The Orange County Registrar of Voter‘s office used to be a statewide embarrassment. Every Election Night, eager politicos waited for the excruciatingly slow county election bureaucracy to tabulate the results. It wasn‘t unusual to wait until lat at night just to get the first round of absentee voters. It was like the tabulating was being done in "bullet time" — which is cool in The Matrix but not cool when waiting on the outcome of elections.

All that began changing rapidly with the accession of Neal Kelley as first Acting OC Registrar, and now as the permanent OC Registrar of Voters. Kelley is busily bringing his office into the 21st Century.

You can watch ballot boxes bring brought into the OC Registrar‘s on the… Read More

In addition to tomorrow’s election day occuring on 6-6-6, [yes the devil IS in the details] we can remember amongst the giant struggles for primaryvictory for statewide offices,senate seats and new assemblymembers in either party, that it is also the 62nd anniversary of the Allied invasion to re-takeEurope from Hitler. More people, materiel; and effort had never been, at one time, expendedto fight for liberty. It was said the British Isles may sink from all the fighting men and equipment poised near the White Cliffs. Andhere was the US leading the way to help others once again taste freedom. Leadership, by our country,under General Eisenhower, made this vast undertaking a huge success and turned the tide of the war and ofhistory..

As we go to the polls tomorrow to decide many issues, from local government to Governor to Prop 82’s ‘soaking the rich’ again with yet another proposal that will drive the job providers out of state, take a minute to think of who we’re electing and will they honor in their elected office the sacrifice made for liberty 62 years earlier that day.… Read More

I was wondering why Datamar was so quiet over the weekend….ok, guys, now give us something on the 50th….

Democrats: Angelides Leads Westly, 42.9% to 41.3% Public Library Construction (Proposition 81) Losing 57% to 36.5% Voluntary Preschool Initiative (Proposition 82) Losing 63.1% to 32.9% San Diego – A poll released today by Datamar Inc., shows Phil Angelides leading by a small margin, 42.9%, to Steve Westly’s 41.3% in the Democratic primary race to be the party nominee, with 15.8% of voters still undecided. Overall findings are based on a telephone survey of 1,592 California high-propensity registered voters—voters who voted in the 2000 gubernatorial primary and general elections, the 2003 gubernatorial recall election and the 2004 Presidential primary and general elections. Sample size is 1,592 respondents and the margin of error is +/- 2.46. The sampling error for subgroups is larger. The Democratic primary race question was available to Democratic voters only. Sample size is 690 respondents and the margin of error is +/- 3.94.

See the … Read More

A break from weekend political activities for a few bites from the week…

Survey USA Poll in 50th CD… Jim Sills noted it after Jon’s commentary yesterday…if you missed it, the survey was conducted 5/30-6/1 for local KGTV…448 likely voters…prior to the Busby "You don’t need no steenkin’ papers to vote" comment. The results show Bilbray up 47% to Busby’s 45%, with virtually zilch undecided. Sills astutely notes, however, that "the cross-tabs show Bilbray far ahead among voters over age 65, with Busby’s best segment being those under age 35. I think we all know the respective turnout history of those two age groups!" Survey USA’s own analysis, "Turnout Will Decide CA 50 Special Election," you can see here, along with the cross-tabs.

The North County Times… Read More

The State Industrial Welfare Commission has the authority, apparently, to hike the state’s wage mandates on private employers, without any action of the State Legislature. That seems like a poor set-up. Mandates on employers like this should require a vote of the people’s representatives EVERY time. If jobs are going to be cut due to regulation on businesses, someone in elected office should be responsible, not some extremely obscure commission. Anyways, if you haven’t been following the debate over the minimum wage between the Governor and legislative Democrats, here is a short breakdown:

The Democrats want to raise the minimum wage. The Republican Governor wants to raise the mandated wage. Republican legislators, overwhelmingly, do NOT want to increase the mandated wage. The Republican Governor wants a $1 an hour hike. The Democrats also want $1 (they would probably go for $10 if they could), but also want to create an ‘auto-pilot’ indexing to inflation of the mandated wage). The Governor had one of the few GOP supporters … Read More

Libraries and pre-school. Wow, is that the best we can come up with? This election’s statewide ballot measures will go down in election history as 1) the most boring and 2) the most worthless.

The independent library system is one of the least important government institution of this century. I don’t discount their value in certain communities. But in your typical middle class community where there is a library at each school site, a (or a network of) city or county library(s) and college or university library(s), I think that makes a few too many librarians.

I have nothing against them. In fact, I quite enjoyed going to the library as a kid. Getting my own library card at 6 was a special event. But times have changed and I no longer have to go to the library on a hot summer day because it is the only place in town with an air conditioner (I am being dramatic–we had air conditioning as a kid).

I also know that large amounts of research that could once be the done exclusively at ‘the library’ can now be done on ‘the Internet’. I… Read More

Sheriff We’ve got a barn burner of a race for Fresno County Sheriff, with four "insider" candidates and one "outsider" candidate. Most of them have heavy hitters behind them. Here is how the race breaks down:

Colleen Mestas – insider candidate, Republican, supported by Congressman Radanovich and liberal County Supervisor Henry Perea. She has union money and some support in the Chamber of Commerce Community as well. The NRA Endorsement plays nicely in this County. Energetic candidate, has a good chance to make the runoff as she has closed hard in the final few weeks.

Margaret Mims – Insider candidate, Democrat with some GOP support. Fatal mistake of listing the Democratic Women’s Political Caucus and Progressive PAC in her mail. I don’t think she can make the runoff and if she does she’ll get creamed in November. She also has support from Democrat Mayors in the outlying areas of the County. She might hurt Mestas for all those voting for a women for this post by splitting this vote up.

Jose "Joe" Flores – Clovis City… Read More

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that UCLA was enrolling twenty fewer African-American students in this fall’s freshman class than it did last year. This represents 2.9% of all incoming students, which the Times points out is well below the 9.6 percent African-American presence in the 1985 freshman class. The article includes the obligatory quote from Proposition 209 author Ward Connerly (who points out that preparing African-American students for college is a preferable alternative to "tinkering with the admissions criteria to make it easier to get in.") But otherwise, the story largely steers clear of the affirmative action debate in order to instead focus on how to address the situation.

Left unsaid is that admissions to a campus as competitive as UCLA is a zero-sum game, and that increasing the number of qualified African-American students means that fewer students from other racial and ethnic groups will be admitted. As an opponent of race-based affirmative action, I don’t see that as a problem. A larger number of academically successful African-American high school seniors is a good thing all around. But the fact… Read More