by Joe Mathews
On Election Day, I intend to stand reluctantly with the majority of my fellow Californians — on the sidelines and as far as from the voting booth as possible.
All the news about the election obscures the big story in California politics: most people here have concluded that voting in state elections isn’t worth their time. Of the 38 million residents in California, 23.5 million are adults, citizens and non-felons, and thus eligible to vote. In this year’s June state primaries, only 5.6 million bothered to vote — less than 25 percent of those eligible. During the last state general election in 2006, 39 percent of those eligible bothered to vote. This November’s turnout is expected to be even lower.
The last time that more than half of eligible Californians bothered to cast a ballot in a state election? 1982.
That year roughly marks the beginning of an era in which Californians have used ballot measures to tie their representatives’ hands behind their backs by enacting spending mandates, supermajority requirements, and tax limits that prevent them from getting important business done. This trend has turned our civic life into one long, nasty cycle. In each election California’s shrinking electorate shrinks the power of elected officials, who can’t deliver what the citizenry wants. As a result, some frustrated voters stop voting, shrinking the electorate further. Remaining voters express their anger at the next election by shrinking the powers of the elected officials even more. And so it goes.
After three decades of this disheartening routine, there’s little left to vote on. The ballot offers mainly two choices. In candidate races, Californians get to decide which politicians to send into offices that don’t carry enough power and discretion to do much of anything about anything. In ballot initiative contests, they’re asked to consider new ways to tie the hands of the people they’re voting for in the candidate races. When these are the choices, not voting is perfectly reasonable.
I am a late guest at California’s non-voter party. I write about government and politics for a living, and yearn to believe that elections matter. I enjoy the ritual of voting. I come from a patriotic family with a history of military service. And voting has never felt like a chore. The three-block walk from my apartment to my local Los Angeles polling place, the Westside Jewish Community Center on Olympic Boulevard, is delightful.
But casting a ballot in such a broken system has come to feel like putting money in a bank you know will fail. In the past, I used to talk California non-voters (including some relatives) into voting. But in recent years, I found that my explanations grew longer and more tortured, full of guesses about the indirect effects of sending a particular political message. This year, I found I couldn’t answer a basic question: what is there to vote for?
But… but… but…. you want to protest that there are a few significant choices on the ballot.
Doesn’t it matter, you ask, who the governor of California is? The sad truth is: on the most important issues — fiscal ones — it doesn’t matter much at all. The fierce partisanship of the legislators and the state’s requirement of two-thirds votes on any fiscal legislation means that all governors — whatever their experience, background or party — end up stuck in the middle, able to balance budgets only through accounting fictions and questionable borrowing.
What about, you wonder, the down-ticket races for lieutenant governor, insurance commissioner and other executive offices? Sadly, those are fundraising contests between rising politicians who are building donor bases for future contests for governor or U.S. senator. As such, these executive offices serve mainly as incubators of pay-to-play corruption.
Don’t the ballot initiatives offer some promise? No, only peril. Even the well-intentioned measures are doomed — in the same way that building a good-looking addition on a house doesn’t help when the entire structure sits on toxic soil. Legislative elections? You must be kidding. The state’s election system makes it impossible to change the party in charge of the legislature. So the results Tuesday are already known: Democrats will control the legislature, in the same numbers as before.
This system must be fixed. California has more supermajority-requirements and other budget restraints than any other state, and its initiative process is the world’s most inflexible, making it difficult to subsequently fix even obvious errors in measures. But repairing these systems can’t be done at the polls. Comprehensive reform of the system itself — through a constitutional convention or revision commission that permits a wholesale rewrite of California’s rules — is the only way out. Such reform will take years of organizing and engagement.
The most civic-minded thing Californians might do Tuesday is devote the hour they would have spent voting to learning more about how their state works and how they might participate in larger reform. There are a host of web sites that provide information in this area, among them California Choices and RethinkCali, the latter an effort to rewrite the state constitution wiki style.
Elections are not cures, but curses, embedding the existing system more deeply in the life of the state. Each new elected official seeks to build upon an existing system (with new laws and regulations) rendered more broken by each new ballot initiative. Enough already: let’s be done with the attempt to march our way out of quicksand. I am staying home for a change.
Joe Mathews, a fourth-generation Californian and a Zócalo contributing editor, writes about his home state and its politics, media, labor, and real estate. He is co-author, with Mark Paul, of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It.
*Photo courtesy Steve Rhodes.
Mathew’s essay lacks consistency. Twice he notes how California’s supermajority requirements stifle governance. Then he laments, “Don’t the ballot initiatives offer some promise? No, only peril.” Did he even read Proposition 25? It would kill the supermajority requirement for budgets, which would break the single biggest logjam in state government.
On the flip side, Proposition 26 would impose new supermajority requirements, equating “fees” with “taxes”.
But it’s not worth walking down the street to vote for 25, or against 26? Mathew, you told us that it’s important, but your actions betray your words. You sound like a kid saying that if he doesn’t get his constitutional convention, he’s going to take his ball and go home.
Go ahead. My vote matters, contrary to what Mathew says. In fact, the more people that stay home, the more my vote matters.
With lengthy diatribes like this how can we expect to eventually correct the problems of our state. I am 73 and a native Californian; I attended all levels of education in state, including being a UCLA graduate. I know the frustrations that we face in a troubled state which is to me not much different than our troubled country. But, to even suggest that we should stay home from the polls only continues to paint the problems in a darker hue. I agree that we need to change the system by becoming more educated and more proactive but to stay home is simply an exercise in futility by denying our democratic obligations. Joe Matthews, do you honestly believe that by standing as far away from the polling place as possibly, you contribute to a solution??? It is hard for me to believe in this cynical approach.
I just don’t see how not voting helps anything. If you ain’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem in California. I hope you will vote on Tuesday.
Joe is right on several accounts, but there are very important issues to consider this time around: Do we increase the power of the redistricting commission by allowing them to also carve out congressional districts? Can we finally get just a simple majority vote on the budget? Should we legalize marijuana? There’s also a jaded outlook on down-ticket races in Joe’s piece. Yes, there may be some consideration to a candidate’s future endeavors and ability to raise money, but at least in my case, I wanted to get in there and see what I could do for working people at the state level. Of course, I didn’t stand a chance for the very reason you mentioned: somebody could raise more money than me.
That has to be the most nihilistic piece I have ever read. Yes, California has voted itself into rigor mortis, but nevertheless, how could you have lived through the close elections of the last few years and not have realized that if more people would have voted it would’ve made all the difference in the world? I AM voting. Personally, I can’t indulge in high-minded apathy when there’s a risk of another Republican in the Senate–especially one responsible for decimating a great American company.
But whatever your political affiliation, at the local level there often is no super-majority. Nor does it come down to Republicans vs. Democrats. It’s about which candidates are for or against the new bridge, high school, tax, etc. Folks, check your ballots–your communities may be passing all sorts of things you disagree with, based on the votes of only a few dozen of your neighbors. The ones who got off their cynical butts and VOTED.
No. You’re wrong.
All you have to do is think back to our friend Richard Nixon — the most corrupt and evil President ever, until the mis-reign of George W. Bush — and remember his notion of “The Silent Majority”.
The Silent Majority was defined as everyone who didn’t cast a ballot in the Presidential Election of 1968. It was Nixon’s spin that they didn’t vote because they were confident that he, Nixon, would win. And it was his further spin that the entire Silent Majority were rabid fans of Nixon who delighted in his every Presidential decision, criminal and treasonous as those decisions generally were.
That’s why I vote. That’s why you should vote. When I show up, I get to say who I’m voting for, who I like. When I don’t vote, they get to say who I would have voted for and who I like.
While voting is not perfect, elections are flawed, and the government is broken, by staying home you let the pundits use your voice for their ends. When you vote, you prevent them from putting their foot in your mouth, and on your neck.
The main reason to vote is just that simple, and it’s just that important.
And it also doesn’t hurt to remember: All that’s required for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
This is a right-wing tactic that has been all too effective in past cases. “Don’t vote – it only encourages them.” If progressives and Democrats stay home tomorrow, Repubs win the takeover of congress. It’s just that simple. Because, you know THEY aren’t going to stay home. Nor the tea “partiers” — they’ll be voting, you can be sure.
Not to say we shouldn’t improve the system we have, by any means. Venezuela is said to have to most fraud-proof election system of all. People vote on a computerized system, which provides a paper record of their vote, which is then put into a ballot box. Different entities count each type of vote separately. If the two don’t match, the paper ballots prevail.
Regardless, anyone who promotes not voting is not a friend of ours.
Wow – what a way to start a week. Each one of the comments above state the case for voting more clearly and eloquently than I could, but I will say that my day tomorrow starts in a school room on the East side of LA along with my neighbors, waiting for our turn to voice our opinion. I cannot buy into the ‘non-voting’ mindset when I look around and see my fellow Americans studying the ballot, engaging in discourse and forming opinions. My community is lower income and demographically heavy on immigrants. There are ballots in many languages and volunteers to assist who speak different languages. I think this is a wonderful thing and true to the basic tenets of this country.
People have died and suffered so that we can vote tomorrow, so that we can be a part of the process. The system is far from perfect and deeply flawed, but to turn mutely away and resign from the conversation is not the answer. Out of respect for those before me and hope for those in front of me, it is my responsibility to, at the very least, tick some boxes tomorrow.
“The most civic-minded thing Californians might do Tuesday is devote the hour they would have spent voting to learning more about how their state works and how they might participate in larger reform.”
This is a false dilemma. Educate yourself for an hour AND vote.
I don’t follow the reasoning of appealing to popularity, since so many Californians don’t vote, then I shouldn’t vote either? I find low voter turning all the more inspiring, my vote ends up being more significant.
are these options – voting and constitutional reform – mutually exclusive? shouldn’t we be exhorting our fellow citizens to vote to keep the idea of our democratic right alive? I question the narrow pragmatism here – just as I am skeptical of how a single election can produce significant and immediately visible and tangible changes. The logic here sadly emulates that of the tea partiers – that after 1.5 years in office the Obama administration has not solved the mega-problems that it inherited. I say elect the officials we believe should rightfully occupy the offices up for election – no matter how hamstrung in the end – and keep pushing for fundamental change; and, this election is not just about california – there is a senate seat, there are US representative seats; finally, on a pragmatic note, the governor influences very much the budget of the University of California, where I teach; we feel – in the most palpable terms – the effects of the Regents’ decisions – Regents who depend on gubernatorial appointment. and I have personally experienced the financial impact of the failure of a proposition to delay the impact of budget cuts get voted in…
“The sad truth is: on the most important issues — fiscal ones — it doesn’t matter much at all.”
Maybe this is the sad truth for you, but the reality is that there are a lot more important issues than just fiscal ones, and no issue is ever one-dimensional. Is Prop 23 not important because it relates to pollution and GHG emission? In fact if money is all you care about, this issue should be one of the MOST important, because continued pollution and erratic weather from global warming will cost us dearly in the long run in terms of healthcare costs, lost crops, emergency services, violent storm damage, repairs, etc…
The most ironic part is that prop 25 lowers the legislative vote required to pass the budget from a 2/3rds to a simple majority vote. And prop 26 increases the vote for levies and charges to a 2/3rds vote instead of a simple majority. However, 25 will likely fail, and 26 will likely pass given that educated and responsible people like yourself, and those that listen to you, will now abstain from voting thanks to your advice.
So, while you are here arguing about why it doesn’t matter if you vote or not, there are some propositions on the ballot that would directly affect your argument as to why it doesn’t matter to vote in the first place.
Regardless of your personal opinion, encouraging people not to vote is hardly something you should be doing if you consider yourself a civic-minded individual. Clearly there is enough apathy and disillusionment with regards to California’s voting population, I don’t think they need more encouragement. I agree the system is very far from perfect, and in fact messed up in many ways. However its not going to change simply by ignoring it. People need to educate themselves about the system and how things work. I find that the best form of education is through participation.
Here are many things to vote FOR
19 Yes
21 Yes
24 Yes
25 Yes
and Against
20 No
22 No
23 No
26 No
And if you can’t vote influence those who can!
I cannot imagine wasting one’s ability to exercise freedom of speech with such a negative bah humbug essay. The right to vote is one of our most important freedoms and no matter what, we are compelled to take it seriously. When I was just 18, I walked the dangerous dusty roads of Louisiana to teach people of color how to vote and to support their courageous action in registering to vote. It would take me three years at that time in our history before I could even vote, but I was working on my future and the future of our country. I cannot support such a childish and negative perspective any more than I can accept the idea that our citizenry should behave with that attitude. There are so many things right and many things wrong with how things are, but we cannot just complain. It is our responsibility to attempt to do something to make it the country we want. I am still working on getting out the vote. I vote as if my life depends upon it because it does.
And I thought I was cynical! The easiest thing in the world to do is not vote. You might well debate about what good does it do; another way to look at it is: what harm is done if you don’t vote? In this year when fear-mongering is more common than ever, do you really want a government filled with know-nothings, nationalists, nativists, jingoists and obstructionists? Do not go gently into that nightmare. Study — and vote! (Maybe Joe was trying reverse psychology when he wrote his piece?)
Hey Joe! I absolutely agree that we need a constitutional convention to fix the broken system of governance which is causing the decline of our once-Golden State. Nonetheless, this is one of the most cynical and despairing pieces I’ve seen. How can staying home from the polls help? If ever greater numbers of those eligible to vote register their alienation and disgust by not voting, it will only embolden the corporate interests to impose their avaricious agendas on us “little guys”, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Rather, why not urge everyone to vote? Then if voters’ desires conveyed in a high turn-out election are thwarted or ignored by a broken system, that may ultimately lead to the anger and outrage necessary to make a constitutional convention come about. Apathy only begets apathy.
While such commentary on a philosophical level might be worthy of discussion, to present it as a basis for action (or inaction, as is the case here) is not only counterproductive but dangerous.
The only message sent by not voting is that the electorate is indifferent and apathetic enough to be jerked around by any political mountebank that chooses to buy, er, run for office.
Viz. the other commenters, voting must be done NO MATTER WHAT. No matter how execrable the choices, they are still choices. No matter how convoluted the processes, there is still a link, however tenuously it may be perceived, between those casting the vote and those soliciting the vote. No matter how weary we may feel of the seemingly interminable, intractable, incessant, insistent clamor of the campaigns, We are not in Oceania* just yet.
Mr. Mathews, I am voting with my suffrage, and with my feet. I am choosing to participate in the flawed, imperfect process that still exists, rather than tacitly – and tactically – yield power to those who realize that seizing it is only possible when reason sleeps.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nations_of_Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Oceania
This essay reminds me of some people I know who say “They’re all the same; it doesn’t matter who you vote for so why bother?” Oh, yeah? Drilling for oil off the California coast? Possibly appointing a judge to the California supreme court? Adding to the gridlock rather than easing it? I still think it matters. Everyone who wrote on this page thinks it matters and expressed their thoughts eloquently. Half an hour before I read this, I was talking to a Republican-ish woman who is going to vote against Carly Fiorina, for Barbara Boxer, even though she was considering sitting this one out. Come on, we’re all cynical enough already. Voting is an expression of engagement and belief in the system. So rare, we’d better value it.
It is deeply troubling to me that Zocalo would send out this e-mail the day before an election. While certainly it falls within the “connecting people to ideas” bin of their mission and is a valid opinion to discuss, sending it out the day before the election is irresponsible at best, and vote-suppressant at worst. If you want to spark discussion about this issue, have a forum. Don’t send out an unsolicited e-mail the day before an election that amounts to a plea to stay home.
Further, I cannot see how arguing that votes don’t matter and that we should instead take the day to educate ourselves is even cognizable as a prescription for the ill Mr. Mathews diagnoses. What doctor tells a cancer patient that the way to get better is to educate yourself about its causes? We would all be better off if Californians generally took the time to learn about the structural problems that face us (some of them self-inflicted) and the possible ways to fix it, but that is quite apart from the question of whether people should or should not vote.
Finally, at a time when people are cynical about their government, it is corrosive to the democratic process to add credence to the idea that one’s vote doesn’t matter. People already don’t trust the process we use for counting ballots and electing representatives. It doesn’t make it better to suggest that we are powerless to change our situation through the act of voting itself.
I like Zocalo and have attended a few of their terrific events. But this e-mail bothers me very much.
Sure, who cares whether our parks are falling apart and closed half the time, as opposed to beautiful, robust and free to everyone in the state? Or whether redistricting is carried out in an even-handed way? or whether California continues to be a pioneer in fighting global warming.
Maybe Brown and Whitman aren’t that far apart on state finances, but which one is more likely to bring about results? How about things other than finances, such as support for same-sex marriage? By the way, are you at all interested in showing that billionaires can’t just buy major public offices in this state?
I’m so tired of nihilistic diatribes like this one. You think politicians really care if you don’t vote? Or a million people don’t vote? So you don’t vote, and that dodo Niles over on the journalism website quits the Times because it isn’t everything he wants in the world, when it’s been uncovering local corruption right and left. Let all the people who can’t have everything their own way pick up their toys and leave. That’ll really get us places.
Voting is a civil right that was earned and achieve by hard work and many times pople fighting and dying for it. To achieve results in a democracy we must raise the bar of what we expect from the people we elect. We raise the bar by demanding that the pople we elect bring substantive issues in their campaign agendas. Democracy is not a system to achieve perfection in governace but to facilitate a fair participation of all and to create venues for those that participate to demand substance from our elected representatives. Voting is a civil right that was gained in past struggles. Not to vote is not an option. The quality of our elected representatives depends on the qulity of our participation.
Thank you for all the smart comments and feedback. Many refer to voting in general. And certainly in presidential elections or other states, voting makes much more sense. But California is a very peculiar place, with a system unlike any other.
Voting (and the fact that we think voting solves problems, particularly via initiatives and other ballot measures) has been a direct cause of our problems — in large part because of the inflexibility of our process. It’s a particular hell to live in a place where voting almost always makes things worse, but it’s our hell. (Also one fact I wish I had included in the piece: Californians still participate in the same rate they traditionally have in PRESIDENTIAL elections; it’s in state elections where we seem to have given up, which makes sense given how we’ve voted in ways that devalue our votes).
I don’t want to get into a detailed dispute with many of you, but those who say Prop 25 offers reform or a solution to the two-thirds vote are misinformed. In fact, Prop 25 perhaps the best example on the ballot of the problem I wrote about.
Prop 25 offers the right policy — a majority vote budget — but in a context that, at best, doesn’t change anything in our budget process and, at worst, could make things worse. How’s that? Well, the question is one of context–and context is what we refuse to reckon with in our California system of one-at-a-time, single-subject ballot measure votes.
Prop 25 removes the supermajority requirement for budget bills — but leaves all the other supermajorities in our system in place — for taxes, for changing the education funding formula, for local government funds, for transportation funds, and a few other things. No other state has so many supermajorities. So the underlying dynamic that causes deficits, gimmicky borrowing, and budget delays won’t change–there are still all those supermajorities in place. In fact, eliminating just one supermajority, for spending bills, may make deficits worse, as Democrats spend more easily while Republicans continue to refuse to raise revenues to pay for spending.
And that leads to the larger worry. If the budget process is the same mess (or even worse) after you pass Prop 25, you’ve effectively made reform harder by discrediting the idea of eliminating supermajorities as a way to solve the budget. And the state should eliminate its supermajority requirements–all of them. (There’s also the frustration that’s likely to grow when people realize that their election system doesn’t allow them to hold the majority that passed a budget accountable, but that’s a longer story).
Prop 25 puts an exclamation point on the message I’m trying to convey: Californians can’t solve their systemic problems by voting in this way. We need to change the system (elections, legislature and initiative) first, so we can have elections that do matter. In the interim, voting is counter-productive. That stinks. And it goes against everything you and I have been told and taught our whole lives. But that’s how it is.
Incredible piece. I got here by googling “Your vote Doesn’t matter.” It truly does not. From presidential to local elections. It simply does not matter. Kudos on a great essay.
Sorry, I still don’t buy it. Even if you wish to change the system, the people OF the system will have a lot of power to let you go on with your efforts or to impede you. I don’t think you can gain anything by not caring about who they are, and have a lot to lose. The difference may seem miniscule, but if a tiny bit of difference can push an outcome in one direction or the other it means a lot.
This piece is embarrassingly wrong-headed. If your only motivation to vote is a solipsistic expectation to see your will manifest, you’ve been doing it wrong.
Voting itself is an act of civic engagement, and if you can’t decide–even in the most cynical and fatalistic manner–which choices are the least bad choices, then you are truly lost in the eyes of a representative republic.
As if participating in what you consider a fatally flawed system is somehow (inexplicably, in this article) further cementing bad policy (no policy is cemented, Mr. Mathews, hence the regular voting thing), you’ve opted out. Instead of using the broken, static-laden radio, you’re throwing up your hands and choosing to ignore the information being broadcast.
No one is so busy that they can’t both vote and learn about the problems with California’s government. Stop being lazy–everyone is tired and baffled by the same civic problems. In complaining about the broken machine and refusing to participate, you are becoming what others (like myself) are lamenting as we march to the polls.
Joe Mathews is one of the many broken pieces of the machine that he’s convinced is so useless. The machine wouldn’t be do darned broken if there were fewer Joe Mathews’ refusing to add their input to the machine that so needs it. I’m glad to read that other commenters are saying similar things–and I’m doubly glad that I don’t see much evidence that the author is succeeding at breaking other parts of the voting machine, either.
…and Grover Norquist wins.