DEFENDING THE NON-VOTER : PRIMARY CAN'T MATCH OSCARS, SO WHY TRY?

Byline: Mark P. Petracca

IN California's first (and hopefully last) March presidential primary, more registered voters watched the Academy Awards last Monday evening than bothered to vote on Tuesday.

Ostensibly, the new primary date was set to increase the state's clout in the nomination of presidential candidates.

The result? No new clout, but another new record low turnout of California voters.

Only 40 percent of registered voters in California cast ballots, ``besting'' the previous low of 47.5 percent set in 1992 by a considerable margin.

This is one record we can probably do without.

Yet we should not rush, as so many pundits often do, to place all of the blame for this feeble expression of popular sovereignty on the individual voter.

Part of the blame rests elsewhere.

Start with the top of the ticket. President Clinton is running unopposed and Bob Dole was assured of winning the GOP presidential nomination two weeks ago.

No excitment to mobilize voters there. California moved the primary to be more consequential, but so did other states rich in convention delegates (e.g., New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin).

Consequently, roughly 70 percent of the delegates to the GOP Convention were selected prior to the March 26th California primary. Most Republican primaries allocate delegates on a winner-take-all basis.

This all but guaranteed the selection of a nominee before California. Had there been a serious competition for the Democratic nomination, California's primary would have mattered more, especially since Democratic primaries tend to allocate convention delegates in proportion to the vote received by the candidates.

However, absent a Democratic contest and with the Republican one all but decided, voters had no choice of any consequence to bring them to the polls. It's really no wonder many stayed home.

The timing of California's primary depressed voter turnout for other reasons as well. The 1996 presidential primary season was more condensed than in past years. (In 1992 the GOP held 28 primaries or caucuses after March 26th; in 1996 this number shrunk to only 14.)

Consequently, from the beginning of February to the middle of March there was intense media interest in the antics of the Republican candidates.

For a while, at least until the South Carolina primary on March 2, it even looked as though there might be a real battle for the so-called ``heart and soul of the Republican Party'' with Dole, Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, and Lamar Alexander going the distance.

But GOP establishment fears of a successful Buchanan insurgency rallied the troops behind Dole, squeezing Alexander and then Forbes out of the race. Pat Buchanan did more to assure the nomination of Dole in 1996 than any Republican Governor, pundit, or political consultant.

The media's fixation on the GOP fracas meant that there wasn't much coverage of California's numerous federal, state, and local candidate races, or the many consequential ballot initiatives. Local news stations did cover electoral politics - it just wasn't California's. This had a devastating effect on voter interest in candidate races and ballot issues.

Thanks to term limits for state legislators, there were more open seats up for grabs in both the State Assembly and Senate than in any election for at least three decades. Likewise, the ballot was chock-full of important issues.

To recap a few: limits on contingency fees for attorneys, a new no-fault insurance initiative, bond funding for schools, and a new way of opening up the primary process to more voter choices and more voters.

Yet few candidate races or ballot measures were treated to the extensive media coverage necessary to educate voters and stimulate campaign interest. The media focused elsewhere and had much less time than usual to cover yet another overwhelmingly complicated ballot.

To top it off, when the GOP presidential race became less interesting - creating a brief window of opportunity for media coverage of California electoral politics - the media decided to overdose, per usual, on advance coverage of the Academy Awards.

Truth is, Californians learned far more about what the stars were planning to wear to the ceremony, who was bringing whom, where the luminaries were going to party afterwards, and why Jesse Jackson was ticked off at the Academy than they ever did about the details of any ballot proposition.

I don't fault the media for its Oscar-mania; it's what viewers and readers apoparently want. However, Californians preparing to vote were poorly served by the lack of careful and systematic attention to the ballot.

The sheer length and complexity of the propositions on the ballot is my final defense of the non-voter. Once again, the ballot contained far too many propositions - 12 statewide and countless local initiatives across the state - for any normally busy person to carefully evaluate and sensibly judge.

Frankly, the bulk of the initiatives - many of which could and should be passed by the state legislatures - is simply overwhelming.

It's time for reform. Make California's presidential primary the first in the nation, but schedule all other primary elections for June of a presidential election year.

California is the one state most representative of the nation as a whole on a wide range of economic, demographic, cultural, and even political indicators. Not so for New Hampshire, Iowa, or Louisiana.

We also must reform the initiative process: Limit the number of initiatives that can be presented to the voters on any single ballot; restrict constitutional initiatives to placement on the presidential and gubernatorial ballots; and establish a process for reviewing the presumptive constitutionality of initiatives before they are placed on the ballot.

These three reforms would enable voters to concentrate attention on a smaller number of issues, guarantee that amendments to the state constitution are passed when the largest number of voters are most likely to vote; and prevent the electorate from approving initiatives which eventually are modified or completely nullified by judicial rulings.

Goodness knows, California needs desperately to reverse the free fall of electoral participation in primary elections. To maintain the basic legitimacy of republican government, voters must exercise their franchise.

MEMO: Mark P. Petracca is associate professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine.

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Photo: (Color) Lonely voter: Only 40 percent of registeredvoters in California cast ballots.

Hans Gutknecht / Daily News