Henry T. Perea’s decision to leave office early cost Fresno County at least a half million dollars.

Henry T. Perea’s decision to vacate his Assembly seat early cost Fresno County a half-million dollars — enough to pay for four sheriff deputies — and has reignited a discussion on the cost of special elections.

The Fresno Democrat announced last year that he’d be leaving the Assembly to pursue a position with the pharmaceutical industry.

In fact, counties are saddled with the cost of special elections regularly. And while they have become less frequent, at least temporarily, a CalWatchdog review of expenses shows that since 2013 counties (and one city) have spent $21.7 million on special elections to replace state lawmakers.

Few would decry a legislator stepping down if the officeholder or his or her family member fell ill. And of course sometimes scandals create a vacancy. But most of the time these seats are vacated by politicians looking to cash in with a high-paying lobbying position, trade up for higher office (perhaps to avoid being forced from office by term limits), which then creates a mad dash to fill the gaps behind them.

For example: In 2013, Curren Price created a vacancy in the state Senate when he won a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, which are elected in odd-numbered years. Holly Mitchell then won Price’s seat in a special election, leaving a vacancy in the Assembly. That vacancy was filled by the current occupant, Asm. Sebastian Ridley-Thomas.

That game of musical chairs cost Los Angeles County $2.4 million. And had Ridley-Thomas and Mitchell not one outright in their respective primaries, forcing a run-off, the cost for the overall costs for the special election would have approximately doubled.

Nonpartisan

Price, Ridley-Thomas and Mitchell are all Democrats, but Republicans do it too. In 2014, Mimi Walters won a seat in Congress in an open Orange County district after former Rep. John Campbell retired.

After winning, she vacated her state Senate seat, which was filled by now-Sen. John Moorlach, costing the county $1.24 million.

One approach

On Wednesday, an Assembly panel will consider a proposal from Asm. Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, which would require that legislators use leftover campaign funds to pay down the cost of the special election they’ve caused, leaving exceptions for health and family reasons.

Perea still has more than $800,000 according to the campaign finance filings from the end of 2015. Instead of giving money to Fresno County, which is allowable under state law, Perea made some political contributions and paid for a few holiday parties.

Other ideas

A measure by Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, was approved by one panel earlier this month. The bill would require the state to reimburse for the entire cost of the special election for vacancies of state lawmakers. The state used to contribute to the cost of special elections, but has since ceased the practice.

“Fresno County was forced to hold a special election today to fill a vacant Assembly seat, which is costing the county more than a half- million dollars,” Vidak said in a statement last week following the election to replace Perea. “That’s money that could have been used for police, fire, health, education and other vital services.”

Others have suggested the governor appoint a replacement to serve until the next scheduled election. But critics claim that gives the unfair advantage of incumbency to a replacement if he or she decides to run for another term, and gives the governor too much political power.

“Sure, it’s a tradeoff,” said Raphael Sonenshein, the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University Los Angeles, noting that if the seat is held only until the next scheduled election then no one would hold the seat for more than two years. “Special elections have very low turnout. It’s at least arguably a budget savings and one less election.”

Turnout

Voter turnout is a persistent issue in California. Some argue that the abundance of special elections contributes to the problem. Most of the special elections have even lower turnout.

In 2013 in Los Angeles, 23 percent of voters turned out for the regularly-scheduled city elections when Price was elected. Later that year, only 5.55 percent of voters turned out to elect Mitchell to the state Senate and then 8.47 percent turned out to elect Ridley-Thomas to the Assembly.

In 2014, the regularly-scheduled gubernatorial election that sent Mimi Walters to Congress drew about 43 percent of voters, while John Moorlach was elected to the state Senate only a few months later with only a 15.42 percent turnout.

Kathay Feng, the executive director of the left-leaning good government group California Common Cause, suggests moving all local elections to the normal presidential and midterm/gubernatorial voting schedule — and during the vacancy, until a successor is elected, the seat could either stay unoccupied or a “caretaker” could be appointed.

“Will a group of people be unrepresented for a short period of time? Potentially.” Feng told CalWatchdog. “But this is insane to elect people by five or six percent of the population and still call it a democracy.”

Cost

The money that is spent on special elections goes to things like: printing ballots, hiring poll workers, securing locations, paying for postage and producing vote by mail ballots. 

Many special elections are unbudgeted and all are unplanned and sometimes they overlap. According to Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk, it can be particularly taxing on the county registrar and confusing for voters who could be receiving election packets from the city they live in and then the county a few weeks later, like Los Angeles residents in 2013.

Logan did not advocate a particular path forward, as it’s not his role as registrar. However, he has at least raised questions over the current process and the drain on resources since at least 2010.

“And we already have a crisis of participation even in our regular election cycles, but the turnout in these special vacancy elections is extremely low,” Logan told CalWatchdog.

Term-limits

Some argue that the 2012 modification of term limits, which allowed legislators to spend more time in each chamber, may reduce the number of special elections. While the change hasn’t been around long enough to say for sure, there has been a reduction in special elections since it was passed.

There were 12 special elections (including primary and general/run-off) in 2013, two in 2014, four in 2015 and only one so far this year.

While dozens of measures are vying to make it on the November general election ballot, one proposal is ready for the June primary — even though no one is campaigning for or against it.

Proposition 50 is a constitutional amendment empowering legislators to suspend other legislators without pay with a two-thirds vote of the respective chamber.

The measure is in response to three suspensions with pay in 2014: Democratic state Sens. Roderick Wright of Inglewood, Leland Yee of San Francisco and Ron Calderon of Montebello. Wright was suspended after being convicted of felony perjury and election fraud and the other two were suspended after federal corruption charges were filed.

The measure has a good chance of passing, as public perception of the Legislature took a hit following the rash of incidents in 2014 (in February of 2015, it rebounded a bit but was still in the low 40 percent range).

“From a voter’s perspective, it’s pretty straight forward,” said Kathay Feng, the executive director of the good government group California Common Cause. “There’s not much love for misbehaving legislators.”

Feng said some may question whether this measure violates the spirit of innocent until proven guilty, but others are sure this won’t be an issue.

“Guilty until proven innocent when it comes to legislators,” said Steven Maviglio, a Democratic campaign strategist, noting that the measure is “totally non-controversial.”

Politics and Process

The measure doesn’t have any opponents actively fighting it. But no one is pushing for it either. When contacted by CalWatchdog, former Democratic Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who introduced the measure, deferred through an aide to sitting senators or the Senate Rules Committee for more info.

But sitting senators would refer it to an outside group to handle the campaign, yet no such committee has been formed. No one is campaigning for it.

“All of the people who were originally involved seemed to have left this as an orphan for somebody else,” said Feng.

If the measure’s passage is truly inevitable — a slam dunk — then there may be little need to push for it, especially in the absence of opposition. But some observers say it could be that the pressure is off now that no one is in trouble.

“Out of sight, out of mind,” said John J. Pitney, Jr., a Roy P. Crocker professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. “The idea may regain currency if another legislator gets into major trouble, but until then it is in the political memory hole.”

The measure will appear on the June ballot because it is a constitutional amendment added by the Legislature. Measures that go through the signature gathering process can only appear on the November general election ballot — of which it appears there will be plenty.

How Else Can They Be Punished?

Besides suspension, legislators have other punitive actions they can take against lawmakers, although they are rarely used.

According to Alex Vassar, who runs the California political website One Voter Project, censure (it’s basically a public shaming by peers) was last used in 1982 to strongly condemn comments made about abortion rights protesters by O.C. Republican John G. Schmitz.

Expulsion, according to Vassar, was last used in 1905 against legislators colluding to solicit bribes (Wright was threatened with an expulsion vote). And members can also be stripped of committee assignments, which was used last with Yee, Wright and Calderon.

It seems Los Angeles County is testing the old philosophical question: What if they gave an election and nobody came? The most populous county in the state had the lowest percentage turnout in last November’s election.

While 42 percent of state voters turned out for the general election, Los Angeles County turnout was only 31 percent. The last mayoral city election in Los Angeles saw a turnout of a mere 23 percent.

The California Senate and Assembly election committees are chaired, respectively, by Sen. Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, and Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, D-Culver City. The chairs called a joint oversight committee hearing on Feb. 20 to look for the reasons and solutions of the extremely low turnout in Los Angeles County. YouTube here.

The answer just might be a feeling of powerlessness among voters.

Loyola Law professor Jessica Levinson told the committee the low turnout in Los Angeles elections could be a case of voter apathy. Los Angeles is not a political town, she said. Everyone knows when the Super Bowl and the Oscars occur, but they don’t know when an election happens.

Many suggestions were made at the hearing on why there was a low voter turnout:

• Voters believe their vote doesn’t matter;
• The size of the county takes away the personalization of politics;
• Lack of civic education in the schools;
• Frequency of elections;
• Lack of an interesting ballot;
• Demographics in which the large minority populations which make up much of Los Angeles County’s potential voters have a history of not voting.

Major obstacles

All those items contribute to the low voter turnout. But are there really major obstacles to prevent voters from coming out if they cared to?

Some of those testifying to the committee seemed to think so. Common Cause’s Kathay Feng said the progressives who set up the rules for stand-alone local elections not only wanted a focus on local government, but they were also racist. They didn’t want certain people to vote and they were successful by setting up elections in off years.

Feng, who serves on the committee to move the Los Angeles city elections to coincide with national elections, a measure which will appear on the city ballot in March, said the convenience to the voters of combining elections will bump up the voting totals by as much as a third.

Still, Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State, Los Angeles, may have touched on the reason citizens don’t engage in local elections. He argued that people believe the only election that really leads to change is the presidential election.

If that is so, then many of the suggestions made to increase the vote will probably only do so on the margins.

Change agents

Even if voting is made as convenient as possible — as Jessica Levinson suggested the time might come when everyone can simply vote by pressing some button on their iPhone — an important question remains: Do voters think those votes for local candidates create change?

Do citizens think they have the power through their votes to alter the direction of government? Or do they believe the institutions are so controlled and manipulated by insiders that voting is pointless?

There were higher turnouts in the past when it was arguably more inconvenient to vote.

The key to bringing voters to the polls, rather than constantly devising new systems to make it easier to vote, is for the voters to see themselves as important participants in governing.