LAUSD was given a respite from criticism while the city elections took the spotlight- and a dim spotlight at that, if you consider how poorly it was covered by the television, radio and newspapers, generally.
A radio interview on March 3rd of some young female voters on KFWB or KNX went like this:
Question: "Who did you vote for?"
Answers: Young woman: "Obama", other young woman, "Obama"
Question: "No, I mean for the election today."
Anwers: "Is there an election today?"
I do not know if these young women were LAUSD alumni. I think that this kind of answer was all too common among the younger voters with a 15% turnout at the polls. Voter eligibility at 18 years old does not mean that they are automatically informed. I think the District might consider including at least some familiarity with civic affairs to avoid the situation illustrated above and work to instill some awareness of the value of voting at every election.
As of today, there are about 43,000 votes still not counted- some are provisional ballots, used where there are problems like Absentee Ballots that were not received or a name not showing up on the voter list, and then the regular Absentee Ballots, all that still have to be counted. There is a potential for a run-off election for the the Mayor's office if Villaraigosa's current 55% of the vote drops to 50% or less after all the votes are counted.
The runoff election is coming in May, and Jack Weiss will be running against Carmen Trutanich for the City Attorney- and Jack Weiss IS NOT anywhere near being the right candidate for that office. Trutanich is the guy to vote for so that we can begin to get the city on the right track after two terms of derailment with Rocky Delgadillo's hit-and-miss history of running of that office, lately being "miss."
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