With a mail-in ballot in hand, Marisala Muniz, an international business student, said she had opted to not exercise her right to vote in the Nov. 8 special election.

Because while the Voter Information Guide, written by the Secretary of State’s Office, overloaded her with information, the unrelenting stream of television commercials were blending together ?” providing her with little knowledge and no clear choice.

“After viewing all the commercials, they just sort of seemed the same,” Muniz said.

Ken Lloyd said he ran into a similar voting hurdle because by juggling four jobs and his mechanical engineering schoolwork, he didn’t have enough time to educate himself on the issues.

“I’d rather let people that know what they are talking about vote,” Lloyd said.

Only four times before, beginning in 1973, had Californians voted in an initiative-only election.

In the end, 42.7 percent of the Sacramento voting population came out to vote totaling 269,372 and echoing the voices of other Californians up and down the state by voting “no” on all eight statewide propositions on the ballot, according to the Secretary of State Web site.

With 42.6 percent of Californians voting ?” less than the 61.2 percent during the 2003 Special Election ?” Proposition 73 was the closest measure to pass with 52.6 percent to 47.4 percent. Proposition 73, which would have required minors to notify a parent before abortion, split California most decisively from north to south with the majority of inland counties voting to pass it and coastal ones rejecting it.

In Sacramento, Proposition 75, the measure to allow union-members to opt out of political contributions, was neck-in-neck until the end and came up only 10,000 votes shy of passing.

Other measures that voters rejected included an effort to restructure the redistricting process, extend teacher tenure from two to five years, eliminate minimum spending for education, create prescription drug discount programs and re-regulate electric companies.

Some students, like social work juniors Lisa Cleveland and Krista Cirillo, didn’t think that the election should have been held at all.

“It was outrageous to have those propositions and money spent when we could have provided for the homeless,” Cleveland said.

Special interest groups spent a record amount trying to get people out to the voting booths. California exceeded $230 million, with pharmaceutical companies shelling out $80 million on two prescription drug measures, according to the Initiative and Referendum Institute. Tax payers will foot the cost of the election, estimated anywhere from $45 to $80 million.

The majority of Californians agree that the initiative process, which was born in 1911 when then Gov. Hiram Johnson called the first special election, is in need of a tune-up.

According to a October Public Policy Institute of California survey, 77 percent of Californians think legislators should review ballot measures before they end up on the ballot, 82 percent favor increasing public disclosure of funding sources and 53 percent want more public funding for campaigns.

Cirillo said she voted against all of the special election measures and was relieved when they didn’t pass. She said Proposition 73 was most important for the state to reject “because we as women all have rights reproductively that shouldn’t be restricted by the government.”

Cirillo said that although she was happy about the election outcome, she was less confident in the student vote.

“I’d like to say that we all did, but I know that most students didn’t vote,” Cirillo said.

During Voter Information Day in the Quad sponsored by Associate Students Inc., groups ?” including Democracy Matters, ASI and College Republicans ?” focused on distributing nonpartisan information to student voters, said Ash Roughani, president of Democracy Matters.

Roughani said it was important for students to know about the measures because “so much money spent on the issues indicates interest for the stakeholders.”

Director of Governmental Affairs, Olgalilia Ramirez, said she spoke with many students at the event who were confused about how and where to vote.

One big hurdle for the student vote was that there was no polling place on campus for students in the dorms to access, Ramirez said. But in order to do that, more campus residents need to register to vote.

Eight in 10 voters followed special election news, while 54 percent of voters declared the election a “bad idea” with more Republicans favoring the election than Democrats, according the public institute survey

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, now at a 33 percent approval rating, admitted a misstep in judgment when deciding to hold the election where he sought to “reform” California.

Despite his confidence in calling the special election in January, the governor acknowledged defeat at a meeting in the Capitol on Nov. 11 saying he should have listened to his wife, Maria Shriver, who advised him to hold off on the election.

“It’s always easy to look back,” said Schwarzenegger, in an Associated Press article. “As a matter of fact, you know, if I would do another Terminator movie, I would have Terminator travel back in time to tell Arnold not to have a special election.”

The Sacramento Chapter President of the California Faculty Association, Cecil Canton, said the election was “a good thing for us because the CSUs train the most teachers in California.” Canton said the association feels victorious because Propositions 74, 75, 76 and 77 did not pass.

“California voters were wise to defeat and repudiate the propositions,” Canton said. Canton said the association is looking ahead and will remain vigilant in fighting for faculty and student rights in future elections.

ASI Vice President of Finance Bonnie Sugiyama said there will be another Voter Information Day to educate young voters for the next election on June 6, 2006, where one proposition, which has to do with increasing literacy and building public libraries, has already been qualified for the ballot.

Jessica Weidling can be reached at [email protected]