Elections and Political
Participation
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| The Electorate as Players: Elections and Political Participation |
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California voters have the opportunity to exercise a great deal of power at the ballot box. Every two years, Californians choose the entire state assembly, half of the state senate, and the state’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives, the largest delegation of any state. In non-presidential election years, Californians must choose candidates to fill the state’s executive offices, including the governor and secretary of state. Besides electing candidates for office, the voters are regularly called upon to amend the state’s constitution, to reverse legislative acts, and to decide other weighty issues placed on the ballot through the initiative process. This chapter examines the role of the electorate as players in the policy process. It first examines California’s election cycle and then goes on to explore the role of declining voter turnout. The chapter considers the implications of voter decline in political participation.
In California parties have played an increasingly minimal role in the recruitment of candidates, in the selection of nominees, and even in the general election campaign. Consequently, due to the state’s candidate-centered politics, candidates must build their own campaign organizations, raise money, and purchase media time, with little or no coordination or support from the state party committees. There are few constitutional restrictions governing who may run for office. One must be a U.S. citizen and a resident of the state. In legislative offices such as the state assembly or senate, the candidate must live in the district that the seat represents. Because there are no explicit regulations as to how district residency must be established, some candidates have been attacked as “carpetbaggers” who move into a district in order to file nomination papers. One must also be a registered voter of the party whose nomination is being sought, although independents can run for partisan offices.
In order to file for candidacy, anyone seeking public office must first file a declaration of intent with the county clerk or register recorder. Nomination papers must be returned within the specified time frame, with a completed petition signed by a specified number of voters and a small filing fee (usually 1 percent of the annual salary for most offices; 2 percent of the annual salary for statewide offices). Upon certification by the elections clerk, the name of the candidate is put on the ballot. Ballots carry with them some inherent biases. The candidate’s full name appears, followed by the candidate’s party affiliation if the election is partisan. In the absence of other information about candidates, voters look for cues in assessing candidates by their occupational designation. Attorneys and other professionals with impressive titles tend to do well. Another inherent bias is the position of the candidate names. Research has demonstrated that at least some voters simply choose the name on the top of the list. Prior to 1974, all incumbents would be listed first, thus giving them unfair advantage. Today, ballot position is determined by a lottery.
Primaries were pushed by Progressive reformers early in the twentieth century to give average people a voice in the nomination of candidates. It was thought that allowing citizens to register their preferences at the polls would reduce the power of party bosses and special interests to wield undue influence at state party nominating conventions. Allowing the voters to choose candidates in a direct primary has become the only legitimate method for the two major parties to decide their candidates for general election in California.
Two recent experiments with California’s primary election were expected to have an impact on state and national politics. One was the adoption of an early primary, which was intended to make California a decisive battleground in the presidential pre-nomination campaign. After five decades of holding primaries in June, California experimented with an “early” primary in 2000. The legislature moved the primary date from the end of the nominating season to March, making it one of the earliest in the nation. Holding a March primary—on the heels of the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary—was meant to give Californians a greater voice in presidential nominations because of the state’s huge share of electoral votes. Unfortunately, the early primaries made no difference in 2000 or 2004 because the nominees for president had already been determined by March. For 2008, Governor Schwarzenegger and the legislature moved the primary up to February 5, making it one of the “Super Tuesday” primaries, helping seal the Republican nomination for Senator John McCain. The early primary failed to play a decisive role in the Democratic contest, however. Despite her win in California, Senator Hillary Clinton ultimately lost the nomination to her rival Senator Barack Obama, who piled up victories in caucus states.
The second experiment was the “open primary,” created by voters in 1996 with the passage of Proposition 198. In most states that have open primaries, voters decide which party’s ballot to cast in the privacy of the voting booth. California’s version of the open primary (also called a “blanket” primary) was modeled after similar systems in Washington and Alaska, where every voter is issued an identical ballot at the polling place on election day. The ballot allowed voters to choose among any of the candidates of every officially recognized party, regardless of the voter’s own party affiliation. In June 1998, for example, voters in California’s first open primary had the opportunity to choose among 17 candidates (in seven parties) for governor. Under the old system, a voter was issued a ballot only for the party with which he or she had registered.
Proposition 198 passed decisively, with 60 percent of the vote, despite vigorous opposition by both major political parties. The initiative was sponsored by Representative Tom Campbell, a moderate Republican who had lost a bid for his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate to conservative commentator Bruce Herschensohn. In the general election, Herschensohn was defeated by liberal Democrat Barbara Boxer. Ironically, Boxer secured the Democratic nomination after defeating a moderate opponent in a closed primary. Supporters of the open primary argued that the old system of nominations was dominated by the extreme wings of the two parties and that allowing independents and crossover voters to participate would stimulate interest by offering voters more choice and would help moderate consensus-building candidates win nomination.1 Critics feared that the new rules would create opportunities for tampering with the nomination process—with voters of one party crossing lines to help nominate the weaker candidate of the opposing party. California’s major political parties challenged Proposition 198 on this basis, and in 2000, the state supreme court ruled the law unconstitutional. In the end, there was little evidence that the blanket primary led to greater voter participation: Turnout in the blanket primary of 1998 was just 27.4 percent, compared to the 26.2 percent of eligible voters who went to the polls in the closed primary of 1994.2
Despite fears of partisan mischief in the blanket primary, there was no evidence of voters of one party crossing lines en masse to nominate a less-electable candidate of an opposing party. In 2002, however, there was some elite-level meddling in the Republican primary for governor. Candidates usually refrain from attacking potential rivals during the primaries, allowing opponents within the rival’s own party to do the dirty work while they conserve resources for the general election. Democratic Governor Gray Davis, running for reelection, faced two potential challengers in businessman Bill Simon and former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. Fearing that the more moderate Riordan would win the nomination, Davis ran ads, attacking the former mayor’s moderate positions on social issues in an effort to push conservatives to support Simon in the primary.3 After a bruising primary campaign and some damaging gaffes by Riordan, Simon won the nomination and was then defeated by Davis.
Of course, not all primary contests are partisan. Nonpartisan elected offices such as judges, local officials, and the superintendent of public instruction also appear on the primary ballot. During the primary, and without the designation of any party label, all the candidates for a particular nonpartisan elected position are placed on the ballot. The one who receives the majority vote (50 percent plus one) wins outright in the primary. If no one receives the majority vote, the top two vote-getters face off in the general election.
California holds its general elections on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in the month of November for both state and national offices. The period between the primary and the general election is typically an intense political season in which candidates work to secure their party loyalists and try to attract crossover votes from the ranks of the opposition party and from independent voters. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, spent much of the 2006 general election campaign trying to position himself at the political center, attempting to appeal to the “median” voter by splitting the difference between himself and his Democratic rival, Phil Angelides. Schwarzenegger distanced himself from many positions of the national Republican Party and renounced his own support for the illegal immigration measure Proposition 187 in 1994. The Republican governor courted moderates by touting strong environmental initiatives and campaigned in a bus decorated with a panoramic painting of Yosemite Valley. “You don’t see that bus saying ‘Vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican,’” he told a reporter, emphasizing his desire to appeal to voters outside his own party.4
In a debate prior to the 1998 general election, gubernatorial candidates Gray Davis and Dan Lungren both spent time talking about how he was pro-death penalty, against assault weapons, pro-abortion rights, pro-HMO reform, in favor of targeted tax cuts for business, and supportive of public schools while acknowledging that education needed reform. Republican Lungren wanted to eliminate the car tax; Democrat Davis wanted to reduce it. At the same time, each candidate tried repeatedly to show that his opponent held positions on these issues that were out of the mainstream.5
A special election is called when there is a vacancy during the term of a member of the state legislature or congressional delegation. These vacancies could be the result of death, retirement, or even resignation, as a term-limited politician leaves to purse more lucrative opportunities in the private sector. When a special election becomes necessary, the governor decides when to schedule the vote. These elections are infrequent, but they come with a hefty price tag: approximately $40 to $50 million. One type of special election is the recall. As we saw in Chapter 7, recall elections were designed by Progressive reformers to remove corrupt politicians from office. In recent years, the recall has been used as a partisan instrument. The most prominent special election by far was the 2003 recall of Governor Gray Davis. Eight years earlier, Assembly Speaker Doris Allen and another Republican assembly member were both removed from office after some of their conservative Orange County constituents, upset over Allen’s power-sharing arrangement with assembly Democrats, gathered enough signatures for a recall.6
Generally, voters who participate in special elections tend to be highly motivated by partisanship or have passionate feelings about a candidate or an issue at hand.
Turnout in these contests is low, and the electorate tends to be whiter, older, and more ideologically conservative than in the general election. Special elections have characteristics of both primary and general elections. Voters are given a choice of all candidates from all parties on a single ballot. If a candidate gets a simple majority of the vote, he or she is the winner. If no one receives a clear majority, the top two vote-getters face each other four weeks later in a runoff election.
The best-known special election was the recall of Governor Gray Davis. Originally created through a statewide initiative in 1911, the recall was designed as a mechanism to remove corrupt politicians from office. A government textbook from that era explained the mechanics of the recall, but its authors were skeptical that it would ever be used, calling the recall “a whimsical notion which both the politicians and serious-minded voters could be trusted to suppress.”7 It would be several decades before this political weapon would be deployed successfully. Recall petitions are easy to initiate, but rarely do they qualify for the ballot. There had been 31 unsuccessful attempts to recall California governors, including Ronald Reagan, Jerry Brown, and Pete Wilson. The Davis recall might have been remembered as another one of these futile efforts had it not been for a cash infusion from millionaire candidate Darrell Issa that funded the petition drive.
Davis began 2003 fresh from his narrow reelection victory against Republican Bill Simon, but the state was facing a host of fresh problems. Davis had several accomplishments in his first term: increasing per-pupil spending, expanding financial aid for college students, raising the minimum wage, and phasing out the problematic gasoline additive MTBE. As the economy boomed during his first term, Davis and the legislature happily spent new revenue and cut taxes. However, a nationwide recession, which had begun around the time of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, hit California especially hard. At the same time, there was a collapse in technology stocks, an important sector in California’s economy and a major contributor to its tax base. Finally, there was the devastating energy crisis that began in 2000, after the deregulation of the electricity market. Four years earlier, a compromise between the Wilson Administration and the Democrat-controlled legislature had resulted in a plan that deregulated electricity but imposed price caps on residential customers. The impact of this arrangement was not felt until the summer of 2000, however, when power shortages caused rolling blackouts around the state. Davis was slow to respond to the crisis. He evaded blame by pointing out the criminal actions of the giant energy trading firm Enron and its allies in the Bush administration, but he seemed powerless to act. The governor’s approval ratings plummeted from a high of 66 percent (at the start of the energy crisis) to 25 percent in 2003, prior to the recall.
Davis also faced a number of problems of his own making. As the recession slowed the state’s revenue stream to a trickle, he downplayed the projected deficit until after his reelection in 2002. Then, in a case of doing too little, too late, he faced a backlash for raising the vehicle registration tax to Wilson-era levels. As the situation worsened, Davis’ allies dwindled. The governor’s heavy-handed dealings with the state legislature irked Democratic leaders, and he had sparred with Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, who faulted him for failing to take a firm stand against Proposition 187. By the time the recall qualified for the ballot, there were few willing to rally by his side.
The recall effort was initiated immediately after the reelection of Davis in 2002. Petitions were circulated by Sacramento-area activist Ted Costa, head of the same anti-tax organization founded three decades earlier by Proposition 13 co-author Paul Gann. Costa and his allies used talk radio appearances to mobilize support for the drive, encouraging people to download petitions from the Internet and collect signatures on their own. The movement gathered steam with a cash infusion from Republican Representative Darrell Issa of San Diego. A former car-alarm magnate with his own ambitions of running in the recall election, Issa contributed nearly $2 million of his own money to the petition drive. The money made it possible to collect 1.3 million valid signatures—more than enough to force the special election. Issa had planned to place his own name on the ballot to replace Davis, but he dropped out when Schwarzenegger entered the race.
The recall qualified in July, and by law, the lieutenant governor had to schedule the vote 60 to 80 days later. Bustamante set October 7 as the date and filed papers to run as a replacement candidate. On the fall ballot, voters would be presented with two questions. First, they were asked to decide whether Gray Davis should be recalled. No matter how they answered the first question, they were then asked to choose from a long and confusing list of replacement candidates. Because potential candidates needed to provide only a $3,500 filing fee and the signatures of 65 registered voters, hundreds of people filed papers to run in the recall election. Ultimately, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley certified 135 candidates for the ballot, including some minor celebrities and a number of private citizens who paid the filing fee just to see their names on the ballot.
Californians went to the polls in October, voting to recall the governor by a margin of 55 to 45 percent (see Table 12.1). Regardless of the way they voted on the recall question, voters then had to choose a replacement candidate. Schwarzenegger captured the plurality of the replacement vote (49 percent), beating his closest rivals, conservative Republican State Senator Tom McClintock and Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat who had urged voters to vote “no” on the recall but choose him as their replacement candidate. Unfortunately for Davis, this sent a mixed message to Democrats, and their failure to unite behind their incumbent governor made the recall appear more inevitable.
Voters registered their fatigue with special elections in 2005, when Governor Schwarzenegger called for a special statewide vote on a proposal to change the way redistricting is conducted. Noting that none of the state senate or assembly seats had changed party hands in the previous election, Schwarzenegger decried the lack of competition and proposed a plan that would have taken responsibility for redistricting away from the legislature and placed it in the hands of a panel of retired judges. The proposal received a cool reception in the legislature, so Schwarzenegger took his proposal to the arena of direct democracy, which had launched his own political career. He backed Proposition 77, a ballot initiative intended to accomplish the reform he wanted, and campaigned heavily for the measure, along with three other initiatives limiting state spending on public schools, reforming teacher tenure, and restricting the political uses of public employee union dues. However, this was the fourth consecutive year that California voters had been asked to go the polls for a Fall election; fresh in their minds was the recall election of 2003, which fell between regularly scheduled elections of 2002 and 2004. All four initiatives were voted down, and a report concluded that Schwarzenegger’s own association with the initiatives damaged them in the mind of the public.8
TABLE 12.1 CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL RECALL ELECTION, 2003
Note: All other candidates in the 2003 recall election received a combined 6% of the total vote.
Source: Los Angeles Times Exit Poll,November 9, 2003. www.latimesinteractive.com/pdfarchive/state/la-100903analysis-b.pdf.
The special elections of 2003 and 2005 illustrate the growing importance of the tools of direct democracy in California. Not surprisingly, an entire industry has emerged to do the work of promoting ballot initiatives. As we saw in Chapter 7, hundreds of initiatives have qualified for the ballot since 1912. Most of them would not have been possible without professional organizations to mount effective campaigns and gather the number of signatures required to qualify initiatives for the ballot. The cost to qualify initiatives allows well-financed interests to set the agenda by placing measures on the ballot. Groups with deep pockets also have an advantage in the campaign because of the cost of direct mail, radio, and television advertising. Tens of millions are spent on advertising campaigns for ballot initiatives in a typical year; in 1998, a total of $92 million was spent on both sides of Proposition 5, the Indian Gaming initiative.
Collecting signatures for initiatives was primarily the work of volunteers for most of the twentieth century. Organizations sometimes relied on paid signature-gatherers to supplement the work of their volunteers, who usually were motivated by a commitment to a cause. What changed was the increased professionalization of the process after the 1970s. For one thing, a larger number of the signatures used to qualify initiatives for the ballot were collected by firms such as American Petition Consultants, which typically paid workers $1 per signature. These firms could be hired by any individual or group willing to pay for their services. In another development, some firms began to test-market issues and propose ballot initiatives on their own. One example is Proposition 37, which created the California Lottery when voters approved it in 1984. Manufacturers of gambling equipment paid for the campaign, but the initiative was conceived and designed by Kimball Petition Management, a consulting firm.9 Today, the costs to qualify initiatives for the ballot routinely exceed $1 million.
Legislative efforts to limit the money spent on initiative campaigns have been struck down in federal court as unconstitutional limits on free speech. One landmark measure, struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, was the California Political Reform Act of 1974, which would have restricted a qualification drive to spending no more than 25 cents times the number of signatures needed to place the measure on the ballot. The Court later struck down a 1980 Colorado law that would have banned paid signature-gatherers altogether, and in 1999, the Court struck down a California law that required signature-gatherers to be registered voters of the state. Today, the people who stand outside grocery stores and shopping malls, collecting signatures, are more likely to be mercenaries bused in from another state prior to election season than volunteers committed to a cause.
Direct democracy, which emerged as a mechanism to counter the power big business had at the start of the twentieth century, had itself become big business by the century’s end. The extensive power of the tools of direct democracy was not known until decades after their advent, and they have continued to affect the state’s politics in the twenty-first century. Legislative attempts to restrict the growth of ballot initiatives and the influence of money in the process have proven futile, and the trends show no sign of abating.
California’s electorate is one of the most complex in the nation. While the state has had more registered Democrats than Republicans for most of the postwar era, this partisan balance has not always been reflected in electoral outcomes. Gray Davis was only the third Democrat to be elected governor since the end of World War II. Similarly, in 9 of the last 13 presidential elections, California voted for Republican presidential candidates (the Republican ticket in seven of those contests included either Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan—both Californians). One reason California has remained competitive is that voters have always been willing to cross party lines. The anti-party attitude of the Progressive era has remained a powerful force in state politics, leading voters to shun party labels in statewide elections and to choose candidates on the basis of multiple criteria. More than one out of five (22 percent) Democratic voters cast their ballots for Schwarzenegger in 2006 (see Table 12.2). This crossover constituency was key to the election of Republican governors in the 1980s and 1990s. Likewise, 18 percent of Republicans crossed party lines in 1998 and contributed to the landslide victory of Democrat Gray Davis.
TABLE 12.2 PROFILE OF THE 2006 ELECTORATE
Source: CNN Exit Poll of 2,649 respondents, November 9, 2006.
Party registration tells only part of the story. The exit poll data in Table 12.2 also reveal that the largest ideological category in the electorate (44 percent) was not “liberal” or “conservative,” but “moderate.” A clear majority of these self-identified moderates supported Schwarzenegger over his Democratic opponent, Phil Angelides (58 to 38 percent). In contrast, Angelides won a majority of the votes in just a few key Democratic constituencies: African Americans, Latinos, registered Democrats, liberals, and voters earning under $30,000. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat running for reelection on the same ballot, did much better among “moderates” than Schwarzenegger, winning 60 percent of their vote.
The size and impact of these self-identified moderates may reflect a growing frustration with partisan politics. Nonetheless, California’s electorate is growing ever more reluctant to identify with either of the two major political parties. The proportion of the state’s electorate registered as Democrats and Republicans has been shrinking over time. While the Democrats and Republicans remain dominant, increasing numbers of independent and minor-party voters have the potential to influence election outcomes, threatening the hegemony of the two major parties. Growing dissatisfaction with the two major parties has fueled the growth of alternative parties in California and nationwide.
In the 2006 general election, there were four minor parties joining the Republicans and Democrats on the ballot in California. Among these parties were the laissez-faire, anti-tax Libertarian Party and the pro-environment, pro-social justice Green Party. Two minor parties that developed from the social movements of the 1960s were the anti-war Peace and Freedom Party and the conservative, pro-segregationist American Independent Party, which was inspired by the candidacy of former Alabama Governor George Wallace.
A party can qualify for the ballot and field candidates in California if it can gather the signatures of 1 percent of the state’s registered voters (158,371 signatures) on petitions seeking official status for the party. Prior to seeking official status, new parties normally hold a party caucus, select party nominees, agree on a party plank, and design a campaign strategy. To remain an official party, a party must get at least 2 percent of the statewide vote for at least one candidate and retain one-fifteenth of 1 percent of registered voters. In some states, minor parties have had a limited impact as “spoilers,” skimming enough votes away from one of the two major parties to effectively hand a victory to the other party. So far, minor parties have had little impact on the duopoly of the two major parties in California. As Table 12.3 shows, the Democrats and Republicans accounted for 42.5 percent and 34.3 percent of the state electorate, respectively, in 2006. In comparison, none of the six minor parties could claim more than 4.5 percent of California voters. Voters with no party affiliation, on the other hand, accounted for 18.7 percent of the electorate.
TABLE 12.3 VOTER REGISTRATION BY PARTY, FEBRUARY 2006
| PARTY | REGISTERED VOTERS | % OF TOTAL |
| Democratic | 6,727,908 | 42.5 |
| Republican | 5,436,314 | 34.3 |
| American Independent | 315,151 | 2.0 |
| Green | 141,451 | 0.9 |
| Libertarian | 84,093 | 0.5 |
| Natural Law | 22,231 | 0.1 |
| Peace & Freedom | 59,139 | 0.4 |
| Misc./Non-Qualified | 82,332 | 0.5 |
| Declined to State | 2,968,489 | 18.7 |
Note: Of the 22,652,190 citizens eligible to register to vote, a total of 15,837,108 (69.9 percent) actually were registered in 2006.
Source: Bruce McPherson, 2006 Statement of the Vote (Sacramento: Secretary of State’s Office, 2006).
Despite the proliferation of alternative parties, many voters have shunned party politics altogether. Americans have been less willing to identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats ever since the late 1960s. Mirroring national trends, voters in California have been registering as independents in higher rates. According to the registration figures in Table 12.3, independents comprise nearly 19 percent of California’s registered voters—the third largest group after Democrats and Republicans.
Combined, independents and minor-party voters comprise 23 percent of the state electorate. Because no single party can claim a clear majority of the voters, this sizable bloc has significant power to decide the outcome of close elections. This might seem like a big uncommitted group with the potential to challenge the two-party dominance of state politics. In reality, independents tend to be reliable supporters of one of the two major parties at the ballot box. Voting researchers have found that many independents vote for either the Republican or Democratic parties so consistently that they may be considered “closet” Republicans and Democrats.10 Under California’s weak-party system, the benefits of classing oneself with a party are not always clear. Until recently, independents were effectively disenfranchised from the primary election stage of the process. That obstacle to participation was removed with the elimination of the closed primary in 1996. One possible side effect of the open primary, though, is the further weakening of the two major parties in California.
Because of California’s (1) weak political parties, (2) system of directly deciding policy through the ballot initiative, and (3) overwhelming numerical significance in presidential elections, the state’s voters have considerable power and relevance in comparison to voters in other states. Yet when compared to the national average, California’s turnout is quite low. Because of this low turnout, electoral outcomes are often determined by the success a particular campaign has in getting out the vote. That is, the winning side in a campaign is often the one that is more successful at persuading supporters to go to the polls. This rule applies to interest groups as well as candidates. In California’s ballot initiative industry, proposition sponsors build strategies around the recognition that they only need a simple majority of voters to approve a measure. Once the paid signature-gatherers have succeeded in placing the measure on the ballot, strategic advertising can mobilize enough potential supporters to make the proposition law. To the firms that sponsor these initiatives, low turnout is actually desirable because a predictable number of voters coupled with targeted advertising is enough to guarantee the success of a ballot measure.11 Therefore, one consequence of low voter turnout is that California’s ballot initiative process is especially vulnerable to manipulation by interest groups.
Consistent with national trends, participation in California’s elections has been declining in recent years. Only 15.8 million of California’s 34 million residents are registered to vote. Still fewer actually exercise that right on election day. In the 1996 presidential election, 52.6 percent of eligible voters in California made it to the polls. In 2000, just 51.9 percent of Californians voted in one of the closest presidential contests ever, but there was a slight upturn in 2004, when 57.7 percent of California’s eligible voters went to the polls during an unpopular war in Iraq. Compared to national elections, turnout in gubernatorial elections has been dismal. Since 1982, these statewide contests have attracted little more than half of all eligible voters. The lone exception was 2006, when 56.2 percent of eligible voters turned out for a critical midterm election and reelected Gov. Schwarzenegger. More typical was the 50.1 percent turnout in the previous gubernatorial election of 2002. California now has one of the lowest turnout rates in the nation. Out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, California ranked 47th in turnout in the 1992 presidential election, despite the unique opportunity that voters had that year to decide two U.S. Senate contests.
One option that has made it easier for many people to vote is the absentee ballot. Any Californian is permitted to register to vote in this manner. Prior to 1978, only voters who had a specific reason—such as illness—were permitted to vote absentee. By the 1993 special statewide election, some 22 percent of the electorate was voting absentee. Modern campaign tactics helped fuel the increase of absentee vote-by-mail. Political parties and candidates routinely try to get their identified loyal constituents to vote by absentee ballot. To the campaigns, absentee votes are analogous to money in the bank, gaining interest. If your absentee voter base is secure, you can expend the rest of your limited campaign resources on mobilizing other sympathetic voters. Although growing in popularity, voting by absentee ballot has not succeeded in increasing participation among traditionally underrepresented groups and classes. Absentee voters tend to be older, more affluent, and conservative than the average voter.
Chief among the factors that suppress voter turnout are the nation’s restrictive voter registration laws. The United States is one of the only democracies that make its citizens register before they can actually vote. In other Western democracies, where there are no registration requirements, turnout rates of 80 to 90 percent are not uncommon. Thus, voter registration is somewhat of an anachronistic impediment to full democratic participation. Supporters of the registration process claim that it reduces potential voting fraud. Critics claim that it is an archaic remnant of earlier colonial America and is a burden that drives some voters away from their electoral right. The two-step nature of the voting process creates an additional obstacle, raising the cost of the act of voting for many individuals who are too busy working and living their lives to meet the registration deadline. As a consequence of this impediment, some states in the United States have begun experimenting with election day registration. This has not yet caught on in California.
In order to be eligible to vote, California residents must register and designate a home address at least 29 days before an election. Once a person registers, he or she stays permanently on the voting rolls until changing party affiliation, changing residence, changing name, or being ruled ineligible to vote by a court decision. Of the 15.8 million registered voters in the state, there are a substantial number of nonvoters whose names remain on the state’s voting rolls. These names will remain until the state’s election officials orchestrate some procedures to remove this “deadwood.” Various efforts have been attempted, such as a “negative purge,” whereby nonvoters are contacted by postcards via the U.S. mail. If the cards are returned as undeliverable, then the nonvoter’s name is dropped. Needless to say, this is a cumbersome, highly ineffective means of keeping the voting rolls current. There are also political reasons for the deliberately slow pace of this process. Campaign experts believe that Democrats comprise the lion’s share of these chronic nonvoters. Thus, the Democrats have not been particularly eager to assist in purging the voter rolls.
Because turnout is key to the outcome of close contests, successful campaigns must mobilize supporters to register to vote well before election day. Thus, voter registration drives are constant fixtures of California politics. The state’s two major political parties spend millions of dollars in “soft money” each election cycle to bolster their registration numbers. Professional campaign firms are subcontracted to collect partisan registrations and are paid $3 to $6 per head for a valid completed form. Individual candidates in certain legislative districts have been known to set aside a chunk of money to orchestrate their own voter drive—either solo or in cooperation with an adjoining or overlapping member’s jurisdiction. Finally, civic groups, churches, nonprofit organizations, colleges, civil rights groups, and other interest groups also help register voters.
In an attempt to encourage voter participation, in 1995 Congress passed the so-called “motor-voter” law, which allows states to take a more active role in registering voters. State and local service providers at the Department of Motor Vehicles or at the county Department of Social Services may provide registration forms and technical assistance in completing them in order to encourage more registration. This law was highly controversial in a partisan sense because it was assumed that more Democrats than Republicans would be registered in this manner. Even after the law was passed, the Wilson administration dragged its heels for months in implementing the law, until forced by court order to comply. From 1995 and 2006, more than 17.5 million people registered to vote in conjunction with the “motor-voter” law.12
In addition to the registration requirement, socioeconomic factors affect turnout. Not all groups or classes are equally likely to vote. Generally, the socially and economically disadvantaged are less likely to participate in the political process. Hence, these groups are less likely to make their voices heard at the ballot box. One of the key factors that helps predict whether a person is likely to vote is income. Wealthy and middle-class individuals are more likely to vote than working-class individuals. Another factor, which also correlates closely with income, is education. College graduates are significantly more likely to vote than people with no more education than a high school diploma. Paradoxically, increasing rates of education in the general population since the 1950s have not increased turnout overall, although individuals with more education are still more likely to vote than others. Political scientists have grappled for some time with this puzzle.13
Partisanship also matters. Republicans are slightly more likely to vote than Democrats, though this may be a function of income more than party affiliation because Republicans have historically been more affluent than Democrats. In addition, people with strong ideological commitment are more likely to vote than those with weak partisan loyalty. Age is another factor: Individuals between the ages of 35 and 55 are considered more likely to vote than younger or older persons. In California, only one-third of people between the ages of 18 and 24 are registered to vote. Men are still slightly more likely to vote than women, although that difference has been shrinking over time.
A final generalization is that ethnicity matters. Whites are more likely to vote than are nonwhites. Of the white population in California, 65 percent are registered to vote, compared with 58 percent of African Americans, 42 percent of the Latino population, and 39 percent of the Asian population. These inequalities in registration rates have consequences at the ballot box. A study of political participation by ethnic groups in Southern California found that African Americans vote in approximately the same rates as whites, while Latinos and Asians vote in significantly lower rates. One reason Latinos and Asians vote in lower rates than whites and African Americans is that immigrants comprise a larger proportion of these communities. Even though voting is their right as U.S. citizens, naturalized immigrants tend to vote in lower rates than native-born citizens.
Much of the difference in turnout rates among these groups can be explained by the factors already discussed. The Latino population, on average, tends to be younger than the white population, with lower levels of income and education. When controlling for these differences, the gap in voting disappears. As the average age of the Latino population increases, and as the community becomes more affluent and more highly educated over time, it is projected that the participation gap between Latinos and whites will dis-appear.14 At the same time, ethnic identification is believed to increase turnout among Latinos. The mobilization of young Latinos in support of Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaigns for mayor of Los Angeles demonstrates the potential of the emerging Latino vote. In 2005, Villaraigosa became the city’s first Latino mayor in more than 200 years. While still lagging behind white and African American participation levels, Latino participation grew drastically in the 1990s. This translated directly into benefits for many Latino politicians, including California’s first statewide elected Latino leader, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante.
Among Asian Americans turnout has also been low, even though the Asian community on average is slightly older, with higher rates of income and education. This has been explained by the fact that the Asian community in California is dispersed around the state. Because they are not as geographically concentrated as Latino voters, the diverse and diffuse Asian communities are more difficult to mobilize. But voting is only one form of political participation. As Latinos and Asians continue to assert political and economic power, their influence and representation will improve. That increase may further drive up levels of voting in these communities.
California’s status as the leading gateway for new immigrants into the United States has impacts on participation and turnout. Naturalized immigrants, regardless of national origin, are less likely to participate in politics if they are from nations without a democratic tradition, although that difference disappears over time. Immigrants who read newspapers and watch the news on television tend to be more informed and engaged in local politics. Across the state, numerous foreign-language media outlets provide the information that helps new immigrants make this transition. For example, KMEX, one of the Spanish-language television stations in Los Angeles, draws larger audiences for its local newscasts than any of the English-language alternatives. Another example is the Korea Times. This international newspaper has a circulation of 50,000 in the Los Angeles area, to which it reports local news as well as news from Korea. On occasion, minority-language media become advocates for their communities. The Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion mobilized readers to oppose Proposition 187. The newspaper ran stories detailing the ways different communities would be affected by the initiative, encouraged readers to register to vote, and raised money for a group working to defeat the initiative.15
These media organizations boast a dedication to help their audience become citizens by educating them about policy issues, particularly those that affect their communities, such as immigration and welfare reform proposals that would have cut benefits to legal immigrants.16 English-language television also plays an important role in this process. A study of media use by Korean immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area found that exposure to television news was an important predictor of political learning because television is more accessible to non-native speakers than are English-language newspapers.17 This suggests that television news has the potential to facilitate the assimilation of immigrants, enticing the state’s diverse population into becoming more active and involved citizens.
The participation gap has serious implications for a state as diverse as California. It raises questions about the legitimacy of a political system that is based on the principle of majority rule. When 6 out of 10 eligible adults stay away from the polls, it also casts doubt on the ability of a democratically elected legislature to accurately represent public needs, which it must translate into effective policy outputs.18 If certain subgroups of the electorate are routinely underrepresented at the ballot box, then the bias introduced at the polls may result in inequitable public policies that favor the interests of the majority at the expense of the minority.
Unequal participation is particularly dangerous when there are issues on the public agenda that disproportionately affect minorities. Proposition 187 provides a case in point. In 1994, a sizable majority of California’s voters registered their support for the initiative, which was designed to cut off services to undocumented immigrants. While the initiative was approved by a 20-point margin, Californians were clearly divided along ethnic lines. White voters accounted for most of the initiative’s support. African Americans and Asian Americans split their votes. In contrast, 77 percent of Latinos were opposed to the measure.19 This made little difference in the outcome, however. Latinos comprised only 8 percent of the voters on election day in 1994, even though they made up over one-fourth of the state’s population. Whites accounted for 80 percent of voters on election day, but they were only 57 percent of the state’s population. Given the high turnout among the white majority, it was no surprise which policy preference prevailed on election day.
There was a slight upturn in voter turnout in 2004 and 2006, when vital national issues of peace and prosperity were at stake, and California had the chance to influence the control of Congress and the White House. Still, declining political participation is the long-term trend in California, as in the rest of the country. There are reasons to be hopeful, however. Thanks to reforms such as the “motor-voter” law and voter registration drives, it has become easier for those who are eligible to register to vote. Most importantly, however, as California’s ethnic communities continue to assert their political will, more equitable participation will emerge, with more equitable policy outcomes as a result. California’s electorate may prove to be the most important policy player—given greater levels of participation and fewer stumbling blocks.
1. Jennifer Warren, “Voters Seem to Enjoy Chance to Shop Around,” Los Angeles Times (June 3, 1998): A3.
2. For a detailed analysis of the causes and consequences of Proposition 198, see Bruce Cain and Elisabeth Gerber, eds., Voting at the Political Fault Line: California’s Experiment with the Blanket Primary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
3. Larry Gerston and Terry Christensen, Recall! California’s Political Earthquake (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004).
4. Karen Breslau, “The Mean Green Machine,” Newsweek (19 June, 2006), 40.
5. Nicholas Lemann, “Government of, by and for the Comfortable,” New York Times Magazine (November 1, 1998): 37–42.
6. Dan Bernstein, “Allen Recalled by Huge Margin,” Sacramento Bee (November 29, 1995): A1.
7. Fredrick L. Bird and Frances M. Ryan, The Recall of Public Officers: A Study of the Operation of the Recall in California (New York: Macmillan, 1930).
8. No Side Leads Yes on All Four of the Propositions Backed by Governor Schwarzenegger (San Francisco: Field Research Corporation, November 1, 2005).
9. Peter Shrag, Paradise Lost: California’s Past, America’s Future (San Francisco: Public Policy Institute, 1998).
10. See Bruce Keith, David Magleby, Candice Nelson, Elizabeth Orr, Mark Westlye, and Raymond Wolfinger, The Myth of the Independent Voter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
11. Peter Shrag, op cit.
12. Bruce McPherson, Report of Registration (Sacramento: October 23, 2006).
13. See, for example, Richard Brody, “The Puzzle of Participation,” in Anthony King, ed., The New American Political System (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1978).
14. Carole Uhlaner, Bruce Cain, and D. Roderick Kiewiet, “Political Participation of Ethnic Minorities in the 1980s,” Political Behavior 11 (1989): 195–231.
15. Victor M. Valle and Rodolpho D. Torres, Latino Metropolis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
16. Susan Rasky, “The Media Covers Los Angeles,” California Journal (July 1997): 42–45.
17. Steven H. Chaffee, Clifford J. Nass, and Seung-Mock Yang, “The Bridging Role of Television in Immigrant Political Socialization,” Human Communication Research 17 (1990): 266–288.
18. For a classic expression of this argument, see E. E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People (Philadelphia: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975).
19. Patrick J. McDonnell, “State’s Diversity Doesn’t Reach Voting Booth,” Los Angeles Times (November 10, 1994): A1.