A Vote Against April Elections

If you don’t live in Tustin, Los Alamitos, La Habra or San Juan Capistrano, you may not be aware that city council elections were held in those communities last Tuesday.

If you do live in those cities, you still may not be aware that city council elections were held in those communities last Tuesday. At least that what the election turnouts indicate.

In La Habra only 14.7% of the registered voters found their way to the polls. San Juan Capistrano was slightly better with 16.9% of the voters bothering to cast ballots, which made the turnouts of 20.5% in Los Alamitos and 21% in Tustin “heavy” by comparison.

Those four cities are holdouts against the trend of shifting the once-traditional April municipal elections to June or November of even-numbered years to consolidate local balloting with state and federal elections.

The traditional argument against the switch is that interest in local issues would be less, and maybe even lost, on the larger ballot with its often controversial measures and more prominent candidates. The hollowness of that argument should have echoed off walls of the near-empty polling places last Tuesday.

The last general election in November of 1984 produced the greatest voter turnout in Orange County municipal history with as many as 70% of the registered voters casting ballots in some communities. The lowest turnout recorded was still nearly three times greater than in last Tuesday’s disappointing balloting, which not only cost the four cities more money to hold than if the elections were consolidated but failed to provide the more representative expression of public opinion that larger voter turnouts do.

Comparing last Tuesday’s dismal exercise with the November, 1984, general election should reassure the cities that abandoned the April election date how wise they were to do so--and convince Tustin, La Habra, Los Alamitos and San Juan Capistrano how foolish it is to keep clinging to such a costly “tradition.”