CalMatters talked to a handful of the 4.3 million Californians who chose to sit out this year’s election to find out why, given 17.8 million set a record by voting in November.

He Supported Bernie

Sergio Berrueta, 28, is a student at Humboldt State. Here is how he explains his decision to not vote.

I didn’t vote this year because, frankly, I didn’t like the candidates for both parties. I wasn’t going to vote for Trump, but I also wasn’t going to vote for Biden. I’ve been registered as a Democrat since the first time I could vote in an election, and this time around I didn’t think Biden was fit enough as a candidate.

I was a Bernie Sanders supporter like many other college students.

Sergio Berrueta, a student a Humboldt State University. Photo courtesy of Sergio Berrueta

In the last election in 2016, I voted third party. It was the same, I didn’t like Clinton as an option and I voted third party because I was like, I believe in this other thing and I don’t think the system is really working out.

What I want to see in a politician is someone that is going to focus on the nation. It’s weird because you have one candidate saying let’s make America great again, but they’re not really doing what would make this place great.

What I want for a candidate is someone who is fighting for us. We need universal healthcare, we need access to proper public health, that is the biggest issue for me. Someone that is pro-choice, someone that wants to actually work on gun control because that has been a problem for years.

I am tired of constantly funding the military for endless war. I just want a candidate that is going to focus on this nation because we have been so focused on everything outside and we haven’t focused on what is going on here. We have problems internally and we should be growing, we shouldn’t be going backwards.

My mom has voted Democrat in every election. My grandpa, he flip-flops. In the last election, he voted for Clinton, in the election prior he voted for Romney, and in 2008 he voted for McCain. But he voted for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. He also voted for Reagan in the 80s, and I’m still mad about that — even though I wasn’t alive then.

My friend Patrick voted — or he better have, I don’t remember. Heidi, my partner, voted, she did by mail. I registered (in Humboldt County) and they mailed my ballot to an old address, but once again, I didn’t vote this election because of what I said.

It boiled down to this: No matter what happens, things are going to kind of stay the same. You gotta vote for the lesser of two evils and honestly — I hope I don’t sound weird or anything — but it came down to morals.

It Wouldn’t Have Mattered

Gabe Kim is 21 and a student at Humboldt State. He said he didn’t think his vote would make a difference.

I didn’t vote.

There were a few things going on, one was laziness and another reason is that I realized, yeah sure, my vote matters a little bit, but it’s not going to affect the outcome of the election one way or the other.

Most of my friends and family voted and they probably did for Joe Biden considering the overwhelming amount of people that swing that way.

Gabe Kim, a student a Humboldt State University. Photo courtesy of Gabe Kim

I don’t feel ostracized in any way because I didn’t vote. You know, if I were to sum it up in one sentence, I just really didn’t feel like it. I didn’t feel like it mattered and that there is no reason to go out and expose myself to other people during a pandemic.

I kind of have been in a downward spiral this semester when it comes to a lot of things. I think the pandemic really has caused me to feel isolated because I can’t go to school and I can’t do this or that and I just figured, why go out and vote and expose myself. And I didn’t really understand the whole mail-in ballot thing.

So it was a number of things, I don’t think I could point to only one specific reason that caused me to not vote.

I mean, is it a bad thing I didn’t vote? Umm, maybe some people would say that. But for me, even when I did vote two years ago… I didn’t know who was doing what. I didn’t really do my research.

When I voted in 2018, there was a lot of stuff to go through. You weren’t just voting for the top dogs, you were also voting for things within the county and within the state and the different levels of government. I got overwhelmed and I mean, I don’t know exactly who is the best candidate for the position or whatever.

If I were to have voted, I would have voted for Joe Biden, but a lot of the stuff that politicians talk about are very broad and I don’t really involve myself in politics unless it directly affects me. Something like student loan debt or something like that would encourage me to go out and vote more.

If politicians were to come down to my level and do things that appeal to me, that directly affected me or related to me, not just broad things like whether or not we are going to be in the Paris Climate Agreement or the Iran Nuclear Deal.

These things matter and I understand that, but they’re not really affecting me. 

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This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. In California, CalMatters is hosting the collaboration with the Fresno Bee, the Long Beach Post, and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

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