Editorial:

Despite the best efforts to make this election more appealing with an open primary and newly re-drawn districts to create fair competition, even the highly charged mayoral campaign couldn’t interest voters to turn out to vote! As of Wednesday, only 27% voters cast their vote in San Diego County. Statewide only 24% of the voters turned out. Both of these numbers will rise a little once all the ballots are tallied, but the bottom line is that most voters stayed home.

Voter disenfranchisement has grown due to polarizing politics, turning the people off so much that they don’t even want to bother to vote. Politics no longer work in the best interests of the people. We see this demonstrated yearly during the budget debate that drags on for months before a bastardized budget is eventually passed.

The art of compromise and of working together for the betterment of the people is gone. It has been replaced by ideological differences where there is no middle ground. This is why mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher was able to attract so much attention and support, which propelled his candidacy from being an unknown entity to the forefront, with his bold move to the middle by switching from a Republican candidate to an Independent.

Adding to the sense of hopelessness is that lots of money, singularly, dictates winners and losers. This is compounded by the Supreme Court ruling that now allows for big business/corporations to pour unlimited amounts of money into campaigns and the fact that campaigning now takes millions of dollars even for local races.

Tobacco companies spent $47 million dollars to defeat Prop. 29, which would have added $1 to the cost of cigarettes for cancer research. In Wisconsin’s recall race of Governor Scott Walker, the incumbent raised 10 times as much money as his Democratic opponent. Walker raised nearly $40 million dollars, most of it from out of state, compared to the $4 million raised by the Democrats and the challenger. Here in San Diego, in the Primary alone, in the race for mayor over six million dollars was spent. These kinds of dollars being spent are beyond the common man’s access.

Voters are no longer a part of the process but have become the end product of mass messaging that is fueled by special interest dollars and wealthy contributors, as such the civic engagement is no longer a driving force as the voters choose not to vote. This is the message we got from the poor voter turnout!