SF vote-by-mail provides early political snapshot

Pub date October 27, 2010
WriterSarah Phelan
SectionPolitics Blog

San Francisco’s Department of Elections had received 41,620 vote-by-mail returns so far That’s a fifth of the 210,993 vote-by-mail forms that were requested this year.
And while we don’t know which districts these folks voted in, we do know how they were registered: Over half were Democrats (24,153 votes), a quarter were decline-to-state (10,563 votes), and a fifth were Republican (5,565 votes).

I was surprised to learn that there are more vote-by-mail requests from folks registered with the American Independent Party (573) than with the Green Party, but not surprised to see that 200 folks were registered as Libertarians and 81 as Peace and Freedom Party.

Unfortunately, we can’t compare SF’s vote-by-mail snapshot with the statewide picture.
According to folks at the California Secretary of State’s office, votes won’t be broken down into vote-by-mail categories until after the election is certified…