California Secretary of State Debra Bowen has certified the results of last month’s general election. As Ben Adler reports from Sacramento, the turnout rate was a below-average 72%.
For all the buzz over the November election, voter turnout didn’t keep up. The 72% turnout fell short of the 79% rate in both the 2008 election and the state’s hundred-year average. Of the 13.2 million Californians who cast ballots, more than half did so by mail. That’s the first time ever in a general election.
In the end, California gave its 55 electoral votes to Barack Obama. The president won 60% of the vote to Mitt Romney’s 37%. Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 finished with 55%. And two statewide measures that lost finished closer than it appeared on Election Night. Prop 34, to abolish the death penalty, lost 52 to 48%; Prop 37, requiring the labeling of genetically modified foods, fell by fewer than three points.
