A 2018 political rally at San Francisco City Hall. (Photo: Sheila Fitzgerald, via Shutterstock)Voter participation dramatically increased in California in the 2018 midterm elections, part of a nationwide trend. About 51.9% of California’s 25.1 million eligible voters hit the polls in the 2018 general election, up from 36.6% in 2014, the previous midterm election, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
A depressed man alone at sunset, saddened by life. (Photo: songpholt, via Shutterstock)Behavioral health is a touchy subject for many. For some, there is a stigma attached to receiving mental health care. Sometimes, help is hard to find. Understanding the roots of a behavioral problem can be difficult, and there are additional barriers of cost, insurance coverage and the amount of time that must be invested to visit a mental health specialist.
Illustration by Tim Foster, Capitol Weekly. Yes, this could be happening. California, despite holding its primary presidential election in June and being a (somewhat) proportional state, could matter in the Democratic nomination process. And it will almost certainly provide the final big set of Republican delegates that could give Donald Trump the 1,237 he needs for the nomination — or deny him and ensure a contested GOP convention.
Voters cast ballots at the November 2014 general election in Oak View, Calif. (Photo: Joseph Sohm) We Californians justifiably become excited about our many remarkable achievements: we make terrific movies; Silicon Valley leads the planet in technological innovation; our traffic jams are world class. But when it comes to voting, we give a statewide shrug. A mere 42.2 percent of registered voters — registered voters — bothered to cast ballots in the November 2014 general election. Los Angeles County bottomed out statewide with a turnout of 31 percent. It gets even worse: The June 2014 turnout was 25.2 percent.
California voters at the polls in Ventura County, 2012. (Photo: American Spirit, via Shutterstock)Some 2.6 million of California’s eligible voters — about one in nine — speak only limited English and many of them can’t get election information in their native languages, a problem that is playing out in low turnout numbers for Asians and Latinos, according to a new study.