What if they held an election, and no one voted. That was almost the case in California’s June 3 gubernatorial primary election. Only around 20 percent of the state's eligible voters turned out to cast ballots — the lowest on record.

There was one election held where no one voted: Proposition D for the Coachella Valley Water District. Prop. D called for elections of the CVWD’s board by districts, rather than at-large. And no one voted in San Diego County.

According to San Diego County’s Registrar of Voters Michael Vu, there are no registered voters in the San Diego part of the district, but because it's partially in the county, it has to be listed on the ballot.

The district is mostly in Riverside County, in the Palm Springs and Palm Desert areas. It also stretches down to both sides of the Salton Sea in Imperial County. But only a little sliver of land, in the far northeast corner of our county, is in the district.

There probably isn’t any disgruntled or unregistered electorate there either. The area is part of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the flatland area going down from Villager Peak in the Santa Rosa Mountains, northeast to the Torres-Martinez Indian Reservation, south of Indio.

Any cave hermits off the grid wouldn’t receive mail there either, as no zip code has been assigned to the area. The closest post office would be Salton City’s 92274 or 92275.

But desert-water fathers obviously saw some potential, either for development or water wells, when they annexed the area into their district years ago, probably before the state park did a massive expansion to protect large parcels of desert land. Who knows? Someday future voters in San Diego County’s portion of the CVWD could be in the hotbed of SoCal water wars.

Prop. D was approved by a three-to-one margin in both Riverside and Imperial counties, where the district’s customers actually reside.

Statewide, experts point to the reasons for low voter turnout: our two U.S. Senate seats were not up for grabs, nor were there any hotbed propositions to debate. And based on the primary votes for Jerry Brown, voters seem to approve of his leadership, although Republican contender Neel Kashkari will try to change minds in the next five months.

In most San Diego–area state Senate, Assembly, and congressional races, incumbent candidates ran unopposed or with little opposition. Both congressman Scott Peters (52nd District) and challenger Carl DeMaio made it into a run-off. That was expected. Expect big bucks to be dropped into that race for November.

The only real squeaker was the 5th District supervisorial race in North County. Oceanside mayor Jim Wood challenged entrenched five-term incumbent Bill Horn, and came close — much closer than predicted — losing by only 2527 votes…as of June 6, at least; another 42,000 absentee and provisional ballots remained to be counted. But with each daily report from the Registrar of Voters’ office, the gap widened a little more. Wood was heavily outspent by fellow-Republican Horn — who had the first fight of his political career.

A race I watched with interest was 400 miles away in Mono County. Challenger Ingrid Braun, a retired LAPD lieutenant and Mammoth Lake reserve officer, tromped on sheriff Ralph Obenberger by a two-to-one margin.