Can We Fix Our State?

The Orange County Register asks this question in its 'California Project' series of articles. The writers state that only the voters can fix the state, but California voters have consistently demonstrated that they will not.

Polls show that only 21 percent of the voters hold a favorable view of the United States Congress, yet in election after election, Californians have re-elected Senators Boxer and Feinstein, Representative Pelosi, and the many other incumbents whom they claim to view unfavorably.

At the state level, 77 percent of the voters think the state is going in the wrong direction, but 37 percent of them want the next governor to be Gerry Brown, who has been driving the state in the wrong direction from various offices for years. California voters continue to re-elect the very state legislators they criticize for not producing a balanced state budget on time.

If Californians believe that incumbents are doing a bad job, why do they keep voting for them?