Absentee ballots roll into elections offices at fast clip

Fresno, Madera and Tulare counties have more than 20% returned.

Published online on Friday, Oct. 27, 2006

Hiley Wallis is on the phone.

The elections division manager for Tulare County is talking about her most current statistics for absentee ballots.

"Oh, I just saw the mail lady, and she's got another nine trays for us," Wallis said Thursday afternoon. "She's walking in the front door."

And just like that, Wallis' numbers are out of date. Absentee ballots keep rolling in.

The statistics climb every day. With less than two weeks until Election Day, county officials in the central San Joaquin Valley are reporting similar results: More than one-fifth of the absentee ballots have been returned in Fresno, Madera and Tulare counties.

Absentee voting, once restricted to only the disabled or absent, was opened up to all voters under a 2002 election law.

Since then, absentee voting has become increasingly popular, say election officials, who cite the convenience of voting by mail as a factor.

Absentee ballots won't be counted until Nov. 7, but the ballots are stamped, scanned, verified and sorted before being kept under lock and key.

Fresno County is leading the pack with 23.7% — or 31,610 — of its absentee ballots returned.

"And climbing," County Clerk Victor Salazar said happily.

Salazar is not only referring to the trays of absentee ballots his office gets every day, but also to the number of absentee ballots still being requested. Voters have until Tuesday to request to vote by mail. And both tallies are still growing.

"That's on track," Salazar said. "We're going to get a whole slew of them from now until Election Day. Every day, we'll pick up trays full of mail with the absentee ballots."

As of Sept. 8, a total of 328,693 people were registered to vote in the county, according to a state elections Web site.

Salazar has estimated that absentee voting in Fresno County has increased by 3% to 5% with every election since 2002. In the June primary election, 57.3% of the 105,645 people who voted did so by mail, according to the county clerk's office.

Madera County had received 22.56% of its absentee ballots in the mail as of Thursday morning. That's 5,273 out of 23,368. The state Web site reports a total of 49,825 people were registered to vote in Madera County as of Sept. 8.

The number of returned ballots had more than doubled since Saturday morning, when the count was 2,297. Election workers received 1,019 ballots on Tuesday and 730 on Wednesday.

"That's a good number," said Madera County Clerk Rebecca Martinez. "They're starting to come in in larger numbers, which makes us happy."

And busy. She has four staffers who take care of the incoming ballots. Two pick up the stash every morning at a local post office. Back at the office, the foursome have a system: One person stamps the ballots, another scans in the envelope, a third verifies the voter's signature, and the last sorts the ballots by precinct, Martinez said.

It takes about four hours to process 2,000 ballots, she said.

Afterward, the ballots are stored in a locked vault and will remain sealed until seven days before the election, Martinez said.

Nearly 5,000 more ballots were mailed out in Madera County for this election compared to the primary election in June, when 12,904 absentee ballots were returned. Martinez said she's hoping to get at least 15,000 or 16,000 returned for this election.

"We should have a better turnout," she said. "Generally, more people come out for a general than a primary."

In Tulare County, 48,200 absentee ballots had been issued as of Thursday. Of those, 10,656 had been returned — good for 22.1%.

And that's not counting the nine trays — with about 500 ballots per tray — that had just come through the front door.

The total number of registered voters in Tulare County as of Sept. 8 was 133,112.

"It's coming in pretty good," Wallis said. "It's good that [absentee ballots] come in early so that we can process them and they'll be part of the results on election night."