With 61 candidates for California governor, voters actually have 62 choices |
A voter casts a ballot at San Francisco City Hall in 2022. California’s top-two primary puts all candidates of all parties on the same ballot.
“I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice.”
— Jean-Paul Sartre, 1945
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If we are our choices, as the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued, then we Californians are simply too much.
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The latest example is the statewide voting now underway, an event that many mistakenly call “The Election.”
It’s really The Clusterf—.
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Just open your mail ballot. There, you’ll see 61 Californians running for governor.
On my Los Angeles ballot, gubernatorial candidate names run over three columns on one page and an entire fourth column on a second page. As a result, many voters — including your columnist, whose eyesight and patience are diminishing — will struggle to find their preferred candidate on the ballot. It’s also possible that confused voters will spoil their ballots by voting for one candidate in each column or on each page — thus casting multiple votes and invalidating their ballots.
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How to make sense of this 61-candidate field?
You can divide them into two groups.
First are the........