Young Voters Show Power in California for Proposition 30

It was with tremendous relief that I woke up Wednesday morning and learned that California's Proposition 30 passed with 54% of the vote.  When I went to bed Tuesday night it had been trailing by four percent.  I knew that if it failed it would result in an additional $3 million in cuts to College of the Sequoias where I teach and the cancellation of hundreds of classes our students need.  We are already serving 3000 fewer students than we did five years ago and are the only institution of higher learning in our predominantly rural vicinity.  For those of you who don't know, Prop 30 was Governor Jerry Brown's initiative to impose a 1/4% sales tax for four years and a 1% to 3% income tax increase on upper income earners for seven years to raise about $6 billion per year, 98.5% of it for education.

I am grateful to the voters of California, and especially to the younger voters.   This proposition became THE great cause for college students in California this election.  At COS our Associated Student Body and Young Democrats campaigned very hard for it.  They secured 600 student endorsement signatures in two hours to fill a full-page newspaper ad the teachers ran in support of Prop 30 last week.  They registered hundreds of voters and made sure they voted by mail or on election day.  This effort was repeated across the state and produced an amazing result.

As Scott Lay, President of the Community College League of California, reported in his newsletter under the title "Winners:"  

Young voters - I know I've been harping on this. Polling firms undersampled 18-29 year old voters through the cycle, particularly after Prop. 30 became a rallying cry on campuses. In the last four presidentials, 18-29 year olds have ranged from 15% (1996) to 22% (2008). So, why were they only expected to be 12% of the California electorate in Monday's Field Poll projections? In the end, the exit poll found that 28% of California's electorate were 18-29 year olds. And, with their 63% yes vote on Prop 30, they single-handedly put Jerry Brown's tax measure over the top. This also led to a 1.9 million 20-point margin for Obama in California that ensured that he won the national popular vote.

In addition to Scott's analysis above, when the dust settles I expect it will be shown they also had a great deal to do with Democrats securing 2/3 supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature.  Pretty impressive, wouldn't you say?  Who says young voters are apathetic?  Give them an issue that strikes close to home and they proved they are very much a force to be reckoned with.