The battle over six state budget propositions on today's ballot sputtered to a close Monday with a burst of low-profile campaigning that belied the gravity of California's fiscal crisis.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose legacy will be shaped in part by the election's results, made a final pitch to voters before leaving the state ahead of the results. The governor is scheduled to join President Obama at the White House today for an announcement on auto emission rules. His absence in the face of widely forecast defeat drew mockery from his foes.
Tonight's results will gauge what polls suggest is voter fury over the failure of the Republican governor and the Democratic-controlled Legislature to balance the state's books.
As Californians struggle with joblessness, home foreclosures and sharp losses in the stock market, the state has raised taxes, cut spending and borrowed to fix a $42-billion shortfall -- and still remains more than $15 billion shy of a balanced budget.
If voters reject Propositions 1C, 1D and 1E -- the three chief money-raisers on Tuesday's special election ballot -- the shortfall will grow to $21 billion.
Despite the high stakes, voter turnout is expected to be sparse for an election that also includes a fiercely contested runoff for Los Angeles city attorney and races to fill vacancies in the 32nd Congressional and 26th state Senate districts.
As of Monday afternoon, nearly 2.4 million of California's 17.2 million registered voters had cast ballots by mail, election officials said. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
In the city of Industry on Monday, Schwarzenegger told a crowd that if the budget measures fail, the state will cut at least $6 billion in spending on schools, healthcare and prisons, among other things.
"We hope the initiatives pass, and if they don't, we will do what is the wishes of the people," he said.
In San Jose, he conceded the outlook for passage was bleak, but said he hoped that "something will break" today. "You've always got to be an optimist when you're in this business," said Schwarzenegger, who cast an emergency absentee ballot that an aide picked up at an election office Monday.
Lacking a public face as prominent as the governor's, opponents relied mainly on talk radio and the Internet to wind down their low-cost drive to kill the measures.
