Monitoring Civic and Political Participation in California

From Wikiprogress.org

Civic and Political Participation in California

California is America's most populous state, home to some of the nation's most outspoken political personalities of all stripes, and also permits the use of citizen-initiated ballot measures to pass new legislation and annul existing laws.^[1] In a democratic society, a large and diverse population, vibrant political debate, and an institutional framework conducive to direct citizen participation in the political process should all ideally contribute to higher levels of political participation. However, several key indicators, discussed below, suggest that this is not necessarily the case. Why though is civic and political participation important to measure in the first place? Furthermore, how can we measure participation and assess progress or regress in participation in California?

Why Monitor Progress in Civic and Political Participation?

Democracy works when citizens participate in the decision-making process.  In the framework of the Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies, “governance”, along with economy and culture, is an intermediate goal in the human system which supports individual as well as community well-being and ideally contributes to the final goals of achieving positive health, education, employment, material, and social outcomes for people. Achieving effective governance depends on a number of factors including:

• Respecting, protecting and fulfilling human rights
• Maintaining security and an absence of violence
• Establishing trust in institutions
• Ensuring access to basic services
• Fostering civic and political engagement

Fostering civic and political engagement can take many forms. In the American political system, some of the most common forms of participation include simply registering to vote, participating in elections, or running for office. In California, a special tool is also available to citizens to help participate directly in the political process: California’s system of ballot measures which allow citizens to bring new or existing laws to a state-wide referendum to be accepted or rejected by a popular vote. Widespread civic and political participation, ideally alongside the other factors of effective governance mentioned above, ideally results in better governance and better policies to facilitate access to public goods.
If civic and political participation is an important factor of effective governance, how can we measure the state of this participation or any trends in participation over time? The selection of indicators for this investigation is guided by the following principles:

• Participation should be widespread – all those eligible to participate should ideally do so
• Participation should be equitable – communities in a society should have a voice proportional to their share of the population
• Representation should reflect the composition of the society being represented
• Institutional arrangements that are barriers to political participation should be removed, to the greatest extent possible
  

Some Key Indicators of Civic and Political Participation

It is acknowledged that more robust time-series, better disaggregated data on the composition of the electorate and the state legislative branch, and more detailed data on forms of participation other than voting or holding office (data on membership in advocacy groups, letter-writing to representatives, or volunteerism for example) would all help round out this analysis. However, within the bounds of the data available to us, the following prompts and indicators will structure our approach to measuring progress in civic and political participation in California:

To What Extent are Californians Participating in Democratic Decision-Making?

• Registration as a percentage of total eligible voters – registration as a percentage of eligible voters (non-citizens and convicted felons either incarcerated on or parole) stood at 74.6 percent in November, 2008. This was down from an all-time high of 96.2 percent in 1940 and a presidential election-year average of 77.5 percent from World War II to 2008.^[2]
• Turnout as a percentage of total eligible voters – turnout as a percentage of total eligible voters was 59.2 percent in November, 2008, also down from an historic high of 78.3 percent in 1940 and below a presidential election-year average of 62 percent.^[2]

Where is Participation the Weakest?

• Registration by county and its relationship to race and ethnicity – data on voter registration exists at the county-level for recent years. California boasts a large and diverse population: a plurality of the population describes itself as “white” but the combined population of Latinos, African American, Asian Americans, and Native Americans make California one of the few U.S. states in which these so-called “minorities” are actually the majority. However, county-level data on voter registration and the racial and ethnic composition of the population suggests that registration rates are lowest in the most diverse California counties. When ranked by the percentage of eligible voters who are registered to vote, nine out of ten of the bottom-ranked California counties are majority non-white.^[3]

To What Extent is Representation in the State Legislature Balanced by Gender?

• Percentage of state legislators who are women – In the current legislative session, 27.5 percent of the seats in the California state legislature are held by women. This is better than the national average of 24.4 percent and much better than South Carolina, the worst-performing state, where only 10 percent of state legislators are women. However, this is still a long distance from gender-parity in representation and actually represents a backslide from the legislative session which ended in 2006 when women made up a little more than 30 percent of California’s legislators.^[4]

To What Extent are Californians Barred from Participating?

• Total prison population – Under California law, convicted felons currently incarcerated or on parole are barred from registering to vote. However, California is one of a few states in which felons who have completed their parole may re-register to vote. In the 1990’s, spurred on by California’s “3 Strikes” sentencing laws, record numbers of Californians have gone to jail. California’s prison population of about 80,000 in 1989 more than doubled by the fall of 2006 reaching a record high of 173,000. The prison population has fallen since then but 290,000 Californians still remain barred from political participation due to being incarcerated or on parole.^[5]
• Incarceration rates by race – California’s heavy burden of incarceration does not weigh evenly on the communities that make up the state’s population. Statistics suggest that the incarceration rate for African Americans is over 6.5 times the rate among whites. Therefore, political disenfranchisement due to felony convictions is having much more of an impact on this community than it is on other Californians.^[6]
  

References

1. ↑ http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_j.htm and http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/06/the_trouble_with_california
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_u.htm
3. ↑ http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_u.htm and http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en
4. ↑ http://www.ncsl.org/LegislaturesElections/WomensNetwork/WomeninStateLegislatures2010/tabid/19481/Default.aspx
5. ↑ http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/News/2009_Press_Releases/docs/CDCR_Annual_Report.pdf and http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm
6. ↑ http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/data/pjim0514.csv

See Also

• Civic Engagement
• California