After successfully managing record voter turnout, Los Angeles County will continue a policy of sending vote-by-mail ballots to every registered voter in future elections.
Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan made the announcement during a Tuesday briefing to the Board of Supervisors on the operations behind last week’s election.
“We can now say, I think with confidence, that the voting model that we’ve adopted in L.A. County is sustainable,” Logan said. “By the action of your board and the way that the Voter’s Choice Act is written, this model of mailing ballots to every registered voter in all elections going forward is in place. That is the model that will be used.”
On Election Day, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he could imagine the entire state permanently moving to the same policy of mailing ballots to all registered voters, but said the decision would be up to the Legislature.
Though Los Angeles County staffers are still in the process of certifying ballots, at last count more than 4.2 million Los Angeles County residents voted in this election. That is nearly 74 percent of the total 5.7 million registered voters countywide.
“While the percentage of registered voters is not a record, it is still noteworthy,” Logan said. “More than 4 million votes (were) cast in this election, which is the highest number of votes cast in any election in L.A. County and in any local jurisdiction in the country.
“Just to put that in perspective, our last record turnout as a percentage of voters was in the 2008 presidential election … we now actually have more votes cast in this election than we had registered voters in 2008, so pretty phenomenal,” he said.
Roughly 80 percent of voters took advantage of vote-by-mail ballots, even though Los Angeles County residents have traditionally favored in-person voting. More than half of those mail-in ballots were dropped off at the more than 400 drop boxes set up around the county.
The limited wait times for in-person voting and notable lack of technical glitches last week stood in sharp contrast to the March primary, when some voters stood in line for hours and new technology malfunctioned.
