TO: CVF-NEWS FROM: Kim Alexander, CVF President DATE: March 21, 2000 RE: Thoughts on California's primary election
Hi Folks,
It's been two weeks since the California Primary, and life here at the CVF office has finally slowed down a bit, giving us a chance to catch up on other things. We had a terrific election season, and wish to thank all of you who helped get the word out about calvoter.org. Our traffic was outstanding -- we are still analyzing our usage statistics but so far we know that we had 200,000 visits to our web site over a six-week period around the election, which is more than double the traffic our site experienced during the 1998 General Election. Our web site served over100,000 pages on Election Day alone! The Proposition Song was a big hit, playing on CNN, ABC News, PBS, NPR and lots of local radio stations around the state, and was a fun and inspiring project for all of us who worked on it. Our Top Ten donors lists continued to be more popular than ever, and every election it is getting easier for Californians to follow the money.
Perhaps most satisfying of all is the fact that California experienced a record voter turnout on March 7. Approximately 7.4 million California voters turned out to vote in the primary, representing 53 percent of all registered voters and an eleven percent increase over turnout in the 1996 presidential primary. This good news was highlighted in a recent commentary by Mark Baldassare, survey director for the Public Policy Institute of California (www.ppic.org). In a column published in last Sunday's Sacramento Bee, Baldassare wrote that their surveys "showed an unusually high level of interest in the presidential primary. The voter turnout on March 7 set a record. It is critical to the state's future for voters to keep informed and stay involved. California faces many important policy decisions in the decades ahead, and voters will be asked to make thoughtful decisions on a wide range of complicated issues."
The California Voter Foundation's voter education services are helping to ensure that Californians can in fact make informed, thoughtful choices at election time. We are proud to be contributing to the civic education of our state, and look forward to the challenges ahead with the General Election in November and beyond.
Thanks so much to our members and supporters for making our work possible. We'd especially like to thank the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Arkay Foundation, the Gerbode Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for supporting our 2000 programs.
I'd also like to recognize the committed efforts of my fellow CVF staffers, Saskia Mills and Debbie Rotenberg, as well as our interns, Mike Strong and Sheetal Jhala, for making this election season such a success for CVF.
For a thoughtful analysis of California's election results, please take a look at Mark Baldassare's column, available at:
www.sacbee.com/voices/news/voices04_20000319.html
If you are not already a member of the California Voter Foundation, I hope you'll take a moment to sign up and join our efforts to inform California voters. Please visit www.calvoter.org/membership to learn more about how you can help.
I hope everyone is enjoying Spring and has a great week!
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This page was first published on March 21, 2000 | Last updated on March 21, 2000
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