Officials Warn of Absentee Vote Factor in Recall Election

[Oilwellian]

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 6 — About 3.2 million Californians have requested absentee ballots for Tuesday's recall election, and election officials are growing worried that counting this record number of absentee ballots could drag out the results of an already unwieldy election.

More than 2 million absentee ballots had been returned to election officials by Monday, state officials said. But about 1.2 million absentee and other ballots will not be counted until well after the election, and officials said on Monday that those votes could decide a potentially close race, raising the specter of an election with no clear winner for weeks.

Of that total, 800,000 absentee ballots and an expected 400,000 ballots that will not be counted until after election night because of anticipated snags will not be included in preliminary results from the counties, said Stephen Weir, the clerk-recorder of Contra Costa County in Northern California and the treasurer of a statewide association of county clerks and registrars.

"If it's close, it's bloody," said Mr. Weir, who estimated that 10 percent to 12 percent of the votes statewide would be counted after election night. "The next day we're dead, and people want to know what's left to be counted, and the bottom line is we're talking about 1.2 million votes that are not counted election night."

There are too many unknowns, including how many of the 15.4 million registered voters will turn out to vote and how the votes will shake out, to predict the influence of the absentee ballots. But Mr. Weir was estimating that 8 million to 10 million voters would turn out, with at least a third of them voting by absentee ballot. County election officials, who said absentee ballots had decided local elections in recent years, said on Monday that if the race was close enough, it could take the counties, who have up to 28 days after the election to count the absentee ballots and certify the election results, several weeks to finalize a tally.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/07/national/07BALL.html?hp

[TrogL]

1. There may be a second problem

They were discussing this on the CBC tonight.

Many of these ballots were cast before the latest revelations about Ahnold's attitude towards women. However, a poll shows that many of these leaned towards not recalling Davis.