Record Voter Registration of 15.1 Million Points to Big Turnout

A record 15.1 million Californians are registered to vote in the Nov. 3 general election and signs are pointing to a potentially heavy turnout, both in the precincts and in absentee balloting, election officials said Thursday.

One expert predicted that 11 million Californians might vote this year, nearly 1 million more than the number voting in 1988, the only election in California history in which turnout exceeded 10 million.

Democrats were particularly buoyed by the registration totals released by the office of Secretary of State March Fong Eu. Of the more than 2 million new voters signed up since February, Democrats accounted for 1.13 million, or nearly 53% of all new registrants, Democratic Party officials said. Republicans increased their voter rolls by a little more than half a million, or 23% of the new voters.

Of the 15.1-million total, 7.4 million or 49.05% were Democrats, 6 million or 37.04% were Republicans and the rest belonged to the four minor parties or were officially listed as “decline to state,” California’s term for independent voters.

The Democrats thus reversed the trend of recent elections of an increasing proportion of Republicans and a declining percentage of Democrats among all voters. At the start of 1990, the Democrats’ registration had fallen below 50% for the first time in decades, accounting for 49.94% to the Republicans’ 39.02%. By the end of 1991, the Democrats were down to 48.5%.

In Los Angeles County, there were 2 million Democrats, or 55%, and 1.2 million Republicans, 32.4%. Orange remained California’s most heavily Republican county, 52.3% to 34.5%. San Francisco County is the most Democratic, 63% to 17%.

Requests for absentee ballots in Los Angeles County were running 100,000 beyond the rate at the corresponding point before the last presidential election in 1988, said Marcia Ventura of the county registrar of voters office.

Officials in some other counties were reported to have run out of absentee ballot request forms and were having more printed. San Diego County officials told state authorities the county may have 300,000 absentee ballots cast.

Eu will not make her official voter turnout forecast until next Friday. Also, the registration figures released Thursday are preliminary, compiled by telephone survey of the 58 counties. The final official figures, also to be released next week, are not expected to vary much.

Don Tanney, the Orange County registrar of voters, said he expects 78% to 80% of his county’s registered voters to cast ballots.

Tanney said his office had sent out 139,124 absentee ballots by Thursday. In 1988, there were 81,408 absentee ballots cast. Those rose to 110,457 in the gubernatorial election of 1990 even though total voter turnout two years ago was far less than in 1988.

Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll estimated that more than 11 million Californians may vote this year, or about 73% of the registered voters. The turnout in 1988 was slightly less than 73%, falling to 59% in 1990. Voter participation in presidential years always is far greater than in the so-called off years, although the off years are when all of California’s statewide officials are chosen.

Voting by mail, or by absentee ballot submitted to voting officials on Election Day, has risen dramatically since the late 1970s, when election laws were liberalized so that anyone, in effect, could vote absentee. Until then, absentee voters had to declare that they either would be traveling out of the state on Election Day or that they were prevented by some disability from going to the polls.

In the 1990 vote for governor, nearly 1.5 million voters, 18.4% of the total vote, cast absentee ballots. The outcome of the state attorney general’s contest could not be determined until days after the election when the final absentee ballots were tallied.

The Field Poll’s DiCamillo, a student of absentee balloting, said it is difficult to predict whether many of the new voters will cast absentee ballots or wait to go to the polls on Election Day. Generally, absentee voters are younger or older than most voting Californians, he said. They have been slightly more Republican, but with no significant difference by sex, ethnicity, political ideology or education.

Though Democrats have impressed political observers with their registration drive this year, the California Republican Party has accused them of improperly shifting $478,000 from party funds into the campaign against Proposition 165, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s welfare plan. A Democratic official denied there was anything improper and called the GOP charge “baloney.”

The party registration totals announced Thursday: Democrats 7,441,528, 49.08%; Republicans 5,593,847, 37.04%; Decline to State 1,567,842, 10.38%; American Independent Party 247,454, 1.64%; Green Party 98,737, 0.65%; Libertarian Party 71,154, 0.47%; Peace and Freedom Party 70,182, 0.47% and miscellaneous other parties 42,078, 0.28%.

Times staff writer Dave Lesher contributed to this story.