Posts Tagged: San Bernardino

Voters shun election in droves

The state Capitol, Sacramento. (Photo: Wikimedia)

by JOHN HOWARD and CONNOR GRUBAUGH posted 06.04.2014

Election 2014 An early tally shows that fewer than one in five of California’s registered voters cast ballots in this week’s primary, continuing a downward trend that has bedeviled the state’s elections. A county-by-county report from the secretary of state’s office noted that 3.24 million people voted out of the 17.72 million registered, or about 18.3 percent. When compared with the total number of eligible voters in California, those who actually cast ballots dwindled to 13.34 percent.

The Vallejo city council last week voted to close a $5.2 million gap in the current budget, showing no alarm that in a five-year forecast the gap reopens, mainly driven by rising pension costs. Moody’s, a Wall Street credit rating agency, said earlier that Vallejo and two California cities currently in bankruptcy, Stockton and San Bernardino, risk returning to insolvency without pension relief.

The demographic changes have been dramatic. Whites, for example, who were 43.5 percent of the electorate in northwestern Riverside in 2000, will be less than 24 percent in two years. Voting data expert Paul Mitchell says a recent trend throughout California has been the migration from major cities, like Los Angeles, into places like Riverside-San Bernardino counties.