How the Economy May Affect Voter Decision Making

The nation’s current financial crisis will give voters something more to consider when they make decisions on local economic spending issues this Election Day.

For example, Californians will be voting on whether to approve a $9.95 billion bond to begin construction of a high-speed train between Los Angeles and San Francisco. “My guess is that a majority of the voters instinctively would be favorable of it,” Tracey Westen, CEO of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies, told the Los Angeles Daily News. “They may have second thoughts when they look at the price tag.”

The bond measure has lost its spot on the ballot before, once in 2004 because of economic concerns, and again in 2006 because funding was needed for road improvements.

This and other measures around the country may seem too expensive because they “reflect assumptions that no longer apply after recent turmoil in the stock and credit markets,” according to Daniel Wagner of the Associated Press. “Some of these could be disastrous if they happen … It could throw government into a tizzy, because there’s not a plan for what to do next,” Donald Boyd, a senior fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government explained.

South Dakota residents, meanwhile, are addressing an issue that some officials have said contributed to the current situation on Wall Street. Voters must decide whether to permit the state to prosecute firms that engage in naked short selling of stock. The measure qualified for the state’s ballot almost a year ago, but some called the idea “baffling and, probably, unnecessary.”

Dionne Searcey and Easha Anand of The Wall Street Journal wrote that supporters of the idea “are feeling a touch clairvoyant.”