Ten years after California passed Prop. 209, the California Civil Rights Initaitive, it appears that Michigan is following in California’s footsteps (10 years later) and passing the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) tonight. Only 17 of Michigan’s 83 counties are reporting so far, so the numbers could change, but the early returns certainly make it seem that Ward Connerly, Jennifer Gratz and the proponents of MCRI are going to be victorious tonight.… Read More

Due to my compilation of the FlashReport today and the upkeep of relatively normal working hours, I was unable to vote before work as I have since college. I voted on my way home from work today. As of 5:57 PM, at my polling location (which serves two precincts totalling 1852 registrants) in very middle-class Irvine, turnout was 14.95% and 15.62% (15.28% total). Very low. The poll was on the ground floor in a retirement community, easily accessible to those high propensity elderly voters. There was a line of about twenty people behind me and I waited between ten and fifteen minutes to get my four-digit code for the machine.

This was probably all to be expected given that most people were just getting off of work. To be honest, I have no idea how Irvine usually stacks up against the rest of the state, but I’m sure one of our industrious readers could figure that out. I’m anxious to check the County Registrar’s website late tonight or tomorrow to see how many more voted after I took account of things.… Read More

For those of you interested in following election results tonight, we’ll point you to three places on the web:

For those who want it easy, California Republican Party Vice-Chairman Ron Nehring has the ultimate one-stop shop for seeing Golden State returns.

The Secretary of State’s Election Results Webpage

CNN’s Election Central Results Page The DrudgeReport for the latest news and gossip.

Good luck tonight!… Read More

There are a myriad of factors that go into why Republicans are at risk of losing both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. I will leave it to the likes of Charlie Cook, Michael Barone, and Bob Novak to go into all of that.

I will just chime in my ten cents, because it goes to just one facet – lack of enthusiasm from conservatives because, at some point, the Republican charge of the Hill to reduce the size and scope of the federal government was replaced with something evil – growth in government at the hands of Republicans. The President and the leadership of both the Senate and House get to take the blame.

At some point, it no longer became the size of government that was "the problem" – rather, it was who was in charge. For a long time now, many conservatives (myself included) have been dismayed at watching "Rome burn" with Republican hands on the torches.

I don’t have enough finger-energy as I pen this on my Blackberry to write about the repeated disappointments, though to use just a few recent examples – we can look at the inability of a Republican Congress to pass the… Read More

There is always lots of "talk" about turnout on Election Day — this document has real numbers. The LA County Registrar is reporting slightly higher turnout in the first six hours of voting compared to 2002.… Read More

Down to his last piece of communications to supports, Phil Angelides is still deluding himself. In a final e-mail to supporters (h/t CA Observer), Angelides is still trying to tie Arnold Schwarzenegger to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

How exactly do you connect THOSE dots, Mr. "Four more years of Arnold Schwarzenegger means four more years of Bush/Cheney/Schwarzenegger policies in California" Angelides?

Literally the only thing that I can think of is that, to the end, Phil Angelides is only concerned about one thing – raising taxes. If that is the case, then I guess he is right — Bush and Schwarzenegger both share a commitment to opposing tax increases.

But that is about it. Ideologically, stylistically, or geographically, there is very little similarity between the two — except that they are both Republicans.

But then, all Democrats are not alike either. There are… Read More

(Dade County, CA) — The news reports of last week that the SD County Registrar of Voters had not ordered enough mail ballots eliciteda kind of "color me surprised" response from many political watchers.

It’s nice that photocopied versions were sent to those requesting ballots. What you may have missed, however, is that the information on the estimated-to-be-returned 5,000 photocopied mail ballots will have to transferred by hand to official ballots, so they can be run through the opti-scan vote counters.

Say what?! That’s right, the results of every up- and down-ticket race, every local office, and every statewide and local ballot measure for about 5,000 ballots will have to be recorded by hand.

And we thought hanging chads were bad.

As far as day-of-voting, the SDUT is already reporting technical glitches with many electronic voting machines. The line was long, but things seemed fine when I hit my polling placeat 7:15 a.m.… Read More

FR friend Chad Morgan e-mailed, inquiring as to whom we would select as MVP for the Claude Parrish campaign? Well, first of all, there will not be MVP’s named for every race. But if there were, we would have a really tough time coming up with one for "Team Parrish" — especially since I couldn’t tell you the name of one person ON the team.

Seriously, though — I really could not say if there is a consultant or staff person for Parrish, who has run the least visible campaign I have ever seen by a statewide candidate from a major political party.

I will say this for Parrish, though, by way of expressing appreciation — his primary opponent, Assemblyman Keith Richman, declared war on his own political party with his rabid support of allowing Democrats to vote on who Republicans nominate in general elections.

We here at the FlashReport choose to view Parrish’s primary victory as a repudiation of Richman’s anti-Party stand.… Read More