EDITORIAL APATHY AND CYNICISM STATE LEADERS CREATE NEW ELECTIONS WHILE DRIVING AWAY VOTERS.

SUCH is the pathetic state of democracy in Los Angeles that on Tuesday only 7.7 percent of registered Angelenos bothered to vote.

And on the very day that residents of the state's largest city gave democracy the thumbs down, the state Legislature voted to add a third election to next year's calendar.

Call it ironic -- or sad.

Either way, in 2008, apathetic voters will have three opportunities to not vote: In November, when we choose the next president; in June, when we hold partisan primaries for all offices except the presidency; and -- courtesy of Tuesday's vote -- in February, when we try to get a jump-start on the rest of the country in choosing major party nominees for the nation's highest office.

Now, there's a strong case to be made for an early presidential primary, which would give Californians -- the biggest source of presidential campaign cash -- a real say in choosing the parties' candidates. Still, with voter turnout in a free-fall, is this is the time to burden fatigued voters with yet another election?

It may not be time for the public, but it sure is for the politicians.

The state's leaders have seen to it that an initiative allowing them to stay in office longer will appear on the next ballot. But for the initiative to do current pols any good, voters must approve it before, and not at the same time as, the June primary. That way otherwise termed-out pols will have time to file for re-election.

Thus, for the sake of the incumbents, California "needs" a February election.

What, you didn't think the early primary was all about increasing the state's influence in presidential politics, did you? If it were, Sacramento could have put it up to a vote at any time over the last four years.

So now it's up to the state's pols to try to demonstrate that their early-primary gambit isn't as self-serving as it appears.

And there's one easy way they can do it: Put a redistricting measure on the ballot that would end the current system of gerrymandering that makes a farce of California's legislative and congressional elections.

Offering to sacrifice some of their own power in the name of democracy would be a good way for the state's leaders to show that when they talk loftily about wanting to give California voters more power, they mean it.

And who knows, if Sacramento would make this modest effort to make California more democratic, Californians might just take a renewed interest in voting.