Experts wondering if there will be A New Wave of Voters

They've signed up in droves, but will they show up?

By Josh Richman/Oakland Tribune   31 October 2004

A last-minute wave of voter registration plus skyrocketing numbers of unaffiliated and absentee voters have left experts baffled about what might happen in California and across the nation on Election Day and beyond.

On the surface, it seems the electorate voting Tuesday could be markedly different from that of 2000.

Preliminary data from the 10-county Bay Area and from some swing states show three trends: more voters overall, more voters declining to state a party preference and more voters casting ballots by mail.

For example, Florida?s voter registration is up about 18 percent with a 13 percent increase for Republicans, 12 percent for Democrats and 39 percent for unaffiliated voters.

Pennsylvania's is up about 7 percent overall: 6 percent for Democrats, 4 percent for Republicans and 21 percent for unaffiliated voters.

Closer to home, Alameda County's registration seems to have grown about 10 percent a 7 percent boost for Democrats, a 4 percent loss for Republicans and a 40 percent rise in unaffiliateds.

The unaffiliated trend is even more pronounced in Contra Costa County, where registration seems to be up 3 percent up less than half a percent for Democrats, down 3 percent for Republicans and up 61 percent for unaffiliateds. In San Mateo County, it's 5 percent overall 2 percent up for Democrats, 1 percent down for Republicans and 27 percent up for unaffiliateds.

But who will come out to vote for whom for president? Who will control the U.S. Senate? Which state ballot measures will be affected?

"We don't know," said University of California, Berkeley, political science Professor Henry Brady, an expert in political participation, "If anybody tells you they know, I'd be very skeptical," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior scholar at the University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development.

"Who knows what'll actually happen," said Michael McDonald, a voter-turnout expert at George Mason University in Virginia and the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution.

Nobody's eager to read the tea leaves with good reason. Here are a few things to consider as the final hours before Election 2004 tick away:

1. How good are the data?

Pretty darned bad, actually.

Voter registration is always nuanced by a few factors. Different counties have different timetables and methods for "purging" their voter rolls, producing a slight apples-to-oranges effect in comparing their changes in registration. Also, counties' numbers of people eligible to register change slightly over time population might increase or decrease, or the number of voting-age people might change, or the number of noncitizens might ebb or surge.

Voter registration: Officials are still counting last-minute registrations, but here's how it looked at week's end in the Bay Area: registration is up overall, Republicans saw losses, Democrats saw modest gains and decline-to-state registration has exploded. (Click on image to view interactive map.)  
Sometimes it's hard to know exactly who's registered. Some states Ohio, for example don't have their voters choose a party affiliation at registration; their tallies of "Democrats" and "Republicans" are based on how many of each party's ballots were requested in the most recent primary.

These sorts of influences always apply. But this year, both locally and nationally, registration tallies are turning into a bit of a train wreck for other reasons, confounding accurate predictions.

Counties in California and across the country, especially larger counties, have been swamped by tsunamis of voter registration forms dumped on registrars' offices at the last minute by groups that had saved up applications gathered weeks or months before. And in California, this is the first presidential election since the state rolled its registration deadline from 29 days pre-vote back to just 15 days; registrars simply weren't ready for this onslaught.

As a result, thousands of voter registration applications won't be processed by Election Day, skewing predictions of what the electorate looks like.

Alameda County, for example, might have as many as 5,000 people who registered to vote but haven't been added to the rolls yet. More on them later.

2. Will the new voters vote?

"A lot of them will vote, but a lot of them won't," hedged Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and never was that old axiom more appropriately applied than to voting."

Whether in Fremont or in Philadelphia, some people filled out voter registration cards this year when someone handed them a clipboard outside a supermarket, or upon pausing at a table on campus, or when applying for a driver's license. Some are eager to vote, while others registered only because they were asked. And some will find the time to vote, while some will be distracted by a busy day at work, the kids or the weather.

McDonald said it used to be that registration itself was a good predictor of turnout people who bothered to register would usually make the effort to vote. But with the advent of "motor-voter" automatic registration laws, registration became a more passive activity "and it wasn't as good a measure of intent anymore."

Both parties have engaged in massive mobilization efforts to ensure all those people they've gotten registered in the past few months actually vote, he noted, and that includes decline-to-state voters. "They're looking everywhere they can this time for votes," McDonald said.

But ultimately, it's a personal choice.

"If they're angry enough and focused enough, they'll come out and vote," USC's Jeffe said. "If they're just a product of the increased ease with which you can register and they're not really motivated, they won't. I can't even begin to guess."

In California, it's anybody's guess.

In 2000, about 15.7 million Californians were registered to vote in the presidential race between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush; about 11.1 million about 71 percent actually voted. In 2002, about 15.3 million voters were registered for the coma-inducing gubernatorial matchup between incumbent Democrat Gray Davis and Republican Bill Simon; only 7.7 million of them about 51 percent actually voted.

And in 2003, about 15.4 million voters were registered for the much-hyped recall election catapulting movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger into the governor's office; about 9.4 million of them about 61 percent actually voted.

So recent years have been a wild ride for the California electorate. This year, the state hasn't been considered "in play" for the presidential race polls have borne out pundits' contention that it's a lock for Democrat John Kerry so candidates accordingly have spent little time and money here.

But they've raised massive amounts of money in California, one of many signs that while we're not a swing state, Californians have firm opinions about this vote. Whether they express themselves at the polls remains to be seen.

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is optimistic. He estimated last week that 73 percent of California's registered voters a record 12 million people will vote Tuesday.

Some will try to vote but fail. Roughly 0.5 percent to 1 percent of absentee voters don't get their ballots, for example; the U.S. Postal Service already is sending stacks of undeliverable ballots back to every county elections office, along with plastic bags of ballots chewed up by postal machines. The number of lost absentees is soaring into the thousands in most large California counties. Alameda County tried shoring up its gap Friday by mailing out another 6,000 absentee ballots.

3. If the new voters do vote, who for? And what's this spike in unaffiliated voters all about?

Call 2004 "the year of the unlikely voter," for whether or not they cast ballots Tuesday, they're the talk of the nation.

Most national and swing-state polls survey "likely voters" people who've been registered for a long time, voted often in the past, are very conversant with the issues and so forth. But both parties, as well as nonpartisan groups, this year have tried to register and mobilize people who ordinarily don't participate in politics, telling them this is the most important election of their lifetimes.

Parties targeted their core constituencies. Democrats sought out poor people and minorities, Republicans pursued groups including evangelical Christians. But many of those demographics aren't apparent in registration data, and it's yet to be seen who'll actually show up.

Also, pollsters might've missed significant blocs of voters this year for example, more and more young people are relying upon cell phones without keeping "land lines" in their homes, and pollsters never call cell numbers. And in states that don't register voters by party affiliation like Ohio it's hard for pollsters to define a sample that truly represents the whole electorate.

Sabato said he believes new voters lean Democratic: "You can argue about the percentage I think it's about 55-45, I've had colleagues who say it's 60-40. If they do come out in enormous numbers, Kerry's going to win. If they don't, Bush will win."

Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, agreed ... sort of.

"I think the higher the turnout, the more likely it is Kerry is going to win, but that's sort of traditional mantra," he said, adding he doesn't necessarily believe unaffiliated or undecided voters will skew heavily toward a challenger in this wartime, post-Sept. 11 election.

The very idea of "new voters" as a swing vote bears consideration, he said. It very well could be "the people who know the least about politics who will be deciding our election isn't that frightening?"

A recent California Voter Foundation study found the state's infrequent voters people who are registered but voted in none or one of the last four statewide elections are relatively young, with about half under 40; about 60 percent white, 20 percent Latino, 9 percent Asian/Pacific Islander and 4 percent black; have at least some college education; likely earn less than $50,000 per year; and are more likely to decline to state a party preference.

As for the increase in unaffiliated voters, McDonald said it's not that "parties are dead in America ... but more people want to say they're Independent." That doesn't mean they lack firm opinions, however surveys show unaffiliated voters often hold more "partisan" stances than some registered party members, he said.

Jeffe summed it up: "They're fed up with both major parties."

Brady suggested this year's aggressive registration drives "are getting into groups that traditionally have not been registering and so don't have strong party identification."

In the Bay Area, Brady noted Republicans are posting the largest registration losses while unaffiliated voters surge. "It's conceivably people who are really closet Republicans registering as decline-to-state," he said. "That may have real impacts on their behavior, ultimately, because it means they're not happy with the party. It could affect their top-of-the ticket vote, and even down the ticket."

That brings us to ...

4. If the new voters vote, will they vote down the ticket?

In California, "the reason that most people are registering ... is that they either love Bush or hate Bush" and probably because they're hot to protect local government funding or reform the "Three-Strikes" sentencing law, Stern said. He anticipates "a big -off" from the number of people casting a presidential vote to the number of people voting on state ballot measures, local offices and the like.

Brady agreed. "It seems likely they were motivated by the fact that this is an important presidential election ... and if that's what's getting them to register, they might not be interested in anything else."

In the Bay Area, that would have mixed results. Polls say the U.S. Senate race was never close, and lopsided party registration has made local House races into foregone conclusions. So these races' outcomes almost certainly won't change even if many voters skip over them. And "we can't assume it's going to favor one side or another on any of the ballot propositions," Jeffe said.

5. OK, we don't know much. When will we know?

Um ... we don't know when we'll know. Could be a few hours after the polls close. Could be a few weeks.

Remember that last-minute surge of registrations? A lot of people in California and across the nation will arrive at their polling places Tuesday only to find their names haven't been added to the rolls yet. They'll have to cast provisional ballots that are subject to scrutiny after Election Day, making them the most statistically likely to be discarded altogether.

So state and local elections officials say it could take a week after the election to get a full picture of registered voters in 2004 and almost three more weeks to count all the absentee and provisional ballots cast on Election Day.

There surely will be complaints be they isolated or widespread of problems with electronic voting machines, inappropriate behavior by election workers, voter intimidation and other forms of disenfranchisement. Thousands of lawyers and other volunteers have been deployed from coast to coast, sometimes precinct by precinct, to keep watch for these. In a tight race, any could be considered grounds for a lawsuit.

Heavy voter turnout could expose programming problems in the computers counting more than three-quarters of the nation's vote. San Diego County officials were dismayed after the March primary to learn that Diebold vote-tabulation software had misawarded thousands of absentee votes for Sen. John Kerry to Rep. Dick Gephardt, who had ped out of the race. Alameda County suffered the same kind of glitch in 2003's gubernatorial recall election. Diebold in both cases blamed the high volume of voting, among other factors.

Both counties have new vote-counting software that Diebold insists has fixed the problem.

"At this point I feel pretty confident," said Alameda County Assistant Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold. Then again, Ginnold says, she had the same confidence before the recall snafu.

This time, "I'm ready for anything," she said. "This election is just so extreme, so outside the norm."