LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: 300,000 Californians Vote for Accused Gun-Runner. What’s Up?

Lord Only Knows

 

“In this week’s largely sleepy California election, there was one startling result: more than 300,000 ballots cast for Leland Yee for secretary of state, good enough for third place, even though he dropped out after being accused of conspiracy to run guns and political corruption,” Mark Z. Barabak writes in The Times. “Yee’s tally, which is likely to grow as hundreds of thousands of uncounted ballots are processed, pushed him past a pair of good-government candidates also vying to be the state’s chief election officer — a bit of irony adding to a widely held notion, especially outside the state, that Californians are a bit nuts.”

Electorally, the turnout for Lee echoes the L.A. sheriff who drew 39% of the vote despite being dead.

Barabak attributes the startling results for Lee to several factors:

  • “The size and sprawl of the state”
  • “The lack of attention, by voters and the media alike, paid to so-called down-ballot offices like secretary of state”
  • Coincidence“: “Candidate Betty Yee was on the same ballot running for state controller, also a relatively obscure office. She received a number of endorsements, including the support of several newspapers and labor unions, and some voters may have simply confused the two.”
  • “The ephemeral nature of news — even events that are widely covered or hugely hyped — in this age of perpetual information.

“People can’t even remember who won the Super Bowl,” Richie Ross, who managed Yee’s campaign before he dropped out, told Barabak. “And people are surprised that ordinary voters — not the political insiders and smarty-pants who follow this stuff — can’t remember who was indicted three months ago?”

Barabak is careful not to blame the “supposed shallowness and stupidity of the California electorate.”

He’s nicer than I am.

This is worse than the dead sheriff. You’d have to spectacularly ignorant not to have heard of the charges faced by Leland Yee. Not to mention, crazy cynical and mad blasé to have already forgotten them.

Even by the low standards of American political corruption, which has seen Congressmen caught taking cash bribes from fake Arab sheiks, and dipping into campaign funds to buy stuffed animals, elk heads and fur capes, it’s not every day that an anti-gun crusader with character actor looks gets is accused of offering to set up an undercover agent with arms traffickers who deal in rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Yes, yes, we’re all busy people — I myself have binge-watching of “Orange is the New Black” to do — but really. This was a big national story. How could anyone forget a State Senator charged with gun-running and hanging out with alleged “tong” (Chinese mafia) gangsters with colorful monikers like Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow (official title: dragonhead)?

Once you hear that story, you’re not going to forget it.

Which means that there are, in the state of California, 300,000 people who do not watch, listen to, read, or hear about the news. At all.

My first impulse was to say that no one that stupid or ignorant should be allowed to vote. But I’ve thought about it: with two political parties so close together on the ideological scale, and candidates whose perfidy varies merely by degrees, what difference does it make?

5 Comments.

  • exkiodexian
    June 12, 2014 8:16 PM

    Oh please. Let’s just address the real reason, the elephant in the room.

    Yee is Chinese, born in Taishan, China. California has LOADS of Chinese living there. They are proud and don’t like their people being shamed, especially when they think they’re being singled out. They voted for Yee because he’s one of them, because they are proud and defiant. Period. It’s the same reason the Chinese don’t give an inch on any political issue, even one as transparent as their currency manipulation.

    The Chinese think they deserve special consideration, the same way white Americans used to. Get used to it. Also, get used to calling it out. Let’s dispense with the political correctness.

    • Yeah, that’s like totally different than the way that white right-wingers give due consideration to all candidates regardless of race, creed, color, or religion.

      :: rolls eyes ::

  • Of course, this certainly has nothing at all to do with America’s latest, predominately effective, streamlined electronic culture of proprietarily-transparentless, computer-programmed, vote-counting machines … . Stalin had it right the first time, it’s not voters who choose the election-winners, it’s the vote-counters.

    DanD

  • So, what’s a little political corruption? If we threw out every corrupt politician, there wouldn’t be any left to vote for. That would be terrible because … uh … wait a sec’ it’ll come to me.

  • Somehow, this ‘toon reminded me of Sheriff Marlin Hawkins of Conway County, Arkansas. After his death in 1995, locked ballot boxes from polling places around the county (places that favored his opponent) were discovered hidden in the attic of his house.

Comments are closed.

css.php