Paltry Turnout Sends Analysts Searching for Causes and Cures

Los Angeles voters avoided, if barely, setting a record for low turnout in Tuesday’s election, but the dismal showing has set minds to work on the causes and potential solutions of the problem.

Some officials say voters were turned off by ethics controversies. Political scientists say we have too many elections for too many minor offices.

And a small group of political observers ventured that maybe it is all right after all that most of us ignore minor races such as the one on Tuesday’s ballot for the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees.

“I feel hard pressed to vote for community college board,” said Raymond E. Wolfinger, professor of political science at UC Berkeley, and he suggested that most Californians are no different.

According to the city clerk’s office, turnout in the community college districts was 9% and in the city proper 10.9%--largely thanks to a comparatively strong 20% turnout in the 7th Council District. The record low, set in 1983, is 8.6%.

Tuesday’s poor showing follows on the heels of a record low turnout April 11 for the mayoral primary election. In that contest--in which nearly half of the City Council was elected in addition to the mayor--only 24.33% of registered voters went to the polls.

Some of the reasons for poor turnout--such as apathy, poor education and the increasingly mobile and rootless nature of society--seem insurmountable.

But potential solutions, such as eliminating some elections and elected positions, are just as provocative.

Politicians themselves say the reasons for low voter participation--and the solutions to the problem--are political in nature.

They say voters perceive their problems as so large that no candidate appears capable of providing solutions. “If no one has an answer (to society’s problems), how do you make a choice?” said Bob Naylor, former state Republican Party chairman.

Some politicians say low voter turnout is the result of a homogenization of ideology, a blurring of the distinctions between candidates, and that makes choices more difficult. Naylor, paraphrasing former President Ronald Reagan, said candidates for public office need to abandon the “politics of pastels” and “stand for something clear.” Only then will voters respond, he said.

Concern Over Turnout

Many in the political process are concerned about slipping voter turnout.

One strategy City Councilman Richard Alatorre is exploring is consolidation of municipal elections with county and state elections. That would not only combine high-visibility contests and the lesser offices on the same ballot but would reduce the number of times voters go to the polls.

Wolfinger points out that city residents have been asked to go to the polls three times in the past seven months. “Let’s face it,” he said, “when you keep doing it, people lose interest.”

Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at Caltech, said other partial solutions are to adopt more accessible vote-by-mail programs and make voter registration easier by making it part of automobile registration. Only about 70% of eligible voters actually register, according to several studies.

Los Angeles City Clerk Elias Martinez said the idea of consolidating elections “always comes up, but never seriously.”

And he is not convinced that it would really make that much difference. Martinez said there is a large “drop-off” on long ballots. Although many voters will cast a ballot for President or governor at the top of a ballot, they will pass over lesser offices such as judges at the bottom of the ballot, he said.

But Martinez said new technology is making other alternatives, such as voting by telephone or post card, possible, even if they will take a while to be accepted. Even though many Americans do not take advantage of voting, “people want confidence in the system,” Martinez said.

VOTER TURNOUT Turnout in Tuesday’s Los Angeles general municipal election was the second lowest in at least 20 years, the city clerk’s office records showed: 1969: 62% 1971: 45% 1973: 64% 1975: 43% 1977: 29% 1979: 24% 1981: 30% 1983: 8.6% 1985: 22% 1987: 16% 1989: 10.9% Compiled by researcher Cecilia Rasmussen