Surveying the Damage of a Brutal Election Day

It was Will Rogers who said: “All politics is applesauce.” Well, maybe here it’s orange juice.

Sometimes I can’t help but think that campaigns are like squadrons of Air Force bombers dropping shells on neighborhoods and those who aren’t killed by the process get up and vote on Election Day.

This year we suffered a particularly savage attack.

In Orange County, casualties were the highest in more than a decade, with only 56% of the voters reaching the polls. Statewide it was only 54% of registered voters. Across the country, a pathetic 36% of the eligible Americans voted, matching the lowest total in 50 years.

They say a big part of voter turnoff is caused by negative campaigning. No surprise. I know a woman in Santa Ana who got 18 political mailers in one day. Eighteen letters, most bashing one person or another! No wonder.

I got calls every day for weeks from campaigns complaining that their opponents were misleading voters or they had distorted some facts. Unfortunately, most were true. I frequently told the callers, “I feel sorry for voters.”

A diligent citizen who wants to perform his or her civic duty at the voting booth faces a daunting task. There were 224 pages in the California Ballot Pamphlet all about the 28 propositions on the ballot. Then there are newspaper stories, television ads, phone calls and mail, mail, mail.

One of the most frustrating things is that the more you read about some campaigns the more unsure you are about how to vote.

It does resemble a battlefield. You have to wonder sometimes: What did the successful candidate win? The word “victory” is a relative term when you consider he or she was probably just the least hated of the two candidates.

Still, I was surprised that the turnout was that low. It may have been a vicious battle, but there was a lot at stake.

They say what really gets people going is pocketbook issues. Well, there were plenty of those in the balance on Tuesday. There is probably more going on in Washington and Sacramento that has a direct impact on everybody’s livelihood, lifestyle and pocketbook than any time in recent history.

We have troops in Saudi Arabia whose mission will be greatly affected by the attitudes of the Congress members we elected Tuesday. The tenuous economy and our budget priorities--

including higher taxes--are on the agenda in Washington. And in Sacramento, we made the most sweeping change to the machinery of our state government in decades with the passage of a proposition to limit lawmakers’ terms.

And obviously, there was the election of a new governor in a highly contested race.

Few people involved in politics would say everything in the process is fine, thanks. In fact, the debate about how to improve the system is hot.

Some suggest that campaigns are forced to be negative because it’s the only way to grab attention. So one pundit suggested in a recent book that network television stations should give campaigns five minutes of free time every night in which the candidate had to talk; no commercials. Such access to the public, he said, would reduce the need for attacks.

Maybe.

Others suggest we should make it easier for people to vote. Maybe make elections a two-day affair. Maybe even someday let people vote electronically through their telephone or computer or cable television.

Then there’s the argument for the educated electorate. Maybe our important issues should be left to those who understand them--whoever that is.