People who are not registered to vote must appear in person at the Flathead County Election Department, which has been temporarily relocated to the Country Fair Kitchen Building at the Flathead County Fairgrounds, and fill out a voter registration card.
Advertisement
Voters in six states go to the polls on Tuesday to choose their preferred presidential candidate, with California and New Jersey the big prizes. But assuming a total 8 million of 17.9 million registered Californians voted, that means 44.7 percent of registered voters and 32.5 percent of eligible residents cast ballots.
Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project at UC Davis, said the numbers released Thursday indicate more voters participated than were anticipated in the days leading up the election.
It’s Primary Election Day, and voters who haven’t cast their ballot can still do so in Flathead County and most western Montana precincts.
If a voter registered as “No Party Preference” decides he or she wants to vote in one of the presidential primaries, the Democratic, American Independent and Libertarian parties all allow NPP voters to participate – but you can only vote in one party race, so you have to pick one. Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc. says there could be as many as 3 million still-uncounted votes.
Just over 6 million ballots have been counted so far.
A brief period when it looked like California could be decisive in both the Republican and Democratic presidential drove up interest in the election, but it’s not surprising that some would-be voters lost interest once the races looked decided, Romero said.
Clinton reached the 2,383 delegates needed to become the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on the eve of Tuesday’s voting, according to an Associated Press tally. “But overall we do know that turnout is above the 2012 levels”.
California’s top primary turnout was in 2008, when the state moved up its primary to early February to be more competitive and drew 9 million voters, 40 percent of registrants. Counting those signatures and processing voter registrations have strained county election offices, some of which had to hire temporary workers to handle the workload.
“There were a couple of places that had stacks and stacks of Democratic ballots because they have stacks and stacks of Democratic voters”, Konopasek said.
Voters in San Diego and Sacramento will cast ballots for a mayor.
Advertisement
Padilla made the comments at a post-election forum Thursday.
