California has no voice on who should be President

We are ruled over by idiots

Both Democrats and Republicans want nothing 

at all to do with voting for President.

By The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board

Iowans have caucused. New Hampshirites have cast their primary ballots. South Carolinians are now mingling with the men and woman who want to be the next president of the United States. And Californians? When will residents in the most populous state and the eighth-largest economy in the world get to choose among the candidates? On June 7 — the absolute last day of state presidential primaries. They'll be lucky if there is still a choice to be made.

It wasn't always like this. In 2008, California mattered because lawmakers scheduled a super early Feb. 5 presidential primary. As a result, Hillary Clinton talked about foreclosure assistance in Compton, Barack Obama championed childcare tax credits to mothers in San Francisco and John McCain wooed voters with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in San Diego. Both parties hosted debates in California that year — the GOP at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley and the Democrats at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. The Times called it "candidates gone wild" in Southern California.

And voters responded. A record 9 million votes were cast in the primary, an increase of 2.4 million over the 2004 primary.

The California legislature is called to order

The price of participation, however, was steep. California spent nearly $100 million on the February presidential primary, which was held in addition to the regularly scheduled June primary. And four years later, Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers abandoned the race for relevance. A state law passed in 2011 moved the presidential primary back to June, on the grounds that it was too expensive and too complicated to schedule an early primary.

And look where that has gotten us. California is now on the sidelines and all but ignored by the candidates (except for when they drop in to fundraise from the state's numerous billionaires and their friends). It's impossible to know whether an earlier California primary might have persuaded Donald Trump to tone down his racist rhetoric about Mexicans, whether Bernie Sanders would have tempered his pitch for higher taxes in a state with one of the highest tax burdens, or whether any of the candidates would have talked more about climate change, affordable housing, renewable energy or transportation infrastructure if they had to campaign in California. But they might have.

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