Voter turnout below 50 percent in Paso groundwater basin district election

Voter turnout remains below 50 percent in the election to decide whether a management district for the Paso Robles groundwater basin will be formed. The deadline for returning ballots in the vote-by-mail election is Tuesday. Ballots that are postmarked Tuesday will be counted if received by Friday.

Voters and landowners will be deciding whether the district is formed, whether a parcel tax to generate $1 million in annual funding for the next five years is approved and who will sit on the nine-member board of directors, if the district is formed.

As of Monday, ballots have been returned by 3,377 (46 percent) of the 7,291 registered voters, 2,118 (44 percent) of the 4,830 landowners, and 2,489 (34 percent) of those 7,291 registered voters eligible to vote in the election to select the board of directors of the district, if it is formed.

Two of the four categories on the board of directors are contested — registered voters and large landowners. In the large landowner category, which are those who own more than 400 acres in the basin, of the 110 ballots sent out, 59 (54 percent) have been returned. The small and medium landowner seats on the board are not contested.

A majority of landowners within the basin are needed to form the district. Two-thirds of the registered voters are needed to approve a parcel tax which would fund the district for five years. Both measures must be passed for the district to be formed.

The state has declared the Paso Robles basin to be in severe overdraft, causing aquifer levels in many parts of the basin to fall precipitously. A new state law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, requires that severely overdrafted basins be sustainably managed by 2020 — if not by local officials, then by the state.

Ballots continue to be received and processed by the San Luis Obispo County elections office, said Tommy Gong, county clerk-recorder. Unofficial results will be announced shortly after 8 p.m. Tuesday when polls close.

The law says that ballots postmarked by Election Day, which is March 8, can be counted as long as they are received within three days of the election, in this case Friday. Official results will be announced Friday.

The deadline for the county elections office to mail replacement ballots has passed. Replacement ballots are those that are used if the original ballot was lost or damaged, Gong said. This means that anyone returning a replacement ballot must request it in person at the Clerk-Recorder’s offices in San Luis Obispo or Atascadero.

The address for the San Luis Obispo Clerk-Recorder’s Office is 1055 Monterey St., D-120, and the address for the Atascadero office is the second floor of the Atascadero Library at 6565 Capistrano Ave.

Voters must sign the identification envelope containing the ballot, Gong said. Without the voter’s signature, the ballot cannot be counted.

This story was originally published March 7, 2016 at 3:25 PM with the headline "Voter turnout below 50 percent in Paso groundwater basin district election."