LA had an election and less than 10% of voters showed up, disturbing findings in Justice Department's Ferguson report, how Skid Row came to be.
Election 2015: Early count shows dismal voter turnout
Yesterday, the nation's second largest city held an election. But not many people noticed. According to preliminary numbers from the City Clerk's office, less than 9 percent of registered L.A. voters went to the polls.
It's a dramatic representation of a nationwide trend. Not even a quarter of eligible voters showed up for New York City's mayoral election in 2013. A University of Wisconsin study that looked at 144 larger U.S. cities found an average voter turnout of just over 20 percent.
The disinterest in local government can have profound effects. Those who vote are much more likely to be white and affluent. Research from UC San Diego says low voter participationcanlead todecisionsaboutpublicspending thatpenalizeminorities.
What might change this, and get more people to the polls?
Dean Logan, the Registrar-Recorder for Los Angeles County, says it's a difficult question.
"There's the election administration side," Logan says, "to ensure that when people are engaged and decide to vote, that we have the infrastructure in place to make that a positive, meaningful experience."
But, he adds, "At the end of the day, that part only matters if people feel like their vote is going to make a difference."
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla agrees that making it as easy as possible for people to vote is part of the solution, but "the tougher nut to crack is getting people to care."
While people tend to get more motivated for a presidential election, Padilla says, voting on a School Board member or a City Council member, "many times has a bigger impact on a local person's quality of life than maybe a presidential election."
Increasing voter turnout, Padilla says, will take civic education to help people realize that local elections do have an impact on their lives.
Election 2015: How will Charter Amendments 1 & 2 work?
Los Angeles voters on Tuesday approved Charter Amendments 1 & 2, two measures that will move municipal and school board elections from odd to even-numbered years to align with statewide and national elections.
Fernando Guerra, political science professor and director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, joined Take Two to explain how changing the timing of elections could increase voter turnout.
We Made Al Care! The evolution of one voter
Voter turnout in Los Angeles is among the worst in the state and country. So we chose one person who doesn't usually vote in local elections - Al Gordon - and we tried to #MakeAlCare about the March 3 L.A. primaries. Reporter Meghan McCarty joins the show to talk about his journey from apathetic to enthusiastic voter.
This is a multi-part series. See Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here and Part 5 here.
is a comics journalist and the founder of .
UC president caps enrollment unless funding increases
University of California president Janet Napolitano announced she was capping enrollment for California residents unless the state increases funding. Lisa Leff from the Associated Press recently wrote about this and she joined the show to talk more about it.
The Department of Justice's report on the Ferguson Police Department
The findings of a months-long investigation by the Justice Department into the Ferguson Police Department were released Wednesday.
Early versions of the report found that African Americans in Ferguson are disproportionately subject to excessive police force, and revealed a troubling lack of trust between the community and police.
Rev. Starskey Wilson is co-chair of the Ferguson Commission, a group of community leaders, set up after the shooting death of Michael Brown. He joins the show to talk about the report.
How LA's Skid Row became what it is today
"Skid Row" – it's a term used to describe the part of any city that's seedy, rough and dangerous. The bad part of town.
The phrase comes from 19th century Seattle to describe the unsavory street that lined the path where logs were dragged and skidded into Elliott Bay on their way to a lumber mill.
Many cities had their own version of Skid Row, too. It was called the Bowery in New York. San Francisco has the Tenderloin.
But in Seattle, gone are the brothels and gambling parlors. They've been replaced by art galleries and book stores to go along with the area's new name Pioneer Square.
And while the Tenderloin is still around, all you have to know about how the Bowery has changed is that there's now a Whole Foods.
But Los Angeles is the only place left in the country with a neighborhood to hold onto that official name: Skid Row.
How did it become what it is today? A place where homeless people can find help, and a place where police had a brief scuffle with a man before they shot him?
In 1975, it pushed forward a redevelopment plan that would contain services for the homeless and mentally disturbed within that specific area – Third Street to the north, Alameda Street on the east, Seventh Street to the south and Main Street on the west.
The idea had its pros and cons.
On the one hand, it prevented developers from overtaking the area so that service organizations and low-income housing could remain. It also made help more accessible because many were concentrated in a small part of town.
On the other, it kept the rest of the city from confronting its homeless problem.
Hear more about Skid Row's history by clicking on the blue player above.
Is LA still the 'City of Quartz'?
Twenty-five years ago, the book "City of Quartz" by Mike Davis was published.
It painted a dark, dystopian picture of Los Angeles that has since become enshrined in the popular imagination.
A suburban junkyard of dreams, L.A., in Davis' view, was a tense prison of soul-less shopping malls and gated communities, fortified to keep the ruling elites safe and segregated from the powerless masses.
It was a vision which took hold throughout the world when a couple years later, those tensions erupted in violence with the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots.
But how does Davis' account hold up today? Are we still living in that dark City of Quartz?
That question will be the subject of the next event in the Third LA Project, a series of talks put on by Occidental college and led by LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, who also coined that phrase.
"In some ways, it seems very dated, and I really wish Mike Davis himself would have written a bit more about L.A. in the last few years, because as I've been saying, the city has really changed in some dramatic ways," Hawthorne said of the book. "I think certain things about the kind of deeply privatized nature of the built environment seem dated because I think L.A., even though it's not a perfect effort, I think L.A. is really trying reanimate and repair the civic realm now."
But he feels certain parts of the book remain relevant, like the city's tendency for slow growth and opposition to development.
"It seems like that chapter could have been written last week," he said.
Sports roundup: Nuggets fire Brian Shaw, Phil Jackson's legacy, hype begins for Pacquiao vs. Mayweather
How come the former staff of legendary coach Phil Jackson have trouble keeping their coaching jobs? Could the Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight be the top sports event of the decade? And who, besides LeBron James, could claim the basketball MVP? We cover these topics and more with
.
Are you missing your adult vaccinations?
The recent measles outbreak in the U.S. has sparked plenty of heated debates about children and vaccination, but it turns out that a lack of vaccinations among adults is also a problem.
So much so, the California Medical Association Foundation recently launched a campaign to get more adults vaccinated. Southern California Public Radio health reporter Rebecca Plevin has the details.
Check out her blog post on the topic over at our consumer health blog, Impatient.
Are minorities well represented in video games?
We hear all the time about the lack of diversity in film and television, but what about other forms of media? Say, video games?
As it turns out, there's not a whole lot of positive representation for minorities in that realm, and that's a top topic of discussion at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week. Evan Narcisse wrote about this for Kotaku and he joins Alex Cohen to talk about it.
Drought could be California's new normal, Stanford study says
California is much more likely to experience drought conditions in the future, according to a team of scientists at Stanford University. The reason? Us humans.
The research included a look back at 120 years of the state's observed historical record as well as international climate models.
For more on the study, Host A Martinez spoke with Noah Diffenbaugh, Professor of Earth System Science at Stanford University and lead scientist on the drought study.
How California can work to conserve more water
With California's snow pack far below normal, and residents nowhere near Gov. Jerry Brown's 20 percent water conservation goal, what is California's plan?
Guelaguetza owners on winning James Beard Classics award
Guelaguetza has been serving traditional Oaxacan cuisine for more than 20 years. The restaurant was founded by family patriarch Fernando Lopez Sr. and has been praised as center of Oaxaca life in Los Angeles.
Bricia and Fernando Jr. Lopez joined the show to talk about winning the James Beard America's Classic award.
Hundreds turn out in LA for Mexican singer Ariel Camacho's memorial
On Tuesday, hundreds of mourners turned out for a service in the San Fernando Valley for the singer Ariel Camacho, who died last week in a car accident in Sinaloa, Mexico.
Camacho led the popular Norteño group Los Plebes del Rancho and developed a strong following in the US.
He was part of a wave of new, young musicians who were bicultural and pioneered a new, hybrid sound, said Leila Cobo, Billboard's executive director of content and programming for Latin music. "He sang corridos and also romantic stuff and that's part of his appeal," said Cobo.
Camacho's hit, El Karma, from his new album drew millions of viewers online.