{"id":4653,"date":"2012-04-11T04:39:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T04:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/commentary-democracy-fails-in-long-beach\/"},"modified":"2012-04-11T04:39:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T04:39:00","slug":"commentary-democracy-fails-in-long-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/commentary-democracy-fails-in-long-beach","title":{"rendered":"Commentary: Democracy Fails in Long Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\"  alt=\"\" style=\"width: 660px;\" src=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/m_image1334133419-58903.jpg\"><br \/><strong><br \/>10:00am<\/strong> | According to Webster, the primary definition of &#8216;democracy&#8217; is &#8220;government by the people; especially: rule of the majority.&#8221; In last night&#8217;s election, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www2.longbeach.gov\/cityclerk\/elections\/results\/cumulative.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the turn-out<\/a> was nothing more than an embarrassment. In Long Beach, only 30% of residents bother to register in the first place.  There were a total of 17,057 ballots cast. Nearly 70% of them were Vote-By-Mail ballots. To be fair, the ballots cast represent 3 of 9 Council districts, 11.3% of the total registered voters for the City, but only 3.4% of the total population. <\/p>\n<p>In the 2010 election, which included the mayoral campaign, 40,292 votes were cast, which is 8% of the total population. Whether 3.4% or 8%, there is no way this small minority of residents can accurately or fairly represent the values of the rest.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p> As our newly elected, or re-elected, council representatives bask in their respective victories, I hope that they remember that, in winning, they&#8217;ve exemplified a complete and utter failure of Democracy in Long Beach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In last night&#8217;s &#8220;election,&#8221; only 3.4% of City residents voted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":69737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4653"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4653"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}