If you noticed your mailbox was stuffed yesterday with negative political ads and the TV commercials about your favorite candidates were particular nasty, here's the reason:
"Election Day starts Monday," said Sarah Pompei, spokeswoman for Meg Whitman, the front-running GOP candidate for governor.
Starts is the key word here. While the finish line for the heated primary election is June 8, the day the polls open, a sizable percentage of the state's voters — including two-thirds in Santa Clara County — will get their ballots in the mail this week.
It's part of an extraordinary trend that has forever altered the way California's political campaigns are run.
"We've gone from an election day to an election month," said Allan Hoffenblum, a former Republican consultant who handicaps election campaigns as publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book.
Here is the vote-by-mail percentage in gubernatorial elections:
..................Primary General
- 1982 5.57% .......6.51%
- 1986 8.63% .......9.00%
- 1990 15.02% ...18.38%
- 1994 20.37% ...22.58%
- 1998 25.26% ...24.72%
- 2002 26.08%...27.09%
- 2006 46.90%...41.54%
