Low Turnout of S.D. Voters Stirs Debate Once Again

Touching off a new round in an oft-heard debate, the 23.6% turnout in Tuesday’s San Diego City Council primary has led candidates, city officials and others to offer various proposals for boosting voter participation, ranging from switching all local races from odd- to even-numbered years to voting on weekends or by mail.

Local politicos have revived some old ideas and brainstormed over a few new ones.

“When you’ve got fewer people voting than committing crimes in San Diego, you’d have to say we have a serious problem,” 8th District City Council candidate Michael Aguirre said. “Citizens and voters are the wheels that make democracy move. And right now in San Diego, the air in the tires is very low.”

Latest Disappointment

Tuesday’s turnout, though slightly higher than local election officials had anticipated, marked the latest in a long series of disappointing turnouts in the city’s council elections held in odd-numbered years. In the last 10 years, the turnout in council races has ranged from 16% in the 1985 primary to 43% in the 1977 primary.

Because turnout generally is substantially higher in statewide and national elections, some have suggested that council races should be consolidated with those contests, which are held in even-numbered years. In addition to increasing turnout by linking local races to gubernatorial and presidential elections, such a shift would save the city more than $250,000 annually in ballot-printing and precinct costs by sharing them with the county.

‘Awful Lot of Sense’

“It’s an idea that makes an awful lot of sense to me,” City Councilman Bill Cleator said. “You’re going to get a lot more participation from a broader cross-section of the public and save money in the process. It’s tough to imagine why you wouldn’t want to do that.”

With the exception of Councilman Mike Gotch, who has long argued for even-year local elections, most other council incumbents and candidates oppose the proposal, arguing that the change would diminish the attention that voters give to local races. Critics also contend that changing city races to even years would be a hardship for local candidates, who would have to compete with higher-profile state and federal candidates for news media attention and scarce campaign dollars.

“There’s something to be said for being the only race on the ballot,” 2nd District candidate Byron Wear said. “If council candidates ran in even years, they’d get lost in the shuffle.”

Sixth District finalist Bruce Henderson framed the issue in even blunter terms: “In a presidential year, local candidates would get buried. By the time voters made it down that far on the ballot, a lot of them would say, ‘Who cares?’ and just start picking names.”

Even some defeated council candidates who conceivably might have benefited from a higher turnout expressed skepticism about altering the current system.

“You might get a higher overall turnout in an even year, but I’m not sure you’d get a more informed voter showing up at the polls to vote for a council candidate,” said county supervisorial aide Neil Good, whose third-place primary finish eliminated him from the 8th District race. “When a local race is the only thing on the ballot, you generally get voters who are more attuned to the issues.”

The Big Disparity

The disparity between even- and odd-year election turnouts is remarkable.

Figures from recent elections show that turnout in the city elections has been roughly half that of the statewide elections. The turnout was 72.1% in the 1984 presidential general election, dropped to 28% in the 1985 council general election, then rebounded to 53.2% in the 1986 gubernatorial election. Similarly, the 66.7% turnout in the 1982 gubernatorial race far outdistanced the 38.2% and 36.2% turnouts in the 1983 and 1981 council races, respectively.

Concern over low voter turnout in odd-year elections prompted public approval of a charter amendment in the 1970s that shifted elections for the mayor and city attorney to the even-year cycle--a change that has produced significantly higher turnouts in those local contests. In 1979, the last regularly scheduled odd-year mayoral race, the two candidates received a total of 153,224 votes. When the mayoral race shifted to even-numbered years in 1984, the vote total more than doubled to 374,809.

A key political consideration--but one not often mentioned by opponents--is that moving council races to even years would eliminate so-called “free rides” whereby council members can run for mayor or other local or statewide offices without jeopardizing their seats. An even-year election plan would force council members to choose between running for reelection to their current seats and seeking new offices.

‘Up-and-Out’ Route

“The system we have now almost encourages what I call this ‘up-and-out’ route where people start running for another office the minute they win their first one,” Cleator said.

While emphasizing that she is not endorsing a shift to even-year races, Mayor Maureen O’Connor said Thursday that she will encourage the city’s charter review commission to consider the concept. Because the City Charter specifies that council elections be held in odd years, any suggested change would have to be approved by voters.

“We’ll throw that in the hopper with all the other things to be looked at--the debate could be worthwhile,” O’Connor said. Her own feeling, O’Connor added, is that odd-year elections “work out better for the city, on balance.”

Two potential ways to improve voter turnout to which she is more receptive, O’Connor said, involve voting on weekends or by mail.

“I like the idea that most people wouldn’t have to take time off work or be rushed to vote,” O’Connor said.

The mayor also noted that, when San Diego used a mail ballot in a special 1981 election on whether to build a downtown convention center, the number of voters was an exceptionally high 61%. City Clerk Charles Abdelnour also is a strong supporter of mail ballots, a process that he argues is “cheaper and almost guaranteed to give you a higher turnout” than conventional voting methods.

Other potential vote-boosting ideas suggested by the candidates and other political activists include mobile polls, voting at home through the assistance of door-to-door registrars and, following the lead of some countries where voting is mandatory, perhaps even fining individuals who do not vote.

But even as political activists search for mechanical ways to perhaps improve voter turnout, some note that it is critical to keep the issue in perspective by remembering, in Aguirre’s words, that “dragging people to the polls kicking and screaming isn’t the answer.”

“The problem with a lot of these ideas is that we’re attacking the symptoms of the disease, not the cause,” Aguirre said. “Candidates have to share part of the blame for the problem, because until we give people a reason to vote, they’re not going to, no matter how easy you make it.”