Council candidate had mailed letters to 6,000 registered voters-700 were returned, reflecting outdated registrar list.
By Sylvie Belmond/Special to The Malibu Times
The recent City Council race attracted few to the polls, but this numerological fact may also represent outdated county registrar records that still show voters who have moved or died.
On April 9, 2,981 ballots were cast, not counting the provisional and absentee ballots handed in at the polls, but there are 9,009 registered voters, according to the county registrar.
“This is the lowest in Malibu History,” said exiting Councilmember Tom Hasse, who expressed disappointment with the results. “It’s too bad, it gave us the results we got.”
Candidates Sharon Barovsky and Andy Stern swept in the race, receiving almost twice the number of votes than the other candidates.
Malibu resident Doug O’Brien, who supported losing candidate Beverly Taki, also expressed concern with the number of voters.
“It was a terrible turnout and people get what they deserve,” he said.
O’Brien noted he is not particularly fond of the choice Malibuites made, “But when the winning people get only 15 percent of the total vote available in Malibu, that’s not a good reflection,” he said.
He was disappointed that Malibu will still be represented by “five ultra-liberals,” with no conservative voice to sound them off. He reasoned that for 11 years nothing has been done around town and all the city got is bus benches and trash cans.
“Apparently the people don’t want anything so they’ll get nothing,” he said.
As he discussed the influence of local media on the elections, O’Brien also observed there is not a paper in Malibu that just prints the news and lets people make their own decision.
“They [the two local papers] both editorialize and they have the right to do that, but that does make it tough for the candidates who contend,” he said.
The election winners, on the other hand, are not fussing over the turnout numbers as much, but even they noticed the lack of interest, as the low turnout appears to have impacted the candidates evenly across the board.
“The hard part about this election is we just had an election [in November],” Stern said. “But I wish people did vote.”
Before the election, all candidates had phone trees, and all wanted to get their message out, but the importance of the message may not have seemed as pressing to residents.
However, Barovsky did some research, which revealed interesting results.
“We may have closer to 7, 500 registered voters here,” she said.
While Los Angeles County maintains the database for registered voters in Malibu, it may not be accurate.
During the council campaign, Barovsky mailed 6,000 first class letters to registered voters in the city.
“I was interested in finding out whether these people still live here,” said Barovsky, who used a list she had recently purchased from the county.
“I got approximately 700 letters back,” Barovsky said, looking at a stack of returned envelopes not included in the count.
The letters were sent out to households, which could represent more than one voter at certain addresses if it was the residence of a couple or adult children lived on the premises; therefore, the 700 envelopes returned could equal 1,000 to 1,400 voters.
Barovsky noted she did not mail the letters to all 9,000 registered voters because she only selected those who had voted in one of the past three elections.
But still, the results were surprising and this led Barovsky to realize that, while the county needs to purge its registration list, it is a difficult job because it is hard to track down people. However, it also appears that the records still included people who had died a long time ago.
“A 120-year-old voter won’t be able to go to the polls,” Barovsky ironically noted.
On the percentage of voters who cast ballots, Barovsky said, “If we really only have 7,500, then 3,000 is not really a bad turnout.”
“But even if it’s closer to 40 percent that voted, that’s still shameful,” Barovsky continued. “People are dying all over the world for the right to vote. It’s a privilege that should be exercised.”
Retrospectively, Barovsky indicated that those results motivated her and the city to help the county purge the files.
“It’s definitely my goal to get our voter rolls as accurate as possible, to save money for city and get accurate election results,” said Lisa Pope, Malibu city clerk.
Marcia Ventura, public relations officer for the L.A. county registrar, said, generally, to update the files the county sends out notification cards.
“If they come back with a change of address we record that change,” she said.
Mail sent out by the registrar is not forwarded when people move.
“Usually, if a person has died, the family lets us know,” said Ventura, who checked her records and noted that as of April 12, Malibu had 9,009 registered voters.