Following the low voter turnout for California’s June 8 primary election, Mark Paul, co-author of California Crackup, wrote, “The real story of the Tuesday elections, it seems to me, is that voters have given up on believing in democracy under California’s current electoral system.” In the California Progress Report last Friday, Peter Schrag, author of Not Fit for Our Society and California, called Paul’s commentary “[t]he most trenchant analysis of this month’s primary election results”.

Voters feel alienated, says Paul, because of the state’s ailing system of government, which he and co-author Joe Mathews describe as three separate, conflicting systems that impede progress while California’s problems keep building. As Paul and Mathews discuss in this California Crackup book trailer, the state’s problems—failing schools, overburdened prisons, water crises, and ever-deepening debts—are huge, but not insurmountable. They propose clear, concrete ideas for how to address these problems, and to restore voters’ confidence and bring them back to the polls.

FacebookTwitterTumblrLinkedInEmail