Low Voter Turnout for Mayoral Election Embarrasses Los Angeles

Sixteen. that's the percentage of registered voters who turned up for Tuesday's mayoral election in Los Angeles.

The city, which houses four million residents, did not seem to be care enough to cast a vote to elect their mayor. The low turnout forced one city leader to say it was "awful" and "embarrassing,"  The Los Angeles Times reported.

According to ABC7, the most voted candidate did not even get 100,000 votes.

"It's tough; it's on an off year, so a lot of people are just recovering from the November election," Councilman Eric Garcetti told ABC7.

Garcetti led the mayoral race with more than 93, 900 votes. This is not for the first time LA witnessed such a low turnout for the municipal elections. The Times reported that four years back, among the city's 1.6 million registered voters, only 17.9 percent managed to cast their vote.

"In Los Angeles, the culture of the city doesn't really pay that much attention in this hugely scattered community where people live so far from each other," Dr. Raphael Sonenschien of the Pat Brown Institute told ABC7.

He also pointed out the lack of differences among the candidates, Garcetti and Wendy Gruel, for the low voter turnout. Garcetti is a democratic City Hall veteran and pro-union, so is Grruel.

On a sarcastic note LA Times' Steve Lopez wrote, "If I were to jump into the mayor's race as, say, a write-in candidate, the first thing I'd do is hijack a car, plaster it with "Believe in Steve" signs, and lead police on a very slow televised chase."

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