Jones Decries Turnout While Certifying Election

Outgoing Secretary of State Bill Jones, the last Republican elected statewide, finalized last month’s election results Monday and lamented the failure of millions of Californians to vote.

Barely more than half the people registered to vote did so in the November general election, a record low.

As the overseer of California’s elections for the last eight years, Jones said he fears that the state’s eligible voters are shunning the polling booth because they think they will only encourage nasty, negative campaigns by casting votes.

“The vote becomes kind of a hostage of the politics,” Jones said, “and people on both sides get upset with the politics.”

Jones, a San Joaquin Valley farmer, lost a bid to become governor in the March primary election. When he leaves office Jan. 6, all statewide elected offices will be held by Democrats.

Before certifying the election results, Jones noted that the fastest-growing category of voters is “decline to state,” meaning not affiliated with any political party. Forty-five percent of California’s registered voters are Democrats, 35% are Republicans, 2% are American Independents and 15% are “decline to state,” according to the secretary of state’s office.

“The number of decline-to-states, independents, people who are sitting the election out completely is growing by huge numbers,” Jones said, “and that is where the opportunity is, to re-enfranchise those people. The party that reaches out to those individuals and brings them to their banner is the party that will be the majority, if not in registration, at least in terms of election successes in the next generation.”

Jones encouraged his successor, former San Francisco Assemblyman Kevin Shelley, to step between mud-slinging candidates and use television and radio ads to remind Californians that voting is an obligation critical to a democratic society.

With candidates collectively spending tens of millions of dollars on attack ads, Jones said, “what happens is, there’s no money being spent by the secretary of state to try and separate the vote itself from that negative environment.”

Roger Salazar, a former campaign spokesman for Gov. Gray Davis, called Jones’ complaint hypocritical. As a candidate for governor, Jones repeatedly criticized Davis’ fund-raising and handling of the electricity crisis, Salazar said.

“Maybe if he hadn’t spent so much time throwing reckless accusations against the governor and more time doing his job as secretary of state,” Salazar said, “we would have had a better showing at the polls.”

Of California’s 15.3 million registered voters, 7.7 million cast votes in the November election, for a turnout of 50.6%. In comparison, 71% of those registered to vote did so in November 2000, a presidential election, and 58% turned out in November 1998.

The decline in votes cast last month will make it easier and cheaper for people to put new laws directly before voters in future elections. That’s because California’s signature-gathering requirements for initiatives are tied to the number of votes cast for governor.

The number of signatures that must be gathered to make an initiative statute qualify has fallen 11%, from 419,260 to 373,816, while the number for a constitutional amendment dropped from 670,816 to 598,105.

The cost of gathering signatures typically runs between $1.25 and $2 per signature, depending on the issue and time pressure, said Michael Arno, president of Arno Political Consultants in Sacramento.

The lower threshold could encourage less well-heeled campaigns to launch ballot measures, he said, and California’s huge budget shortfall could trigger a special election in 2003 to ask voters to raise taxes through the initiative process.

“I think it’s going to be really heavily used in the next two years,” Arno said.