Dear LAist: Why do some elections have more votes than others?

Do you vote in every race? If so, gold star for doing your civic duty to a tee.

But a lot of people don’t. While California election officials are still working their way through the remaining ballots, current numbers illustrate that non-voting trend. Here’s a look at how “undervoting” shaped this election cycle.

What is undervoting?

If you look closely at some ballot counts, you may notice some races have more total votes than others. It’s called undervoting, which is when a person — intentionally or not — skips a race on their ballot.

Undervoting happens in every contest. There can be obscure candidates you don’t recognize, so you don’t vote for either one. Maybe you ran out of time.

In any case, undervoting is normal and common. But it can be hard to spot where it affects races. It’s usually easier to notice in countywide or statewide contests because all voters in that given area have at least two races to decide.

This year, if you crack open a calculator, you can see it in our two senate races and the 10 propositions. (Don’t worry, I crunched the numbers for you.)

What the contests show

Again, this happens in every contest. But here, we’ll look at two prime examples. So far, around 600,000 voters sat out on at least one statewide proposition.

At one point in the count last week, Prop. 34, which is about drug revenues spending rules, was the least voted-on measure with 13.2 million total votes between “yes” and “no.” And Prop. 32, the measure to raise the state minimum wage, was the most voted-on with nearly 13.8 million. Counts are still ongoing, so these numbers have already changed and will continue to do so until it's all over. And here's where they stand now:

We also had two senate races this cycle.

One was to elect a senator to serve out the remainder of late Sen. Diane Feinstein’s term that expires in January, and the other is for the full term after that.

Both races were between Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey.

While Schiff ultimately won, both candidates have different margins between the races and received more votes for the full term than the short one. So far, it appears around 260,000 more people voted in the full contest than the short one.

Whitney Quesenbery, executive director of the Center for Civic Design, aims to make elections easier for voters by solving design problems in areas like ballots. They were on the L.A. County registrar’s technical advisory committee when a new voting system was developed a few years ago.

Quesenbery said the senate race is a particularly confusing civics problem.

“I would love to say that this is like people who really know their civics and they thought about it and they decided they didn't care that much about the short contest and they cared a lot about the long contest, but I don’t know,” they said.

Why do people undervote?

Undervoting can be tough to study because ballot-level data isn’t readily accessible.

Things like race placement, page breaks, and personal choice can all influence why a voter stays out of a race. But it can be hard to tell because researchers aren’t in the booth or with voters as they fill in their mail-in ballot to know for sure.

“The problem with undervotes is we simply don’t know whether someone is trying to send a message or whether the ballot is trying to send a message,” Quesenbery said.

While Quesenbery said L.A. County has well-designed ballots, poor ballot design in general has caused voters to overlook races. Text description of the race can also confuse readers. It could even be ballot fatigue — where voters just get tired of filling in bubbles — that makes someone not fill in an option.

“People can also undervote as a protest,” they said. “There are people who might skip a contest because they simply don’t know the candidates or they don’t have an opinion on the ballot question.”

California also has a top-two primary system where the two candidates with the highest votes make it through regardless of party. That can contribute to undervoting because if both candidates are, for example, Democrats, a Republican voter may choose to sit that election out. Research from Indiana University found undervoting was nearly 20 percentage points higher for voters who didn’t have a preferred party candidate in a given race.

What happens if I undervoted?

The upshot here is even if you’ve undervoted, the things you do vote on still count.

“Undervotes don't disqualify your ballot,” Quesenbery said. “It’s just you’ve skipped an opportunity to say something.”

So don’t worry if you skipped a race this past election. But keep in mind, some contests can get decided by a very small number of votes. Take this as your reminder that every 👏 vote 👏 counts👏!

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