Data on “democracy deserts” provided by C.C. Marin of the Independent California Institute show that more than 22.1% of voting-age adults in Los Angeles can’t vote. A quarter of voters in cities as different as Cupertino, Anaheim, and my mom’s hometown of Hawthorne are disenfranchised.

Connecting California is a column by Joe Mathews, syndicated in newspapers across the state. Read the original version of the article on Zócalo Public Square.

See our Democracy Deserts dataset (referenced in the article) here.