Calmes: All tricks, no treats for midterm election workers after the second-longest gap between voter turnout and the last midterm election, which was only slightly more than a year ago.
As a result, the state has not held a regular, year-round election since 2004.
Voters in the six most-populous counties in the state — Clark, Nevada, El Dorado, Placer, Sierra, and Washoe — have turned out far and wide to fill more than 2,000 vacancies in board positions and committee posts, as well as more than 1,000 local and state offices, as well as all of the state’s five U.S. House reps.
The vacancies caused by the large-scale vote-by-mail ballot initiative in California are a problem in all these counties, because they’re all within the Golden State’s 62nd Senate District, the last home to incumbent Republican Sen. Dean Heller in the state.
But the other, more than 1,000 vacancies are clustered in a handful of counties on the East and West coasts, including Los Angeles County, where three vacancies have created a cluster near Los Angeles’s Harbor and in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Meanwhile, in California’s 49th U.S. House District, where two vacancies have created a string of empty slots, three-fourths of the state’s three U.S. House seats are up for grabs, and, in the case of Rep. Steve Sisolak in the Sacramento suburbs, the seat has been held by a Republican since 1995.
The vacancy cluster in Los Angeles County will likely become even more prominent this year.
A month after the second-longest gap between voter turnout and the last midterm election since 1970, which was just a year ago, the state’s biggest city, Los Angeles, will likely have at least one fewer person in Congress.
If that’s the case, it could leave the state with only
