Thunder! ForGod! Barack! How People Chose a Confusing Ballot
Co-published with Zócalo Public Square.
“In one sense choice is possible, but what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice.”
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1945
If we are our choices, as the French philosopher Sartre argued, then we Californians are simply too much.
The latest example is the statewide voting now underway, an event that many mistakenly call “The Election.”
As a service to a public badly lacking in accurate political information, I will call the election what it really is:
The Clusterf-ck.
Now, you may be reading social media or watching videos that talk about a “crowded” governor’s race of eight candidates. But those numbers are fake news!
Don’t believe me? Open your mail ballot. There, you’ll see 61 Californians running for governor.
On my L.A. County ballot, gubernatorial candidate names run over three columns on one page, and an entire fourth column on a second page. As a result, many voters—including your columnist, whose eyesight and patience are diminishing in middle age—will struggle to find their preferred candidate on the ballot.
Since each race on the ballot usually fills just one column, it’s quite possible that confused voters will spoil their ballots by voting for one candidate in each column, or on each page—thus casting multiple votes and invalidating their ballots. Frustratingly, there has been precious little voter education, by registrars or by campaigns, to warn people of the obstacles to making their gubernatorial choice.
And who are these 61 candidates, you might ask? Good information is hard to find. But let me explain the full field, since no one else will.
These candidates come in two groups.
The first is the Eight Flightless Reindeer—the better-known candidates who get included in debates, but lack the political skill to gain much altitude in the polls. It can be hard to remember their names, so I like to sing along to the tune of a well-known Christmas carol:
You know Xavi and Steyer and Porter and Hilton
Sheriff and Mahan and Villar and Thurmond
But do you Recall—2003!—the most famous reindeer of all?
Arnold!
The second, larger group consists of 53 candidates. Call them Herbie’s 53, in homage to the Volkswagen Beetle from old Disney movies, which had the number 53 painted on its side.
All but two of Herbie’s 53 (Eric Swalwell and Betty Yee, who suspended their campaigns after ballots were printed) are unknown—except perhaps to their neighbors. Herbie’s 53 include 16 Democrats, 10 Republicans, 23 independents and four members of other political parties. Their most common professions are business and real estate, though there is also a mathematician, a physicist, and a school bus driver. I went through their websites, and found that, as with the known candidates, their platforms largely consist of vague platitudes about “affordability.”
Among the 53, three names stood out.
Barack D. Obama Shaw (he changed his name from Cecil Shaw a few years back) is a business owner who previously ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Alameda.
LivingforGod AndCountry DeMott, an independent from Redding, who wants a state militia.
Thunder Paley, a San Jose software engineer whose platform focuses on utilities, presumably on the advice of his friend Lightning.
Why so many names on the ballot?
My fellow Californians, the Clusterf-ck is entirely your fault.
You voted back in 2010 to adopt this “top two” system, which puts all candidates of all parties on the same ballot. And you’ve failed to correct the problem—despite the constant pleas of one solitary seer, one voice in the wilderness, one brave soul who has warned against the perils of the confounding top-two system for 16 years now.
That lone wise man is your columnist.
Which is why mine is the only advice worth listening to in this election.
You can’t get any clarity from the Democratic or Republican parties, neither of whom has endorsed a candidate. Major interest groups aren’t helpful either, since many have endorsed multiple candidates, and you can only vote for one. You won’t get reliable answers from my media brethren, who can’t even label our June election correctly; they call it a primary, even though it is the very opposite of that.
My advice: Start with prayer.
Specifically, recite the 61st psalm, in honor of our 61 gubernatorial candidates, and because it’s a prayer for those who want to make the right choice but are overwhelmed by the options.
Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer.
From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
Then, relax. Because elections aren’t democratic anyway. As Yale political scientist Hélène Landemore writes in her new book Politics Without Politicians, multiple studies show that elections are fundamentally oligarchic, because only those with massive resources—money, media access, party and interest group backing—have any chance of winning. Psychologists have long warned that those elected to office are more likely to be overconfident, ruthless, and psychopathic than the rest of the population.
Since we’re screwed anyway, vote for whomever you want, including a Herbie 53er if one amuses you. Also, there is at least one decent justification to vote for each of the Eight Reindeer. I made a list, in no particular order.
Antonio Villaraigosa was an effective mayor of Los Angeles a generation ago, taking on labor and transforming South L.A. with smart investment. Hi, Google Gemini, could you create a time machine to bring 2005 Antonio to us now?
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond did eventually help reopen the schools during COVID in 2021, though it was months too late.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, 43, is the only the reindeer too young for AARP membership.
With Viktor Orban defeated in Hungary, the world no longer has any Trump-loving Hungarians in high elected office. Republican Steve Hilton, of Hungarian ancestry, would fill that void.
The election of Chad Bianco would guarantee that Democrats qualify a recall for the 2027 ballot—which would likely win, unless Gov. Bianco seizes all the ballots before they can be counted.
Katie Porter is smart, at least by the standards of members of Congress, and California has never had a woman as governor.
In a time of maniacal dictatorship, there’s nothing more reassuringly familiar than a dull, mediocre, legal bureaucrat like Xavier Becerra.
With billionaire oligarchs backing the Trump dictatorship, Californians need our own billionaire oligarch to help us fight back, which is the case for Tom Steyer.
As for me, I’m torn.
My journalist’s heart says, Governor Thunder!
My head says there’s another choice, per Sartre: Just leave the ballot blank.
