Voter registration soars as Californians get mad, plan to get even

California voters are mad and they're going to vent their frustrations on Nov. 4, Election Day. That’s the gist of a report released today by the Public Policy Institute of California, which found only 23% of Californians say that they trust the federal government to do what is right always or most of the time.

"They are fed up with government that they cannot trust and leaders who do not lead," said Mark Baldassare, president of the institute. "But contrary to the conventional wisdom that disgruntled voters stay home on Election Day, Californians have been registering and voting in record numbers."

At the state level, where the governor and Legislature are still arguing over a budget that is more than two months late, the group noted that one in four Californians in a May survey said they approved of the job the state Legislature is doing.

The institute said one pet peeve of voters is the amount of partisanship in the state. In fact, the number of decline-to-state voters increased from 1.3 million in 1992 to 3 million in early 2008, the report found.

--Patrick McGreevy

Photo: Picture Taker 2 / Flickr via Creative Commons

Comments

[SCruz]

Of course we're upset. I'd like to see what would happen to a taxpayer who refuses to pay taxes for over two months. They would put such a person in jail! Why should our public servants toy with our money this way?