To record :-
7:34 a.m. Nov. 25, 2022: In a previous version of this article, it was stated that almost 978 000 people had cast ballots in the Los Angeles mayor’s election. The precise figure is close to 928,000.
According to analysts and nearly final results from county officials, a record number of Los Angeles voters cast ballots for mayor this month due to changes in the electoral calendar, the state’s relaxation of voter registration laws, and the contentious race between U.S. Rep. Karen Bass and businessman Rick Caruso.
Bass defeated her opponent with a margin of over ten percentage points by taking advantage of the altered political climate. In the historic, racially divisive contest for mayor in 1969, when the white incumbent, Sam Yorty, beat his Black rival, Councilman Tom Bradley, about 928,000 Angelenos cast ballots, breaking the previous record of 856,000.
The 1969 race saw an astounding 76% turnout, despite L.A.’s population being a full 1 million below the 3.8 million it is today and the number of registered voters being only half the 2.2 million of today. This year’s Bass-Caruso contest is expected to see a turnout of about 45%, according to county election officials.
Last week, Bass made history by becoming the first female mayor in Los Angeles’ 241-year history. Her vote count of 508,860 as of this week is already the highest for the position of mayor of the city and more than double that of Eric Garcetti in 2013.
Elections for political office in Los Angeles have traditionally been held in years with an odd number of days, although voter turnout has declined over the past forty years, generally dropping considerably below 40%.
Voters in 2018 passed a constitutional change to move elections to even-numbered years, aligning them with contests for president, governor, and other high-interest posts as well as ballot issues, in order to strengthen the electorate and make it more reflective of the populace.
Another example of how election-year irregularities influence voters is the fact that the measure supporting the change in the election calendar received 975,000 more votes than the Bass-Caruso debate. Election reform advocates would want to think that it inspired voters, but in reality, a “blue wave” of people turned out in 2018 to primarily oppose President Trump.
According to Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, the calendar change is largely to blame for the spike in voter turnout in 2022.
The aim behind combining is to increase voter turnout in cities, special districts, and school districts in any given year, according to Logan. “The participation we observed this year is supporting the goal of that policy,”
Bill Carrick, a political consultant who has managed numerous local, state, and federal campaigns, concurred that this year’s election represents a “extraordinary” increase in the number of voters compared to prior mayoral elections due to the switch to even-year voting as well as several measures California implemented to increase voter registration.
The so-called “motor voter” law, which enables millions of Californians to register by simply maintaining their driver’s licences, the “automatic registration” rule, which ensures that voters remain on the voting rolls even when they move from one county to another, the measure allowing new voters to register on election day, and more minor reforms, like one allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to pre-register, making them automatically eligible to vote when they turn 18, are among them.
And with the pandemic-era switch to mail-in ballots being distributed to every qualified voter, the county stated that around 80% of votes were cast that way.
According to Paul Mitchell, an expert on voting who closely monitored the results in Los Angeles, white voters continued to represent by far the largest racial group, casting 59.6% of the votes in the mayoral race, compared to Latino voters at 23%, Asian Americans at slightly above 9%, and Black voters at just under 8%.
Political scientist Fernando Guerra of Loyola Marymount University argued that for Caruso, a former Republican, to have a chance of beating Bass, Latino voters must make up at least 30% of the electorate. Polling conducted prior to the election revealed that Latino voters preferred Caruso more strongly than Bass, despite the fact that over half of the population identified as liberal.
Guerra stated, “He needed to encourage Latinos to turn out far more than they did and he needed to obtain a lot bigger proportion of that vote.” “He also didn’t do either of them. He performed better than most people had anticipated, but not well enough to win.”
Given that the 2022 election was the first to be held in combination with statewide voting and the first to be done with all the regulations enhancing voter access, experts advised against comparing this year’s election to those from past eras.
The 2013 election, in which Garcetti beat City Controller Wendy Greuel despite collecting just 222,300 votes, would be the closest comparison. With turnout remaining at a pitiful 23%, the 419,000 total votes cast fall well short of Bass’ single vote total this autumn.
A housing crisis and spiralling homelessness attracted a lot of attention to this year’s contest. The fury and spectacle that developed in two historic showdowns between Yorty, the populist who would later become known as “Travelin’ Sam” for his frequent trips abroad, and his opponent, Bradley, a former Los Angeles police lieutenant and the son of Texas sharecroppers, could not, however, compare to the attention.
Yorty, who won the 1969 election by 6 percentage points, painted the politically moderate and well-mannered Bradley as a dangerous extremist.
Four years later, with a turnout of more than 64%, Bradley put together a historic coalition, mostly made up of white liberals and Black voters, to win the rematch and become the city’s first Black mayor.
Nearly 50 years later, Bass is awaiting his inauguration as the second Black mayor of Los Angeles on December 12.
“The racial politics of the entire nation were marked by those elections, which served as a historical milestone. They received a lot of attention both here and abroad “said Raphael Sonenshein, a political scientist at Cal State Los Angeles and the author of the canonical account of Bradley’s triumph. It’s hard to contrast them with anything that has come after.
This year’s final turnout of 45% will be roughly comparable to that of 1993, the last time voters had such an intellectually compelling option. Republican businessman Richard Riordan defeated City Councilman Michael Woo, who would have been Los Angeles’ first mayor of Asian origin, in a contest held amid the lingering aftermath of the 1992 riots.
Due to the extensive registration requirements, Los Angeles has added approximately 450,000 citizens since that time and slightly under 780,000 voters.
Some feared that local races would not receive enough attention when Los Angeles switched to holding elections in even-numbered years due to the overwhelming number of state and federal elections.
That turned out not to be the case as city voters turned out in higher numbers than countywide voters and as the race for Los Angeles sheriff, which featured contentious incumbent Alex Villanueva, garnered much more attention than anything on the statewide ballot, possibly with the exception of a measure to codify the right to a legal abortion.
There was a claim that the ballot would just be too long or that there would be too many candidates, confusing voters, according to Carrick. Well, that was all just a load of BS, as it turned out.
Guerra concurred, saying “With the turnout greater in the city, it suggests that people were coming out because of the competitive council elections and the contest for mayor.”
