It’s sobering to consider how many things have changed since the last time so few votes were cast in the race for governor of California: The state’s population was 40 percent smaller. Donna Summer had the No. 1 song on the charts. Jerry Brown handily won re-election as governor.
Actually, that last one is pretty much the same as it was 36 years ago, which brings us back to the reality of what happened on Nov. 4.
The final tally from elections officials is that 7,317,581 votes were cast in the two-man race between Brown and GOP challenger Neel Kashkari. Brown won 60 percent of those votes, the most lopsided gubernatorial contest since 1986. It was also, it seems, the least inspiring in more than a generation.
State elections data show last month’s gubernatorial election saw fewer votes cast than in the previous eight quadrennial contests. Only 1978’s race between Brown and Republican Evelle Younger saw fewer total votes cast (6,922,378) than did 2014.
This year’s race for governor, of course, was only part of a much larger gloomy headline: the lowest turnout for any California gubernatorial election in history — ballots cast by just 42.2 percent of the state’s 17.8 million registered voters.
There’s been some criticism in political circles over the past few weeks that the lackluster contest between Brown and Kashkari may hold some of the blame, but it’s unlikely we’ll ever have a definitive answer as to why so many voters took a pass this fall.
But the gubernatorial numbers alone are striking when compared with previous elections. In 2010, more than 10 million votes were cast in the race for governor; and even the previous record holder for the most ho-hum race, the 2002 re-election of Gov. Gray Davis, drew some 450,000 more votes than the 2014 gubernatorial matchup.
As we pointed out just after the election, the real legacy of the tepid turnout is the amazingly new low threshold for getting an initiative or referendum on the 2016 and 2018 ballot — a threshold that by law is set by the total number of votes cast for governor.
Political consultants believe it will dramatically drive down the cost of using paid signature gatherers to qualify an initiative — a new bargain of perhaps less than $1 million, and a possible impetus for a frenzy of initiatives over the next two election cycles.
Perhaps the lasting question is whether those initiative thresholds, set in the state constitution by the 1911 effort that created the state’s direct democracy system, need another look when it comes to the 21st century and beyond.
Just compare the relative impact of the 1978 and 2014 gubernatorial elections on California’s initiative process.
For the 1980 and 1982 election cycles, the threshold to qualify an initiative — 346,119 voter signatures — represented about 3.4 percent of the state’s registered voters.
For the 2016 and 2018 election cycles, the threshold to qualify an initiative — what we think will be 365,879 voter signatures — will represent just 2 percent of registered voters. And if you look at the state’s eligible electorate, a group that’s vastly larger than it was in 1978, it’s clear that there’s about to be a big boost of power for a relatively small number of Californians in forcing a statewide vote on a proposal of their choosing.
Yes, a lot has changed since 1978. But electorally speaking, the next four years may feel like a blast from the past.
Copyright 2014, KQED
