In the six weeks since the Nov. 4 election, much has been said about its extraordinarily low, record-shattering voter turnout. Scarcely 42 percent of California’s 17.8 million registered voters, and just 31 percent of its 24.3 million potentially eligible voters, actually cast ballots. It resulted, one could say, from the perfect calm – no hot statewide candidate races or blood-boiling ballot measures to spur voters into doing their civic duties. Nevertheless, it also continued a decades-long slide in California’s voter turnout, which is one of the nation’s lowest, and generated some political palaver about what might be done to raise it to more respectable levels. … Herb Wesson, a former speaker of the state Assembly who now is president of the Los Angeles City Council, has made raising local voter turnout a personal cause, saying it’s a civil rights matter.
Last week, Wesson and his council colleagues placed two measures in next March’s city election – when turnout is expected to be even lower than it was in 2013 – to shift city and school elections into even-numbered years, merging them with statewide general elections.
That would raise turnout for city and school elections but any change in election procedures, particularly anything that affects turnout, also would have bottom-line impacts.
Shifting Los Angeles’ city and school elections into even-numbered years certainly would make it easier for more liberal, union-oriented candidates to win elections and re-elections.
Full Article: Los Angeles Seeks Increase in Voter Turnout