Friday, November 7, 2008

Lost Voter Power

Here is our tally for the election turnout for the Nov 2008 Presidential Race. We compared the voter turnout to the census population of each county. The state average was 30.5%.

The top 5 counties are as follows with % of the total population that voted:
- Alpine 57.2%
- Sierra 55.4%
- Plumas 52.9%
- Mariposa 51.6%
- Amador 49.9%

The bottom 5 counties were:
- San Benito 18.2%
- Imperial 20.4%
- Tulare 21.4%
- Monterey 22.6%
- Sutter 23.0%

What do we see here? The counties on the top list got about 2.6 times more votes per resident than the bottom list. Why would that be? Do the bottom counties suffer from voter apathy? Illegal aliens? Extra children?

Los Angeles County deserves special mention. They have just over over 28% of the total population of California - but only registered less than 26% of the total vote of the state. That was 233,000 lost votes which could have swung some of the proposition issues and especially some local races.

Look up your county and see how civic minded your neighbors are.

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