Quiet Polling at Lawrence Middle School as Some Voters Voice Discontent

Lawrence Middle School’s auditorium was quiet most of the day. Many voters had voted by absentee ballot. Others ignored Election Day. And others were just angry.

The evening was no different. You wouldn’t know it by the jovial nature of the poll workers, though. No stuffy, serious faces greeted the voters. Quite the contrary, they said they were happy to be there and doing what they were doing.

The voters did not, as a whole, share their lighthearted nature. Their expressions said as much as they exited the auditorium. But just as the nation’s vox populi expressed its discontent during the 2010 midterm elections, so did Chatsworth residents on Tuesday.

“It’s a joke,” said Chatsworth resident Carlos Zegarra, of the entire City Council election, “because of the measures we are voting for. I don’t know about any of the candidates. All you hear on the news is corruption, corruption, corruption.”

Of the measures he most disliked, Measure L, the initiative that proposes more funding for public libraries by shifting budget resources, was a top contender. “We don’t need libraries. You can find any book or anything on the Internet,” Zegarra said. But the funding that’s proposed is a major, if not greater, part of his discontent with the measure. “I’m for privatization,” he said. “There’s too much money given to everybody. You can’t make everybody happy. [Our current economic situation] is proof. We have to get less and then we get stronger.”

Zegarra’s views are motivated by his livelihood. He owns an independent tracking and delivery service in Chatsworth, and not only the business, but he, too, is suffering. “I’m trying to survive,” he said. “I don’t have any money to back me up and then you have a politician and they retire with $6,000, $7,000 a month? That’s a joke.”

That sentiment was echoed by landlord Mike Dickinson of Chatsworth, who voted at Lawrence along with one of his tenants, Ruth Sullivan. “The candidates don’t really thrill me,” said Dickinson. “Politics in California is slightly controlled. The taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill for politicians’ mistakes. That really bothers me.”

Sullivan was more concerned with the fate of funding for Los Angeles’ fire and police departments. “I’m concerned for cuts in budgets for police and fire when it took them so long to find something that will work,” said Sullivan. If such departments do lose funding and are thus adversely affected, Sullivan warned, “we are going to be backsliding.”

But not all voters saw things quite so negatively. Dolores Ambriz lives in an apartment in Chatsworth. Somewhat younger than her fellow voters at Lawrence, Ambriz was optimistic. She admitted that she isn't among those who feel they’ve been let down by their government one time too many.

“I did notice the frustration of the people at the Chatsworth Neighborhood Council meeting,” said Ambriz, where she was first introduced to the City Council District 12 candidates at a forum. Ambriz admitted, too, that she felt she needed to become more involved in her community, so “it was good that I was there to hear what [the candidates] were offering and what was happening.”

It was that realization that led her to study the measures and candidates’ platforms  so that when she showed up at the polls, she would be at least somewhat prepared. And it's that initiative that Zegarra says America is missing, along with a desire to vote in the first place.

Zegarra is a South America native. "In Peru, everybody votes," he said. "It's an obligation. All of our problems in America stem from it not being an obligation, and that's how we end up with corruption."

It's also an obligation to the one of the eldest of Tuesday's voters at Lawrence. Even though Sullivan said she didn't have as much time as she would have liked to study the measures and candidates' platforms. "I wasn't able to do that," she said. "But I still know it's important to vote." So she did.