It's Election Day and You're Paying

It's election day in the sprawling first state senate district.  What, you haven't heard about it? Don't blame yourself. It is a meaningless election.  The special runoff election to fill the seat of the late Sen. Dave Cox between Assemblyman Ted Gaines (R) and Rancho Cordova city council member Steve Cooley (D) already has a certain victor. Neither candidate has campaigned significantly since the primary election November 2nd. Nor should they waste their time - in a district with an eleven point Republican registration advantage and little media attention, the only way Gaines loses this race is if he is caught with a prostitute sometime between now and the polls opening six hours from now.  And even then it would probably be too late since a majority of voters in special elections vote early by mail.

Unfortunately, the election is not meaningless to taxpayers. In Placer County alone, it will cost 650,000 big ones. If (when) Gaines is victorious, he will vacate his Assembly seat, costing counties in that district twice as much to conduct two more special elections. That's a lot of money that could be used for other things.

This is not to suggest that the elections should not be held. Even if the outcome is certain, elections must be held. Just ask President John Dewey and Massachusetts Senator Martha Coakley.  However, that doesn't mean that the elections have to be run the exact same way as normal ones with large turnout. For example, perhaps in an election where most votes are cast by mail anyway it would make sense to do the entire election by mail and just forget about the regular precinct stations.

The counties in the first senate had that idea and were all for it. However, polling stations around the district will be opening tomorrow at 7am and will be open all day, costing hundreds of dollars for no more than a handful of voters. Why?  Because no legislator would carry the bill to change the rules. There was no reason not to, only no one willing to lead.

This goes beyond the several hundred dollars that counties will be out because of this needlessly expensive election and the two that will follow this spring. It gets to a larger problem surrounding California's budget crisis. A post election LA Times poll showed that 70% of the public believes that there is enough waste, fraud, and abuse in state government to mostly or completely erase the deficit.  Most analysts believe this isn't the case. I tend to agree.  However, voters can be excused for believing this.  This is just one example of where government has utterly failed to cut unnecessary spending. There are countless others and they are in the media everyday.  It doesn't add up to $25 billion, but to the average voter who doesn't follow politics on a daily basis it seems like it does.

In politics, perception is the reality. As long as stories like this keep coming out, Governor Brown and legislative leaders will have no chance of generating  support for any kind of tough budgetary decision, be it tax increases or spending cuts.