EDITORIAL SAME OLD STORY... THE PRICE OF CALIFORNIA'S LOW VOTER TURNOUT.

LOS Angeles County spent about $45 apiece for the more than 663,000 votes cast in the county in Tuesday's statewide primary election.

If that sounds a high price to pay for a single vote, that's because it is.

All in all, taxpayers spent about $30million -- in a county of more than 11million residents -- to hold an election in which only 16 percent of registered voters turned out. That's a rate significantly lower than even the pitiful statewide average of 23 percent. Poll workers were reportedly bored stiff Tuesday, with so little to do at the sparsely attended polling stations.

What happened?

Part of it surely is that there was so little on the ballot, thanks to California's holding the presidential primary in February and the primary for every other race in June.

Tuesday's election was also a primary election, which typically gets smaller turnout than general elections, especially those during a presidential-election year.

But despite those two caveats, there were still some very real issues at stake on the ballot: the makeup of the very powerful county Board of Supervisors, including an unusually competitive race for one seat; the re-election of District Attorney Steve Cooley, one of the county's top law-enforcement officials; and two statewide ballot issues that could fundamentally alter cities and neighborhoods.

Yet so few people bothered to show up, thus leaving the choice to just a few thousand people in each precinct.

Take, for example, the 40th state Assembly District Democratic primary. Even with higher turnout than typical countywide -- about 20 percent -- Bob Blumenfield won the nomination (and thus, effectively, the seat in a heavily Democratic district) with just 8,608 votes. While that may be a majority of the votes cast in the race that day, it represents only about 10 percent of the total registered voters in the district.

What's wrong is what's been wrong for years. Voters are turned off by the fact that there's little competition, due to the state's rigged political districts and the overwhelming powers of incumbency. Many primary races were uncontested, and since nearly all districts are controlled by one party or the other, thanks to gerrymandering, there will be no real competition in the November general election.

Then there's the off-putting, seedy nature of modern politics. In the few cases where there was real competition in a campaign, such as the Blumenfield race, the campaign got so nasty, with attack ads and mudslinging, that most voters were likely too disgusted to vote at all.

Tuesday's turnout is the result of California's particularly flawed political system. And now we have a cost attached: $45 per vote.