GELFAND’S WORLD-Los Angeles -- Voter turnout for our city elections has been pathetically weak. I mean, we've seen larger turnouts for the Doo Dah Parade. If the turnout were any lower, it would risk getting into single digits.
The City Council decided to study the matter, and out of their inquiries, opted for a proposal to change the dates. The idea is to hold our city elections on the same day as the national elections, November of even numbered years.
Will we actually do this? It's up to you. You will have the chance to vote for or against Charter Amendments 1 and 2 in a couple of week's time, when the March 3 municipal election occurs. You have to admit that there is a certain irony in voting in an off year election, one that threatens to have the lowest turnout ever, for a promise to increase electoral turnout.
The proposal is being presented to us city residents in the form of twin Charter amendments. There have to be two because one is for citywide offices such as Mayor and Councilman, while the other is for school board seats.
There is one slight kicker. Since future election dates would change under these amendments, the choice before the City Council was either to extend the terms of current City Council representatives by 17 months or to reduce their own terms. So what do you think the City Council decided? You guessed it. If these amendments pass, City Councilmen elected in 2015 and 2017 will hold their seats for an additional 17 months beyond their traditional 4 year terms.
Still, this extension of the Council terms is only a one-off. As the system settles in for the 2020 and 2022 elections, we will see a return to the 4 year terms currently held.
Last weekend, there was a debate over the pros and cons of these amendments at the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition. I think I can safely say that there was more heat than light generated by the opposing sides.
The argument in favor of the amendments was simple. More people go to the polls for the big November elections. We will therefore see more people vote in municipal elections if we hold them in November. This argument is actually a bit subtle, because we could imagine people who go to the polls to vote for president, but stay around long enough to cast a random vote for the incumbent City Councilman. You know, the way that people sometimes vote for a few judges. This would mean more votes, but less meaningful votes.
The counter to this argument is that people who come to the November general elections have invested time and thought in voting (or are voting for some strongly partisan position such as labor or conservatism). Some of these people will presumably invest effort in choosing citywide offices, just as they would in choosing the candidate for State Treasurer.
In this way of thinking, we are giving the voters credit for using their heads in all their ballot decisions, even when the ballot is a long one.
We are also taking note of the fact that for understandable reasons, most people will not pay nearly as much attention to the off year elections. For one thing, we are just recently coming off a massive electoral campaign which led up to a long ballot. Think of it as voter fatigue, and ask yourself if you are feeling it right now.
One example: Did you even know that there will be a city election on March 3? I can't very well blame you for not knowing. Or for feeling that voter fatigue.
One other point. There isn't that much choosing to do. On my sample ballot:
One school board race with an incumbent who is a shoo-in.
Four community college district elections. I get to vote for Glenn Bailey for seat 3, Glenn being a long time neighborhood council person and a demonstrated intellect. Of all the rest, there is only one incumbent, and I have no idea how good he has been.
And there are the Charter amendments to change the dates of elections.
It's not exactly Lincoln against Douglas coming up, although I will enjoy getting the chance to vote for Glenn. But if you didn't know any of the candidates, I wouldn't blame you for ignoring the election entirely. It's pretty thin gruel.
On the other hand, if these elections were bundled up in a general election ballot, I would probably vote for some of the candidates and issues because I would already be there. Since I take voting seriously, I would take those choices seriously.
That's my summary of why you might want to vote for the Charter amendments. I understand that it is a modest argument at best, but it is an argument.
By the way, the person who debated the pro side last Saturday missed these points almost entirely.
What of the opposition case? Some of it was the mirror image of the pro side I have detailed above. Yes, there will be more votes, but they won't necessarily be informed votes. The opposition speaker actually argued that there would be more votes, but they wouldn't necessarily be liberal votes. If you catch a hint of voter suppression in that attitude, I wouldn't blame you.
The rest of the opposition argument is somewhat defensible in an indefensible way. What I mean by that is that the opposition points out the amount of money that gets spent in the even year general elections. The argument is that these November general elections are noisy battlefields, with dozens of candidates spending millions of dollars, the airwaves saturated with ads about ballot propositions, and your mailbox getting filled with deceptive mailers.
How can a decent candidate without zillions of special interest dollars stand a chance?
I do understand the point, and feel some sympathy for the honest candidates without zillions in special interest money. But this isn't really an argument for keeping the current election dates. It's an argument for creating a system of full public financing of municipal elections. Then, the voters could decide to cast most of their votes for publicly financed candidates, and to make it a principle to reject the self-financed candidates.
The current municipal election system, even with its odd-year scheduling and a lack of competition from national races, involves some hugely expensive primary battles. We do get our mailboxes filled with fliers, and we get telephone calls. Still, I must concede that the season is not drowned out by congressional races or numerous statewide ballot initiatives. That by itself isn't much of a revelation, but it is a little something.
My own view is that our voters can sort out the city candidates, even on a long ballot where you have to turn past the judges in order to vote for the mayor.
The one question that was neither asked nor answered in Saturday's debate goes a little deeper. Suppose we were to change the election dates for the primary and the runoff, and that we did, indeed, get a higher voter turnout. Here's my question: Would this result in better government? This is a question that ordinarily gets ignored as we obsess on metrics and measurable quantities. But I want to know whether we will get better government, or even a ghost of a chance of improved government.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 13
Pub: Feb 13, 2015
