Voting by mail alters campaigns

By DAN WALTERS

SACRAMENTO BEE

It used to be quite difficult in California for someone to vote via mail, rather than in person at the polls, but about 30 years ago, a Democratic Legislature and a Democratic governor decided to loosen up on what was called “absentee voting.”

The Democrats believed that it, along with easier voter registration, would counteract Republicans’ edge in voter turnout.

The maneuver backfired big time in 1982 when Republicans mounted a strong — albeit somewhat stealthy — drive to increase absentee voting among party loyalists and help their candidate for governor, George Deukmejian, in what shaped up as a close contest with Democrat Tom Bradley.

Bradley won among Election Day voters, as exit polls accurately confirmed, and Bradley supporters in Los Angeles celebrated.

As the mailed ballots were tallied, however, it became apparent that Deukmejian had won the governorship, by fewer than 100,000 votes.

In the quarter-century since, mail voting has become an ever-larger factor in California politics. More than a quarter of the state’s voters have claimed permanent vote-by-mail status, and nearly half of the votes in typical statewide elections are being cast by mail.

Massive impact

The impact on campaign tactics has been massive. Not only must campaigns for and against candidates for office and ballot measures mount drives aimed specifically at mail voters, but with many votes being cast days or even weeks before Election Day, last-minute appeals for votes and hits on opponents have less impact on outcomes.

Given that background, it is fitting that Field’s polling organization, the Field Research Corp., should plumb the characteristics of the growing cadre of vote-by-mail voters.

Field confirmed what political pundits and campaign consultants had already figured out, that mail voters are markedly older, whiter and more affluent that other voters and a bit more ideologically polarized — i.e., more likely to be strongly conservative or liberal, rather than moderate. One key finding: The 4.2 million permanent vote-by-mail registrants include slightly more Republicans than Democrats. Another: San Francisco Bay Area voters are much more likely (29 percent) to vote by mail than those in Los Angeles County (10 percent).

Field’s poll, compiled throughout the year, was released just a few weeks before election officials begin sending out ballots for the Feb. 5 primary, which is ironic unto itself. When state political leaders moved California’s presidential primary from June to February, they said they wanted the state to occupy a more prominent place in choosing presidential candidates.

Very quickly, however, other states moved their primaries to Feb. 5 or earlier, thereby diluting the proclaimed impact of the earlier California election, and the state has seen only scant campaigning — although much fund-raising — by the presidential hopefuls.

Scripps Howard News Service