SACRAMENTO — As election results slowly trickled in late Tuesday, California appeared headed for the worst voter turnout for a presidential primary since Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a third term 52 years ago, California Secretary of State March Fong Eu said.
She attributed the poor turnout to the seeming irrelevance of the California vote in the nomination of presidential candidates in both major parties.
"The primary election here in California is so late that it's already decided by the rest of the country who the Democratic and Republican nominees will be," she said.
Eu also noted that there were only three statewide propositions on the ballot and that none was placed there by initiative. Ballot measures that qualify by initiative petition often are controversial and attract considerable voter attention.
Eu estimated that the turnout was about 44% of California's 13.6 million registered voters. The only time the turnout for a presidential primary was lower was in 1940, when it was 43%. In those days, a separate presidential primary was held in May, three months before the primary for state and local offices.
Complicating the vote count this year was the large number of write-in ballots cast for undeclared independent presidential candidate Ross Perot.
Each ballot with a Perot write-in had to be set aside to determine whether the voter also had punched a vote for a regular party candidate for President. If so, the presidential vote on that ballot will not count. The rest of the ballot will be counted, but probably not for some time, perhaps several days.
Perot's write-in votes will not be counted because he was not an official write-in candidate, election officials said. Perot's supporters are working to qualify him for the November ballot.
Voter Turnout
\o7 Here is a list of state voter turnout percentages for presidential and gubernatorial primary and general elections.\f7
