Californians stayed away from the polls with a vengeance Tuesday, shattering all state records for poor voter participation in a general election

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Sacramento Bee/Randy Pench 'Let's stay home' won in a landslide By Dan Smith -- Bee Deputy Capitol Bureau Chief Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Thursday, November 7, 2002

Californians stayed away from the polls with a vengeance Tuesday, shattering all state records for poor voter participation in a general election.

Secretary of State Bill Jones said Wednesday that when an estimated 500,000 late absentee ballots are counted over the next couple of weeks, fewer than half of the state's 15.3 million registered voters will have cast ballots.

That means barely a third of Californians eligible to vote actually made it to the polls.

"It's dismal. It's terrible," Jones said. "The constituency that spoke the loudest on Tuesday was the constituency that stayed home."

If the turnout figure comes in at 48 percent, it will be nearly 10 percentage points beneath the state's previous low-water mark. In 1998, 57.6 percent went to the polls.

State figures show 6.8 million cast ballots Tuesday, making the ultimate electorate about 7.3 million if Jones' estimate of absentees holds firm. That would be the lowest number of voters in a general election since 1978, even though there are 5 million more registered voters now.

Sacramento-area registered voters were among the most interested in a low-interest election. Placer (56.4 percent of registered voters), El Dorado (54.5 percent), Yolo (52.9 percent) and Sacramento (47.7 percent) counties all performed as well or better than the statewide rate. All the numbers will edge up when uncounted absentees are factored in over the next few days.

Experts agree that the lowest turnout in state history was both a reaction to gubernatorial candidates who drew little respect or interest, and another piece of evidence in a trend toward less participation in elections.

Pollster Mark DiCamillo called it "the perfect turnout storm," brought on by the lack of a U.S. Senate race, uncompetitive legislative and congressional contests, boring ballot measures and an ugly governor's race with candidates the public loved to hate.

Jack Citrin, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, blamed "a lack of competitive factors" for the dearth of interest.

"I don't think you can get a lot of people excited about after-school child care, even if Arnold Schwarzenegger is promoting it," he said, referring to Proposition 49.

Even the governor's race, which normally is counted on to attract voters, fell into the "low-profile, low-stimulus" nature of this election, Citrin said. "There was very little doubt as to who would win," he said.

DiCamillo said people who vote regularly but were undecided about the governor's race -- most likely Latinos and nonpartisans -- passed on this election.

"The governor's race was by far the biggest factor," he said. "The record large undecided vote did not vote. They resolved their dilemma by not voting."

Nationally, voter participation was up slightly from the 1998 midterm elections, according to a survey by Curtis Gans, director of the independent Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. Gans said more than 39 percent of voting-age citizens voted nationally, higher than the 37.6 percent in the 1998 election. The survey found 28 states improved their performance over 1998, but 22 states and the District of Columbia had lower turnouts.

Two states that featured competitive U.S. Senate contests -- Minnesota and South Dakota -- had the greatest voter participation, each drawing more than 60 percent of eligible voters to the polls.

Jones, who was termed out and will give way to Democrat Kevin Shelley in January, acknowledged that this election was an especially tough sell, particularly when Gov. Gray Davis and Republican challenger Bill Simon likely spent $100 million, much of it on television ads bashing each other personally.

"That makes an awful poisonous atmosphere to try and have people feel upbeat and optimistic and believe in the future of California," Jones said. "When there's $100 million spent one way and I have no money to spend on the positive side, the results are probably what you're seeing."

Voting, Jones said, "becomes attached to the negativism of the campaigns as a tool of the political process rather than what it was originally meant to be, which is a fundamental right, obligation and method by which the American people can register their choice in this democracy."

Jones said the state needs to advertise to encourage voting and counteract the negativity of campaigns.

"You can teach all you want in high schools," he said. "But you and I know that if I don't buy TV time, I don't get to anybody, and all the rest of this is just talk."

-- Anonymous, November 07, 2002


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