The San Luis Obispo County Elections Office was busy Wednesday counting ballots collected from polling locations across the county on Election Day.
“We’re going through all the vote-by-mail ballot bags that were out at the polling stations, so we’re going through those, counting up to see how many there are,” said Elaina Cano, SLO County Clerk-Recorder.
Cano says voter turnout is strong in this midterm election, with about 45% of San Luis Obispo County voters having cast a ballot so far.
“Midterms are always a lighter turnout, with especially on how we have a two card ballot right now, it doubles everything,” Cano said.
Cano says the two-card ballot also means twice the work. If 70,000 ballots are counted, election workers have actually processed 140,000 individual ballot cards.
Cal Poly Political Science professor Michael Latner says this election has been historic nationally, with some races showing a significant shift toward Democratic candidates.
“I think there are a few major trends that we can see in the data, the first of which is the sort of standard explanation: it’s not unusual for the president’s party to lose some seats in the midterm election,” Latner said.
He says voters typically base those decisions on a couple of different things.
“The economy, involvement in another war in the Middle East, very unpopular among voters, so that contributes,” Latner said.
Locally, results show San Luis Obispo County voters heavily favored Xavier Becerra, while the City of San Luis Obispo tried out the citywide single vote system for the first time.
“It’s notable that the progressive majority in SLO, in the City of SLO, was able to coordinate because every voter only has one vote in this new system," Latner said.
The next wave of results is expected to be released Thursday night. Updates on those can be found here.
