The Marijuana Policy Project, a national group that seeks to legalize recreational marijuana use, says it intends to put the issue before California voters on the 2016 general election ballot. The group’s decision to file a committee with California Secretary of State Debra Bowen on Wednesday means it may start raising funds to help finance signature gathering and qualify the measure in California.
Ventura County voters go to the polls in a California general election. (Photo: Spirit of America) OPINION: I now believe the turnout this November will be closer to 45% than 50%. In the previous 8 governor primaries (1982-2010) the average turnout was 39.2% and in those eight General Elections the average turnout was 59.0%, thus, on average an increase of 19.8% from the Primary to the General.
The state Capitol, Sacramento. (Photo: Wikimedia)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.
U.S. Senate election, 2012In little more than a decade, mail-in or “absentee” voting for statewide elections quadrupled, from 4.4 percent in 1978 to 18.4 percent in 1990, reflecting in part legal changes making it easier to vote absentee. Since the 1990s, mail-in ballots have increased exponentially. In the 2008 primary, 58 percent of the voters cast mail-in ballots, the first time in a California statewide election that mail-in ballots represented more than half the vote. In primaries since then, mail-in voting has risen steadily to a remarkable 65 percent in 2012. In the November 2012 general election, mail-in ballots accounted for about 51 percent. (Above: 2012 U.S. Senate election map/Kurykh, Wikimedia))
By Mark DiCamillo and Mervin Field
Despite a record number of Californians registered to vote, the turnout in today’s election will likely include about one million fewer voters than in the last presidential election. The Field Poll estimates that 12.75 million Californians will participate in today’s presidential election, down from 13.74 million who voted in