Ali OTO

“Incumbent Secretary of State is the only person in California who thinks otherwise.” San Francisco—Yesterday’s primary had the second lowest turnout in recent California history, when calculated as the percentage of eligible voters who went to the polls. Of the approximately 20.5 million eligible voters in the state, a mere 5.6 million turned out to vote, for a turnout of 27%.

Despite these numbers, incumbent Secretary of State Bill Jones insisted that turnout was considerably higher (around 40%), based on his calculation of turnout compared to registered voters.

“The incumbent Secretary of State appears to be the only person in the State of California who thinks we had a high turnout yesterday,” Alioto said. “But rather than tell the public that only one in four eligible voters participated in the primary, Jones wants to hoodwink them into believing otherwise.”

Alioto’s statement referred to Jones’ comments in Monday’s San Francisco Examiner. Acknowledging that the major reason for the “increased” participation rate is statistical, Jones stated that he was employing “the psychology of the message” in order to lead people to believe that turnout is higher than more statistically reliable methods (San Francisco Examiner, June 1, 1998).

“Secretaries of State have historically been judged by their ability to involve people in the electoral process, and Jones’ attempt to statistically reinvent his record in office is dishonest,” Alioto said. “By the measure of voter turnout, Jones’ term in office has been a total failure.”

“Cutting people from registration roles is not the key to improving turnout,” Alioto continued. “That’s why, as Secretary of State, I will work to implement same-day registration, multi-day elections, extended voting hours, and the use the power of new information technologies to open up the political process to the nearly 15 million eligible voters who did not participate in yesterday’s election.”