Independents now 18 percent of California electorate

[Kadie]

Independents now 18 percent of California electorate

Wednesday, November 2, 2005


(11-02) 20:01 PST SACRAMENTO, (AP) --


Nearly 16 million Californians are eligible to vote in Tuesday's special election, and almost one-fifth of them are registered as independents, according to figures released Wednesday.


snip...
The secretary of state's office said 15.9 million — 70.7 percent of the state's eligible adults — registered to vote by the Oct. 24 deadline. That's up from the 15.4 million Californians who were registered to vote in the 2003 special election that recalled Gov. Gray Davis and elected Schwarzenegger to replace him.


But it's below the 16.5 million that qualified to vote in last November's presidential election.


Nearly 6.8 million registered as Democrats, or 42.7 percent of the electorate. The 5.5 million Republicans make up nearly 34.8 percent.


But both major parties have lost ground to independents. Those registering as decline-to-state have increased their share of the electorate to nearly 18.1 percent, up from 16 percent in 2003.

more...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/11/02/state/n183638S72.DTL

[Selatius]

1. I'm no longer satisfied with the two-party duopoly we have

If we switched over to a multi-party (more than two) representative democracy, I'd rather vote for the Social Democrats, Greens, or parties representing democratic socialism. It causes less fighting because you're not forcing so many disparate groups into one group to determine direction. It allows these groups to negotiate and build coalitions with each other of their own free will, not negotiate under the duress of the argument of "party unity."

Until then, I'll just be a "little 'd'" Democrat given the present system we live under. There is simply no other choice given.