Letter: Voter Turnout Understated by 80%.

A first hand report from an Election Observer.

By Alan Hirsch

I know all this as I was election observer at the Yolo County offices in Woodland—and I want to correct some misinformation.

Many have commented on low turnout as of vote count Tuesday Night. In fact, turnout  has  been understated by 80%.

However, on Tuesday night  saw I saw with my own eye many, many trays  of uncounted mail ballots collected in drop boxes that day. I watched as they were put into secure storage to be later signature verified and tabulated by race. This was because the county election crew had already put in a 15-hour day—my wife, an election worker at the ARC,  started at 6am and was not home until after 9pm.

The next day, Wednesday, the PM Yolo County election office reported a count of those unopened envelope put into storage that night: 22,209.  And this is not the end—mail ballots, if postmarked by Election Day can be received for another couple days.

Compare that with votes fully tabulated and reported out Tuesday night—28,045. A number on a report I walked away from the Woodland County Election Office with that night. This number was ONLY the number of mail-in ballots receive by Monday—by mail or drop boxes—PLUS all voting in person on election day.

This means the percent turnout number talked about on Wednesday was understated by at least 80%.  Hot news can be wrong.

Alan Hirsch is a Davis Resident.

Source: https://twitter.com/YoloCoACE/status/1534992870184132609

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2 comments

  1. Thanks for working the election Alan.  I have a couple of questions about your numbers, in particular the 28,045 number you cite from Tuesday evening. Are you talking about Davis only or Yolo County as a whole? As of this writing, the yoloelections.org page shows the Measure H results for Davis totaling only 11,166 as of around 1 AM Wednesday. The highest vote total I see on yoloelections.org are for DA with 26,273 votes – also from early Wednesday morning. I am sure those totals will go up. Can you clarify?

  2. Alan

    I don’t follow your math. What reported benchmark value are you using? You show a county-wide number of 28,000 counted and 22,000 to be counted later. That’s about 44% left to be counted. That’s consistent with the numbers I’ve seen reported for Davis.

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