It was tempting to entitle this ‘Los
Angeles Votes to Abolish the Death Penalty’. That was indeed what happened in
Tuesday’s vote on Proposition 34, a referendum on amendment to the California
constitution intended to abolish capital punishment.
The people of Los Angeles voted by
1,191,545 or 54.04% in favour to 1,013,477 (45.96%) against.
However, when the votes for the rest of the state were considered, the
amendment was rejected, by 47.2% Yes to 52.8% No.
The result, then, was indeed very close,
and shows that when the death penalty is put to a popular vote as was the case
in California, it cannot be said that Americans massively support the death
penalty. I suppose some will say that California is not typical of the United
States, and no doubt the support for capital punishment would have been higher
if the referendum had been held in Utah or Idaho, just as it would have been
lower were it held in Vermont or Massachusetts.
It seems that the message in Tuesday's election is that the population of the United States is changing, and that ethnic minorities, younger people, and women, all of whom tend to be more progressive, are increasingly effective in exercising their democratic rights. That would suggest that if the referendum is repeated in California in five or ten years, the result will improve. It doesn't need to improve much for it to succeed.
Two new publications on capital punishment:
From the European Union, a study by Prof. Roger Hood on enhancing EU action in Asia with respect to capital
punishment
From the Office of the High Commissioner
for Human Rights, Moving Away from the Death Penalty, which is a report on a
panel discussion held in New York earlier this year.
This is a rather self-serving, poorly thought-through and sloppily drafted post.
ReplyDeleteAlmost 55% is a pretty solid majority, any politician will tell you. Most elections are decided by much narrower margins.
To argue that African-Americans and Latinos are somehow inherently more "progressive," as your penultimate paragraph does, is offensive and crude. Yes, African-Americans and Latinos do tend to vote Democrat in the United States, but there is a multitude of reasons for this, many of which have nothing to do with what you would label as "progressive." In fact, to give just one example, Latinos are known to be more socially conservative and religious than many other ethnic groups in the US, but they still vote Democrat because of, among other things, purely utilitarian concerns, such as immigration reform, i.e. whether they or people they know will be deported.
This response box is not the place to explain the complexities of US politics. I would simply suggest that you use a more circumspect tone when talking about issues that you seem to understand rather superficially. Just because abolition of the death penalty is your crusade does not mean that anyone who happens to agree with you - regardless of their other political views - is automatically "progressive."
ReplyDeleteSan Francisco County voted to abolish by a much wider margin than LA: 70% yes, 30% no. http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/ballot-measures/county/san-francisco/