We are getting closer to the wire in all of the election contests this November. In addition to the presidential, senatorial and congressional contests, there are many state and local elections at the same time on the same ballot. There are also 17 statewide-qualified ballot measures to vote on. If you vote at the polls, you probably should take a lunch with you, because voting is going to be an ordeal. At the same time, the voters of the City of Malibu are going to be voting on three council seats choosing among six contenders. Typically, in the past, we would get a 30-40 percent turnout for the local elections, but we changed our voting day to coincide with the general election and, this year being a new Presidential year, we probably will see a turnout of 70-80 percent of the registered voters casting a ballot. That means a lot of new voters or occasional voters will be voting and many will be new to city politics. When the highly contested Measure W (Whole Foods) went to the ballot in Nov. 2015, the Malibu voter turnout was 38.9 percent, which meant that there were 3,475 ballots cast and the winning side had 1,971 votes. Assuming we have an 80 percent turnout this time, which might be possible with this being a Presidential year, there might be an additional 3,500 voters going to the polls — whom you typically do not see voting in city elections. It complicates the problem for candidates trying to get their messages out, since they will be competing with all of the other political advertising and background noise.
The Malibu Times will be doing several things to help the process. For one thing, we are sponsoring a political candidates forum for council candidates on Wednesday, Sept. 21, at Malibu City Hall in the evening. Additionally, every week beginning seven weeks before the election, we will profile one of the candidates in that week’s newspaper. The order in which we do these profiles will be chosen randomly in a blind draw. We welcome letters to the editor both via email and online; however, they have to relate to issues in the campaign. A letter that just says, “Vote for Joe; he’s a great guy!” is called advertising and you have to buy that space. We also don’t generally cover campaign fundraisers unless you get Hillary or Donald to appear, and then that’s news.
As we have in the past, we will endorse in most all of the races. Because so many people now vote absentee, we will endorse early when the absentee ballots come out and again in the last issue before we go to the polls. Typically, the endorsements are the same both times, but these days you never know. Sometimes performances in the campaigns change our minds.
Lastly, because the elections are now all combined, the County Registrar of Voters will run all the elections, including the Malibu City Council election. What that means is, the results are much slower coming in. Where in the old days, Malibu ran its own elections, and we got the absentee count right away, today it’s much slower, and the ballot boxes are taken out to Alhambra where they are counted — so it’s going to be a long night. We will post returns on our website as we get them.