PRIMARY ELECTION REVISITED - Over the years, I’ve not often been on the winning side of many races. But this Election Day, I won big.
By not voting.
It was a landslide. Roughly three in every four Californians who are eligible to vote didn’t cast a ballot.
(Conventional turnout rates miss the point, since they are percentages based on the 17 million-plus Californians who are registered voters. The more important denominator is 23 million—the number of Californians who are eligible to vote).
I was one of them and proudly so. As a group, we non-voters are much more representative of California as a whole than that sub-population of voters, who are very old and very white.
And we sent a powerful message – that nothing on the ballot was worthy of our time and attention.
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(The June Primary Election from other perspectives:
● “Election Results: A Few Rays of Hope … Like Not Having Carmen to Kick Around Much Longer”-Ron Kaye
● “Lessons for California in Tuesday’s Vote”-LA Times Editorial
● “Carmen Trutanich-What Went Wrong”-Leonard/Zahniser/Kim
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The roar of this popular verdict should drown out any other claims of a popular mandate. (O, please, term limits “reformers” with your 2.3 million or so votes – our side had 17 million votes had on that proposition for “who the hell cares?”).
Heck, even the Republicans should bow down – because we won a supermajority!
What will our victory mean?
Those of us who think California is broken and has a system that needs a total redesign are often told that the people don’t support such changes, that the polling shows that big changes don’t go anywhere.
The results of this election show such claims about the people are nonsense. Those of us who won’t even bother with the current broken system have made their verdict loud and clear.
The question is whether the pundits, the elites, the politicians of both parties, the good government organizations can recognize this overwhelming popular rejection, and change course.
Or whether they’ll continue to demonize us, the non-voting masses, as bad citizens – or ignore us and keep talking to themselves, and to that small shrinking niche – not much bigger than a club — known as the California electorate.
(Joe Mathews is Journalist and Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It. This article originally posted at foxandhoundsdaily.com)
-cw
Tags: Joe Mathews, Primary Election, June Election, California election, Election Day, Republicans, Democrats
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 46
Pub: June 8, 2012
