New voters among many California voters heading to the polls

Department of Elections voter services worker Shane Agao works at City Hall in San Francisco on Tuesday. In comparison, presidential primary turnout was a whopping 55.8 percent in 2008.

A surge of 650,000 new voters less than two months ahead of the primary set up a potentially big turnaround from the historically low turnout of 2014.

To the point about how fiercely contested contests boost turnout, when Hillary Clinton ran against Barack Obama in 2008, the two each got more than 17 million votes. Contra Costa has been planning to accommodate 60 percent of registrants, and Alameda is hoping to hit 70 percent.

Such factors as a noncompetitive Republican presidential primary and The Associated Press call the night before the primary that Hillary Clinton had secured enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination may have played a role, according to Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst and senior fellow at USC.

The potentially confusing system prompted a lawsuit by Sanders supporters who argued that election officials were depriving unaffiliated voters of their right to cast ballots. California is a well-known strong blue state and Democratic presidential nominees have won the state in each of the last six election cycles.

Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders immediately demurred, calling the AP report “unfortunate”. Ballots counted by Wednesday morning, June 8, represented only one in four eligible Californians and one in three registered voters. It includes 616,000 outstanding ballots in the most populous county, Los Angeles.

Hourly polling place results will be updated until 1 a.m.

“It’s a disappointing number compared to what I think many people were thinking”, said Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project at the University of California, Davis.

In past primaries, independent voters have heavily supported Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders. “But when we went through it all, there they were”.

“Vote-by-mail ballots that are mailed must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by your county elections office no later than 3 days after Election Day”.

More than 2.5 million ballots from California’s June 7 primary are still uncounted, sparking questions about the results of the presidential contest in which Hillary Clinton emerged the victor and leaving the fate of local races in the air as poll workers continue to grapple with reports of voter difficulties.

The Field Poll also estimated a dramatic increase in voters opting to mail in their ballot rather than visit a polling place. But this year we are seeing a doubling of registration growth among Latinos, and a more than 150% increase for some young voters, and a near-tripling for Democrats.