If Oklahoma voters sometimes feel overwhelmed by the number of choices on their general-election ballots, consider California. Residents of San Diego County certainly are not lacking in Election Day choices.
Collectively, the ballots in that county will offer voters a variety of selections in 196 contests on November 3, according to Registrar Michael Vu.
Depending upon where one lives – San Diego County has 10 suburbs and small communities – residents will vote on mayors, city council members, a city attorney, the county supervisor, congressional and school board seats, and, of course, who should be the 46th President of the United States.
SAN DIEGO COUNTY: 12 PROPOSITIONS, 27 MEASURES
Oklahomans will vote next month on two proposed constitutional amendments, while San Diego County residents will vote November 3 on 12 state propositions.
Again depending upon where they live, San Diego County voters also will cast ballots on 27 measures, including general obligation bonds to finance affordable housing, establishing a commission on police practices, compensation for city council members in Carlsbad, a citizens initiative in Encinitas that would allow commercial marijuana activities such as cultivation and product manufacturing and retail dispensaries, taxing retail cannabis activities in Lemon Grove and Oceanside, term limits for the mayors and city council members of Santee and Oceanside, school bond issues in four school districts and proposed fees for two fire protection districts.
OKLA. BALLOTS PRINTED IN ENGLISH; SAN DIEGO COUNTY: 9 LANGUAGES
Furthermore, because the San Diego County voter guide will feature 842 variations in five languages – English, Spanish, Filipino, Vietnamese and Chinese – those pamphlets will comprise a total of 4,210 variations, Vu noted. Los Angeles County ballots will be printed in Cambodian and Korean, too, and some San Diego County precincts will have ballots printed in Laotian, Japanese, Korean and Arabic, Vu said.
Oklahoma ballots will be printed only in English, said Misha Mohr, the State Election Board’s public information officer. San Diego County residents will have four days for in-person voting: October 31 through November 3. In-person absentee voting in Oklahoma will be conducted October 29-31, and polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. November 3.
Voters in San Diego County (which encompasses 4,526 square miles) have 126 locations at which they can drop off absentee ballots. In comparison, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has limited Texas to one drop-off location in each of the state’s 254 counties, including 1,778 square-mile Harris County (Houston), 1,257 square-mile Bexar County (San Antonio), and 909 square-mile Dallas County (Dallas).
Vu said this November’s election is unusual, at least for Californians, because of cybersecurity concerns, the coronavirus pandemic, wildfires that have scorched more than four million acres, and a host of social media sites spreading disinformation.
“This will be an election unlike any other,” Thad Kousser, a professor of political science and department chair at the University of California, San Diego, said during a “Voting 2020” online program streamed over the internet recently.
MAIL BALLOT VOTER FRAUD QUITE RARE
The “lack of faith” in the integrity of voting by mail are unfounded, said Vu, who earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and government at the University of Utah. “We know that incidents of voter fraud are infinitesimally small, because there are so many safeguards.”
During a federal lawsuit in Tulsa earlier this year, Oklahoma State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax testified he believes that voter fraud in Oklahoma is “exceptionally rare...” The reason, he said, is because of “the protections that are provided under Oklahoma law for in-person voting ... including the verification of the ID of a voter...” and verification of ballots by obtaining a notary’s signature.
Every mail-in ballot Vu’s office processes is tracked and the signature is verified “against signatures on our records,” he said. “We have decades of experience in mail-in balloting.”
MAIL VS. IN-PERSON VOTING PREFERENCE GAP NOW ‘A GULF’
Kousser said the partisan divide in voting preference – by mail versus in person – “has grown from a gap to a gulf over the past several months” because of COVID-19.
At the national level, only about 25% of Republicans indicated they intend to vote by mail, while “just over 50%” of Democrats said they intend to vote by mail rather than in-person on November 3, Kousser said a political science research team led by UCSD learned.
More than 1.9 million absentee ballots were mailed to all registered voters in San Diego County, along with prepaid-postage envelopes in which to return them, Vu said.
The Oklahoma State Election Board had received 284,893 applications for absentee ballots as of October 8, Ms. Mohr said. “That’s triple what we received in 2016 and more than double the number we received for the 2018 general election,” she said. The state Election Board received 94,598 absentee ballot applications for the 2016 general election, and 122,864 absentee ballot requests for the 2018 statewide general election, records show.
The deadline in Oklahoma to request an absentee ballot is 5 p.m. October 27, Ms. Mohr said.
275 ELECTION LAWSUITS PENDING IN COURTS, UCSD PROFESSOR SAYS
Kousser said there are 275 pandemic-related election law cases “working their way through the courts.
A federal judge in Tulsa upheld Oklahoma’s absentee voting law last month in a lawsuit filed in May by the state Democratic Party and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Questions that jurists are being asked to decide, Kousser said, include: Can ballots be processed [counted] before November 3 in order to ease the pressure on Election Day? And how many days will be allowed to count ballots after Election Day?
In Oklahoma, an absentee ballot must be received by the local election board no later than 7 p.m. on Election Day in order to be counted. The final results of local races in San Diego County won’t be certified until December 3, a month after the general election, to allow plenty of time for counting late-arriving absentee ballots, Vu said.
Republicans “are pushing for a shorter window,” said Kousser.
Members of the armed forces serving overseas, college students attending school far from home, and American “expats” living in other countries “all have the ability to vote” in U.S. elections, Vu noted. However, to be counted, their absentee ballots must be postmarked by November 3, he emphasized.