California primary's lesson for pundits: Don't speak too soon in the age of mail-in voting

[Demovictory9]

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-06-22/cautionary-tale-of-california-primary-dont-speak-too-soon-in-age-of-mail-in-voting

n the hours after polls closed in the closely watched California midterms on June 7, reviews from pundits were quick to come in.

Turnout: abysmal. Progressive reforms: rejected. Ex-Republican Rick Caruso: the surprise star of the night in liberal Los Angeles.

But with the proliferation of mail-in voting, messages from California voters now arrive with a lag — one that hasn’t proven friendly to the quick takes of social media and cable news.

-----------------------------

Perhaps the most dominant narrative in the media coverage and commentary coming out of election night was that California voters were sending a clear message on public safety and progressive criminal justice reform efforts that could have national reverberations. But in the two weeks since California’s primary, some key races across the state have reshuffled or tightened — turning upside-down some of the early punditry about the message Golden State voters are sending this cycle.

In L.A.’s mayoral race, Caruso, a billionaire developer who ran on a platform of expanding the city’s police force and clearing homeless encampments, celebrated with confetti on election night as he held a five-percentage-point lead over U.S. Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), whom he will face in the November runoff.

But two weeks later, he finds himself trailing Bass by seven points.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-06-22/cautionary-tale-of-california-primary-dont-speak-too-soon-in-age-of-mail-in-voting

[PXR-5]

1. I still don't understand

Last edited Thu Jun 23, 2022, 09:01 AM - Edit history (1)

why they count the mail in ballots last.

I was a Chief Judge on Election Day at my polling place, and no one in my county could answer this question.

So my conspiracy theory is that Repugs want it this way to try to seed some type of doubt.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. I don't exactly how they work it in CA, but do know that many states

sortof use similar "look and feel" templates for mail ballot packets that get sent out (some of it done per HAVA ( "Help America Vote Act of 2002" )), that include some type of completion of an outer envelope that has a signature line (although I think I recall seeing at least one state/locality that had that signature somewhere on an inner envelope), possibly along with other info like an address (sometimes hand-filled), date, etc.

So since "in-person" usually involves "signing in" to a "poll book" (whether a literal binder or bound book with sheets of paper with names and lines for signature or an electronic type), the slow down is "verification" - for example - that a signature is there at all before processing. Some states (particularly GOP ones that only target blue precincts), might obsess over the validity/quality of the signature, but in any case, there still needs to be that "verification" before continuing, whereas "in person", you can't even vote (either be given a ballot to complete or be directed to a voting machine) until you successfully "check in" and are at least verified as a registered voter at the minimum.

And per HAVA, which allows "provisional ballots", those are actually what gets counted "last" in most cases because they require the most effort for verification/adjudication.

[JohnSJ]

7. They don't, as long as your mail-in ballot is received early enough, they are processed and feed

into a counting computer. Officials are not allowed to look at those numbers until the polls close.

The delay occurs with ballots that are received on election day or after, but they must be postmarked on or before election day to be counted. It is these ballots where the delay occurs, because on election day, mail-in vote processing is put on hold, and priority goes to in-person election day votes.

California goes out of there way to insure all citizens, and Californians have the opportunity to vote. Every registered voter is mailed a ballot with a postage paid envelope.

California goes out of their way to insure all legitimate votes are counted.

[JohnSJ]

7. They don't, as long as your mail-in ballot is received early enough, they are processed and feed

into a counting computer. Officials are not allowed to look at those numbers until the polls close.

The delay occurs with ballots that are received on election day or after, but they must be postmarked on or before election day to be counted. It is these ballots where the delay occurs, because on election day, mail-in vote processing is put on hold, and priority goes to in-person election day votes.

California goes out of there way to insure all citizens, and Californians have the opportunity to vote. Every registered voter is mailed a ballot with a postage paid envelope.

California goes out of their way to insure all legitimate votes are counted.

[Retrograde]

13. They don't

at least not in my California county. The ballots are verified and counted as they come in. However, ballots are valid if they're received up to X days after election day (used to be 5, longer now because of pandemic) as long as they're postmarked by election day.

This election was all mail-in, and California has some big counties - Los Angeles alone has over 10 million people. California also processes all the provisional ballots cast. Counties have long had 30 days to complete their counts and get their results in to the Secretary of State - it's just that the media ignores this and wants its results NOW!

[Lovie777]

2. Here here . . .

the polling prior to the primary was off as well.

Its another reason why RWers hate mail in ballots until it favors them, prime example - PA.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. "lesson for pundits: Don't speak too soon in the age of mail-in voting"

Yes, there is a "pundit problem" and it's not just on TV but in the print media as well. Here in Philly with the 2020 general election, I still hold this STILL UNCORRECTED Philadelphia Inquirer article up for ridicule as the showcase example of purposely pathetic punditry while the jackass reporters continue to write to this day -



The above was fabricated gasbag reporting that made a conclusion while the votes (particularly the deluge of hundreds of thousands of mail-in votes) were still being counted as this was only the 2nd election but 1st "general election" under Act-77 that opened up the opportunity to use "no-excuse absentee ballots" ("mail-in" ).

The correct result was that the city surpassed the historic 2008 vote totals by tens of thousands and that article was off by 20,000 ADDITIONAL votes that became part of the final tally. In fact, for that election, mail-in votes exceeded "in-person" voting by over 15,000, mainly because the pandemic severely limited the number of available and staffed polling places.



I know I complained in the comment section for that article and then comments were later closed down for all articles.

From the OP article - this portion summarizes it the best in this new era of larger population states and mail-in voting -

With a pandemic-induced acceleration in mail-in voting, election day results mean less than ever, representing an increasingly small part of the picture.

“It’s been a growing challenge to get the word out before election day to the general public and news media alike to not expect to have definitive results on election night,” Alexander said. “This new ballot flow frustrates the longstanding conventions of how we think about election day and election night.”

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. They weren't that far off

The screen shot is a bit blurry, but I think these are the figures.

"And it’s likely to mark the third straight presidential race in which the Democratic margin out of Philadelphia has shrunk. While Biden will probably improve on Clinton's Philadelphia total by a few percentage points, Trump increased his vote by more than 18%."

Final result: Biden/Clinton = 604,175/584,025 = 1.035 - 3.5% higher
Trump 2020/Trump 2016 = 132,870/108,748 = 1.222 - 22.2% higher.

2016 margin: 475,277
2020 margin: 471,305

So the margin did shrink, Biden improved the Democratic vote by a few percentage points, and Trump increased his vote by more than 18%. They said "while the final votes are still being counted", and "as of Saturday evening" for the numbers in the box.

I just noticed they did get one thing wrong - which was about 2012. They talked off "the third straight presidential race in which the Democratic margin out of Philadelphia has shrunk", but the margin in 2012 was higher than in 2008 - so it was only the "second straight" race in which the margin shrunk (which doesn't seem worth noting). But that was data they'd had for 8 years.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. You missed the big BLARING headline

which was complete bullshit.

The thrust of the article was that the city did not "turn out", let alone turn out at the degree as we did in 2008 or 2012 and that was a complete fabrication and goes along with the OP article's assertion - the jump-the-gun punditry by arrogant reporters.

And 2 years later, they STILL haven't corrected it and that piece of shit article remains as part of the "written archival record".

And they never even wrote a follow-up either.

ETA - here were the earlier elections -


2016



2012



2008

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. The Philadelphia Democratic turnout was essentially flat, while it shot up in the rest of PA

Philadelphia:
2008: 595,980
2012: 588,806
2016: 584,025
2020: 604,175 (+3.5% on 2016, +2.6% on 2012, +1.4% on 2008)

PA:
2008: 3,276,363
2012: 2,990,274
2016 :2,926,441
2020: 3,458,229 (+18.2% on 2016, +15.6% on 2012, +5.6% on 2008)

[BumRushDaShow]

12. This was my point

Last edited Thu Jun 23, 2022, 10:29 AM - Edit history (2)

2020: 604,175
2008: 595,980

The assertion from the jump-the-gun reporting being that we didn't "turn out like the 'historic' Obama election" where that was bullshit.

If they had hedged and waited until ALL the votes were counted (aside from the fact that the was under lawsuit assault by the loon MAGA GOP challenging the votes and sending goons in to break in to the PA Convention Center to disrupt the counting), they could have salvaged themselves.

ETA from here (the older city election results are archived) - https://whyy.org/articles/as-far-as-voter-turnout-2012s-got-nothing-on-2008/

(snip) % Registered who voted

Philadelphia 2000 (snip) 54.7%
Philadelphia 2004 (snip) 63.4%
Philadelphia 2008 (snip) 63.6%
Philadelphia 2012 (snip) 58.8%

2016 = 64%
2020 = 66.3%


Here is what the Inquirer SHOULD HAVE written -

Philadelphia turnout for the 2020 election was the highest in 25 years

Pennsylvania also set a record for number of voters at the polls, with more than 6.9 million ballots cast.

Layla A. Jones
Nov. 17, 2020, 5:55 p.m.



Two weeks after Election Day, the Office of City Commissioners announced Tuesday night their count of all Philadelphia’s votes was complete. The result? The city’s highest turnout since 1984, per Commissioner Al Schmidt.

Combining in-person with mail and valid provisional votes, more than 749,000 Philadelphians cast ballots in the November election. Contrary to early predictions, more city voters cast a ballot this year than when Obama was elected. Joe Biden received 81% of this year’s Philly vote, and Donald Trump pulled in 18%. Just under half the total, about 365k of the city’s votes, came via mail ballot this year.

Turnout was high nationwide. More than 155 million Americans voted in the 2020 election, which is more than over a century, according to projections from Bloomberg. In Pennsylvania, more than 6.9 million people cast a ballot, PennLive reports, which is nearly 71% of the voting age population and the highest since 1960.

About 66% of Philly’s 1.1 million registered voters cast ballots this year — compared to 59% in 2016. Voter registration was also the highest since 1984, with about 9 out of 10 eligible Philadelphians signed up.

(snip)

https://billypenn.com/2020/11/17/philly-turnout-2020-lower-obama-trump-biden/

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. But sadly, that higher turnout was more due to a large Republican increase

than a Democratic increase. So, sure, if you're just interested in how many people voted, and not in who they voted for, go ahead and write a different article, like Billy Penn did. But what you're saying is that, rather than write an article about the votes that had been counted at that stage (most of them, by the Saturday), with caveats about the count not yet being complete, the Inquirer should have censored itself and printed nothing about the publicly-known results by then.

[JI7]

11. A lot of support for Caruso came later on. I agree about waiting to count the mail in votes

but I still think Caruso has good chance to win . Plus he has unlimited personal funds for ads .