The Ties That Bind: Changing Demographics and Civic Engagement in California

The ties that bind : changing demographics and civic engagement in California / S. Karthick Ramakrishnan and Mark Baldassare. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Research publications reflect the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers, or Board of Directors of the Public Policy Institute of California. Short sections of text, not to exceed three paragraphs, may be quoted without written permission provided that full attribution is given to the source and the above copyright notice is included. PPIC does not take or support positions on any ballot measure or on any local, state, or federal legislation, nor does it endorse, support, or oppose any political parties or candidates for public office. iii Foreword One of the most troubling and poorly understood trends in America today is the decline in civic participation. I say " poorly understood " not from the lack of research, but from the frustration that arises as we see citizens avoiding participatory activities that have always seemed to be the heart and soul of democracy. Voting, civic organizations, and political engagement are activities that now seem embedded in a mid-twentieth-century lifestyle—never to return in anything like the scale and intensity we knew in that era. Two trends in California make declining civic engagement especially worrisome. One, of course, is the vigorous use of the ballot initiative as a means for making public policy—at both the state and local levels. The second is the shifting demographic profile of the state. Because voting and other forms of civic engagement are highly correlated with education and income, older white voters go to the polls in disproportionate numbers. A majority of all voters in California are white, even though the 2000 Census tells us that the state is now home to a majority-minority population. California is at a stage in its history where a minority white population is in the position of making key policy decisions for a highly diverse society of 35 million people. S. Karthick Ramakrishnan and Mark Baldassare started with this stark reality and investigated the question of whether minorities are engaged in civic activities even if they are not proportionately represented at the polls. One of their conclusions is sobering: " Whites are overrepresented in California in almost every political activity, particularly when it comes to contributing money to political campaigns and writing to elected officials. Thus, …