Voter turnout for tomorrow's primary mirrors previous election years — and that's precisely the problem.
By reverting back to the status quo after historic engagement and turnout means that the overwhelming majority of California's registered voters don't participate. This means just a fraction of voters ultimately make decisions that are far from a reflection of California's diversity.
Mindy Romero, director of the USC Center for Inclusive Democracy, said she's not surprised.
"You know, the last few years, I've been more optimistic because we've seen an uptick in turnout. Last November 2020, we saw some of the highest turnout in decades going into this election. I was hopeful," she said.
But Romero said there are a number of factors that can contribute to low turnout, including how — and who — campaigns try to reach with election messages and the time it takes to vote in primary elections especially.
"We just need to have some kind of understanding of the dynamics of the difficulty and why people don’t participate," Romero said. "Don’t write it off as apathy because then we don’t do anything to fix that problem."
Eligible Califrornians can still register and vote in the election until 8 p.m. on Tuesday, June 7. Here's more information on how to do that.
Romero joined Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez to explain patterns of voting behavior of Californians and how that could lead to political underrepresentation.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Interview Highlights
On what determines if voters show up to vote
I want to be careful here, as we talk about the numbers [that] so far, are not great. I’m not thrilled by the numbers, but we also want to make sure that we don’t discourage people, right?
We don’t want a reverse bandwagon effect in a sense where people feel like, "Hey, no one else is voting … maybe this election really isn’t important.” … We already have a lot of that in primaries anyway.
So the reason why, historically, in any given primary, the turnout is low compared to general elections, I think it’s because … we see primaries as not as important … we see them as not sexy.
There’s an information gap for many voters, and that’s why it’s not only is turnout low, but it’s much lower for voters of color, low-income voters, young voters. Trying to get that information on all of those candidates that are on the ballot.
… It’s a primary. You see a ton of candidates. How do I get that information? … Generally speaking, we have a real difficult push to get voters to know about the election, to feel that it’s important, to get the information to feel comfortable to participate.
On not calling voter hesitancy “apathy”
We shouldn’t even use the word apathy. Are there voters out there that just don’t care? Yeah, of course. But the overwhelming set of reasons don’t really involve apathy at all.
It’s voters who sometimes are regular voters in the general, but that just aren’t familiar or are kind of scared off of the primary process.
… The information gap is very real. We’re in the information age, we think “oh, it’s just … go online and look up candidates.” But it takes a lot of time, and there’s a lot of hesitancy or even concern [that] voters want to make the right decision. And they say, well, how do I figure out among all of these different candidates on the ballot who's real, who's sincere, who has a real track record?
… And if you are somebody who doesn’t frequently vote — data tells us that Latinos, Asian Americans, Black voters, and young voters are going to be voting in much lower numbers in this election — and that's not from apathy but in candidates in campaigns [are] not reaching out to them as much.
So there’s a lot of research in the field that shows that we’ve got this vicious cycle happening where the vast majority of outreach that happens is from candidates in campaigns, and they’re not trying to get everybody to vote — they’re trying to get just some people to vote, the people they think are going to vote for them.
… We just need to have some kind of understanding of the dynamics of the difficulty and why people don’t participate. Don’t write it off as apathy because then we don’t do anything to fix that problem.
Instead, think about what we need to do in our voting system in the U.S. to make turnout overall higher, but also very much in primaries and to address that disparity gap that makes us have consistently, no matter what type of an election, having a non-representative election.
On how voter turnout in California compares with other states
We know that general [elections] are higher than primaries. The lowest generally is a midterm non-presidential race on the ballot … that’s across the country.
Overall though, the United States has some of the lowest, consistently by far, the lowest turnout among established democracies in the world. So we’re at the bottom as a nation.
California historically has been kind of in the bottom 20% or so of states. Last few years, we brought that up a little bit. We’re doing better comparatively against other states, but like other states, our primary turnout is always quite low, and we share the same kind of dynamics that other states have.
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