Readers React: Explaining Leland Yee’s votes

The Times explores some of the reasons 300,000-plus voters may have cast ballots for Leland Yee after his indictment and his dropping out of the race for secretary of state. But it didn’t touch on my reason. (“How did accused politician Leland Yee get 300,000 votes?,” June 6)

Voting for Yee provided me (and likely many others) a rare opportunity in California to voice my displeasure with the field entirely. My vote for an absurd “candidate” was a deliberate nose-thumbing at the choices I was given.

California should adopt Nevada’s practice of including “none of the above” on every ballot. It would be nice to vote for something I actually believe in rather than holding my nose and settling for a lesser evil.

Jon Zerolnick

Los Angeles

With so many news stories mentioning the Yee corruption scandal, it is unfathomable to me that so many voters could have not known that Yee was arrested and had withdrawn.

When the seven of us other candidates for secretary of state debated in San Diego on May 6, we briefly discussed among ourselves how many votes we thought Yee would get. I suggested a “few thousand,” which drew laughs. Dan Schnur reminded us that in the world of politics, the only bad publicity is an obituary.

Well, this maxim is truer than any of us expected. And we all thought that all the news about the scandal was akin to an obituary.

So it is fair to say that all seven of us other secretary of state candidates are shocked (I know I am) by such a large vote count for a “dead man.”

Jeff Drobman

Westlake Village