The People’s Choice Is McKenna …. for the fourth time
Written by redqueeninla in Education
WINS!!!
LA Wins the Most Shocking Apathy Voter Award all over again. And despite ever-diminishing numbers of voters manages to leverage national significance from their voice.
Besting last June’s record low turnout of 13.1 percent, this special board election was decided by just 8.3% of the 342,493 registered voters of LAUSD’s first district.
Almost two-thirds of the 28,366 ballots cast were via mail rather than in-person, an option particularly attractive to parents juggling family needs with citizenly responsibilities when election day coincided with the first day of school following summer break.
It was the well-funded and over-staffed Johnson campaign in conjunction with its side-kick, independent, shadowy “independent expenditure” PACS, that pushed hard for absentee, or Vote By Mail (VBM) ballots. When their count was reported immediately following the close of polls as slightly favoring McKenna, the evening’s trajectory seemed set. Given the emphasis by Johnson’s campaign on turning out the charter parent VBM vote, if they had not claimed an early, immediate lead, it seemed unlikely the campaign could recover as the in-person ballots trickled in. The non-rote ballots were cast at the polling place. And indeed McKenna’s lead over Johnson just widened steadily over the next four hours culminating in a 6.4% superiority of votes – or 1,787 ballots —for McKenna. All precincts have been reported but provisional ballots are still being checked and the final election results may not be certified before September 2, 2014
These scant thousand votes are no trivial smudge. They reflect the culmination of a concerted effort from far beyond the borders of LAUSD1 to sway the electorate in preference for an ideology substituting private, corporate control of our children’s education over a publicly-driven and accountable, democratic public school system.
This is a movement that has been gaining strength for a rather long time. It The People’s Choice Is McKenna …. for the fourth time – redqueeninla: