Staying home on election day

Four in ten California voters (41.5%) cast their November ballots absentee. Los Angeles County voters not so much: just 26% of those who voted used the convenient absentee method. (Contrast that to Orange County, where 48% voted the easy way.) Los Angeles actually had slightly more overall participation than Orange, with 51.9% of registered voters casting ballots compared to 50.5% of our neighbors to the south. If those rates seem unconscionably low (or surprisingly high), consider this. Of the 5.7 million Los Angeles County citizens 18 or older who are eligible to register, just 35.6% voted in November. That's below the state average, but not the worst — just 27% voted in border-adjacent Imperial County.

Source: Secretary of State