Voting in California has never been easier. Despite all that, the people who vote most often remain older, whiter and wealthier than most Californians, according to a new survey from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.
Just under 4 in 10 of the state’s registered voters are what Berkeley defined as regular voters — those who have cast ballots in at least five of the last seven statewide elections. Berkeley researchers determined the frequency of voting by verifying the voter histories of more than 6,000 registered voters whom they surveyed.That pool of regular voters is 71% white, a share that is significantly larger than the white share of registered voters.
Infrequent voters are also much more likely to be young, to be renters and to be unmarried, Berkeley found. About 1 in 4 registered voters who didn’t vote frequently or hadn’t voted at all said they felt their vote didn’t matter much or that no matter how they voted, special interests and big money controlled politics.By contrast, those who vote regularly said they did so to “stand up for the candidates and issues I believe are important” , “to influence the direction of state and local government” , or because voting is “an important civic duty” .
“The state has invested in trying to make voting easier. That’s what the state is doing when it’s sending out ballots early,” DiCamillo added.
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