them into containers that have tamper-evident seals before they left the buildings, Liebschutz explained. The materials were then driven to a central South County collection point near the old courthouse in San Martin, and from there the ballots were carried to county headquarters, where the counting began.
Volunteers on-site at the polling places did not tally any of the votes, but they counted the ballots cast to make sure the inspectors’ checklists matched up, Liebschutz said.
By the numbers
Voting in Santa Clara County
538,745: Vote-by-mail ballots issued
159,479: Vote-by-mail ballots returned
765,680: Registered voters
*As of June 6
Staff writers Lindsay Bryant and Jonathan Partridge contributed to this report.
