Opinion: February 5 voter turnout: high-ish

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A record 9 million Californians voted in the Feb. 5 presidential primary, according to final numbers certified last week. On a percentage basis, turnout was noteworthy, but not record-setting. 57.71% of registered voters cast ballots. That pales in comparison with the post-Watergate Bicentennial primary of 1976, in which two California governors fired up the Golden State’s electorate as they tried, but failed, to derail their parties’ frontrunners.

Jerry Brown thought Jimmy Carter was too conservative and beat him in the California primary but couldn’t stop him from getting the Democratic nomination. Ronald Reagan thought Gerald Ford was too liberal and beat him in the California primary but couldn’t stop him from getting the Republican nomination. In that June 1976 primary, perhaps the last time (before this year) that California truly mattered in a presidential primary, 73% of voters did their duty.

Despite Los Angeles County’s bubble ballot problems, a respectable 55.1% of registered voters cast ballots. Not bad, but it’s deceptive; only 38.23% of eligible voters, registered and not registered, voted. That indicates that the county has a long way to go to register eligible voters.

In the 2004 California primary, only 37.59% of eligible voters bothered.

At California Progress Report, Frank Russo says the improved but still middling turnout in Los Angeles County -- especially when compared with Bay Area counties -- is a reflection of the registrar-recorder’s failure to get the word out about vote-by-mail ballots. Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s numbers show that 482,921 L.A. County residents voted by mail, as compared with 1.7 million who went to the precincts. In the tiny mountain counties of Alpine (482 voters) and Sierra (1,526 voters), literally everyone voted by mail.

Bowen and L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/Clerk Dean Logan both have called for the momentum to continue into the June 3 election. That’s kind of sweet. They both certainly know, as does everyone involved in that election, that turnout is expected to be abysmally low, since the presidential portion of the ballot was carved out and placed before voters in February. The next Big Event is the November 4 presidential election.

For June 3, when voters will consider two ballot measures on eminent domain, vote in party primaries for the state Legislature and take up various local races, mail is the name of the game. Political consultants are targeting the high-propensity voters, and that means absentee balloting. Expect to see lots of carefully targeted campaign mail when absentee balloting begins May 5.

Find out the latest on the June 3 stealth election, the November 4 presidential race, and the March 2009 Los Angeles city elections at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/elections/