STOP WITH THE ELECTIONEERING!

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

IS it any wonder that every year fewer voters decide to actually vote? While the primary election campaigns and their scads of voter-repulsing ads were mercifully gone by early Wednesday morning, the respite was short.

By slightly later Wednesday morning, the race for the governor's job in November was back on. I wasn't even done with my morning coffee when the first salvo ended up in my e-mail in box: It was an innocuous-seeming announcement from the Statewide Coalition of Leaders Unite(d) To Support Governor Schwarzenegger.

The message tried to make it seem as if there had been a spontaneous convergence of the state's influential people who woke up and thought, Gee, I really believe Arnold has a plan to keep California moving, unlike that Greek fellow with the big ears. It was really an ad, and even had the legally required, ``paid for by Californians for Schwarzenegger '06.''

By the next day, Phil Angelides gave up even the pretense of a campaign breather. He hit Los Angeles, and with the former target of his nasty-gram ads at his side, Angelides said the governor ``has failed to deliver.''

It's going to be a long five months.

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A plea to campaign direct mailers: Stop! This year's primary election was remarkable in its volumes of campaign mailers stuffed into mailboxes across the state. I made it a personal goal to punish the candidates who sent me the most mail by not voting for them. From what I can tell, many other voters did the same.

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Here's a short list of the goofiest campaign mail I received in recent weeks:

A paperback book by the unsuccessful Assembly candidate who is related to Cesar Chavez.

A red refrigerator magnet from Supervisor Gloria Molina advertising the county's 211 call service.

A glossy photo of Kevin de Leon, winner in the 45th Assembly District, with L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. All it lacked were the kissy lips and the X-0-X-0's.

A stylized watercolor portrait of Steve Westly that came in the mail Tuesday, and is possibly the reason he lost.

A mailer featuring JFK sailing on a boat, which I surmised was intended to appeal to the female voters. (Note to Democrats: Get a new icon. That one has been dead longer than most of the voters in my district have been alive.)

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Only 28 percent of the registered voters turned out on Tuesday, despite millions of dollars poured into ads, mailers, signs, billboards and baby-kissing events. That's much lower than even the record low of 34 percent predicted by experts. In Los Angeles, where some serious electioneering went on, it was even lower, just 24.2 percent.

By comparison, in last November's special election, when voters were inundated with a number of confusing propositions, half of all registered voters in the state voted -- a difference of more than 3.5 million people.

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Political experts have all sorts of theories about why so few people vote in elections: They are put off by negative campaigning. No one's talking about the real issues. They just don't care. They don't think one vote can make a difference. They are busy. Oprah's on.

Those factors may explain why some of the nearly three-quarters of registered Californians didn't bother to vote Tuesday in the primary election. But I have another theory to explain the rest: They couldn't figure out where to go.

I'm not saying voters are stupid (though that might explain the victory of Gray Davis in 2002, to be followed by the almost-immediate recall of Gray Davis in 2003). But they are easily distracted when it comes to unpleasant tasks, such as picking from a slate of mostly indistinguishable candidates, all of whom will probably lie, steal and cheat with equal skill and aplomb.

So I imagine even a small change, such as showing up to the place they usually vote and finding no one's there, could deter hundreds, maybe thousands of voters. And that's what happened throughout L.A. County this election.

As a result of a new state law dictating a voting precinct size, the county registrar-recorder had to add 420 new polling places. If that wasn't enough to send potential voters haplessly wandering around, 179 existing polling places changed location. And some, I can say from personal experience, seemed pretty illogical.

Although a new polling place opened up just a block and a half from my front door, I continued at my same polling place twice as far away, while voters from more than a mile away used this closer space. It got weirder for my neighbors around the corner, who had to pass both the new and the old polling places to hike across a busy highway nearly a mile away.

The helpful people at the county registrar's office explained that crazy polling locations aren't the product of demented mappers, but rather a requirement that polling precincts can't have overlapping political districts. Considering how many various political districts exist in the county, the resulting precinct boundaries can sometimes get strange.

Campaign strategists picked up on the potential confusion early on. Roughly half of the various mailers I received, be they from a PAC or from a candidate, helpfully listed my polling place.

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And finally, it's pronounced ann-jell-ee-dess, not ann-jell-ee-deez. No accent on the last syllable.

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Photo:

(color) State Treasurer and Democratic nominee for governor Phil Angelides, center right, speaks during a campaign stop at the Oakland Airport.

Paul Sakuma/Associated Press