Editorial

— Rollie Atkinson
With so much helpful technology and blazing-quick connections to
a universe of information sources voters should have no excuse for
being uninformed for the upcoming California State Primary Election
on June 8.
Right?
Well, of course not. When is too much information too much? Who
can keep up with all the campaign tweeting and on-line blogs? Long
before our world twittered and Googled, many would-be voters
already had given up on trying to de-mystify all the election-time
rhetoric, false promises and personal attacks.
What used to be a one-sentence “talking point” on the nightly
news has now become a constant 24-hour stream of 140-character
“tweets.” Instead of putting “spin” on messages, candidates and
their surrogates now have us so dizzy we wouldn’t know up from down
— let alone true from false.
We suppose the cyber-explosion of information resources is not
all bad. State and local election officials and the county
Registrar of Voters office all have excellent web sites full of
official and up-to-date election and voter information.
But with so many voters already tuned out and
self-disenfranchised, we wonder how much it will help.
Here’s a test: How many Propositions will appear on the June 8
California ballot? Don’t know? Times up. The filing deadline has
passed, so there will be a total of five measures, Propositions 13,
14, 15, 16 and 17.
Not to worry, there’s still plenty of time for voters to get
educated. And with the help of the recent U.S. Supreme Court
decision that now allows for unlimited corporate campaign
financing, voters are sure to get plenty of “guidance.”
Expect the insurance industry to be very helpful in explaining
why voters should support Proposition 17, which would let car
insurance companies penalize anyone who lets their previous
coverage lapse by charging almost double rates.
PG&E will undoubtedly launch a multi-million dollar
information campaign supporting the wisdom of Proposition 16. This
initiative was basically written to block citizen activists from
creating new publicly-owned utilities. Prop. 16 would require a
two-thirds super majority vote to start a community-operated
utility wherever PG&E or any other major private utility
already operates.
Democrat and Republican incumbents all across California may
finally come together in agreement to aid voters in understanding
why Proposition 14 is so bad. (Prop. 14 would allow for open
primaries.) Expect mailers, radio ads, web sites and probably
“tweets”  misleading voters into thinking that an open primary will
undermine the Two Party system. Passage could lead to third party
and independent “amateurs” getting elected to statewide office,
they will be telling us.
The incumbents will be joined by their lobbyist friends to be
sure we don’t blindly approve Proposition 15, which calls for a new
Fair Elections Fund. (Lobbyists would be “taxed” to pay for the
fund.)
Opening a Facebook account is cheap and becoming a “fan” is
free. Twittering on your smart phone is also free. A basic web site
can be set up without much money as well. With such affordable and
accessible communication tools, we’d think campaign costs could go
down not up. But the opposite is the case.
Just look at the impact of millionaire governor candidate Meg
Whitman, the latest candidate trying to buy an election from her
own pocket.
She already has spent $39 million of her money on early radio,
TV and on-line advertising messages. The high cost of running a
campaign is one reason Sonoma County Supervisor Paul Kelley decided
not to seek re-election.
Just watch how high the campaign contributions for supervisor
candidates Debora Fudge and Mike McGuire pile up. District attorney
Stephan Passalacqua and his challenger Jill Ravitch are in a
million dollar race as well.
It almost makes one miss the old-fashioned “low cost spin.”