VOTE BY MAIL: NOT MUCH CHANGE FOR CALIFORNIA

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  FRIDAY, JULY 3, 2020, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“VOTE BY MAIL: NOT MUCH CHANGE FOR CALIFORNIA”

Voting by mail has been common in California almost 40 years, since the state did away with the requirement for an excuse if folks wanted to cast an absentee ballot.

Now, using emergency powers he took during the coronavirus emergency, Gov. Gavin Newsom has made it all but universal in the fall election. In some other states, this seems radical, but it won’t change much in California.

At first, California’s no-excuse mail voting system clearly benefited Republicans, who first employed mass mail balloting and upset then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley in the 1982 run for governor, where Bradley led every pre-election poll.

But Democrats quickly caught on, and by the 1990s began holding ballot-marking parties welcoming anyone who put in a standing order to vote by mail.

          Later came techniques like “ballot harvesting,” where operatives of both major parties go door to door collecting mail ballots to be dropped off at polling places, now often called vote centers. President Trump and wife Melania voted this way in Florida’s spring primary election, handing their mail ballots to an aide who dropped them off in West Palm Beach.

          Until now, this has all been a matter of choice. In the state’s last general election, in 2018, more than 60 percent of ballots were mailed in or dropped off. Lines at polling places have grown shorter with each election, causing some counties to send mail ballots to all voters.

          Now it appears the coronavirus pandemic may all but end in-person voting. For even with social distance in lines where voters stand six feet apart, fear might keep many away from the polls until a COVID-19 vaccine is in near ubiquitous use.

          The fear is valid: When partisan-oriented, Republican-dominated courts refused to allow postponement of Wisconsin’s April primary election, the virus infected dozens of voters and poll workers.

          California Secretary of State Alex Padilla has now become a national leader in a drive to allow mail voting everywhere. “What we saw in Wisconsin should serve as a warning, not a preview,” he said the other day. “Without proper planning, voters nationwide could be left to make the same stark choice that voters in Wisconsin were forced to make: exercising their right to vote versus protecting their health…”

          Ironically, considering how he cast his latest vote, Trump leads the other side in this key election-year dispute. On March 30, he warned on his favorite interview outlet, “Fox and Friends,” about “levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” It was the first time any GOP leader openly admitted the party’s very survival hinges on its efforts at vote suppression in states now dominated by Republicans. Trump then added that “I think mail-in voting is horrible. It’s corrupt.”

          Except it isn’t. Despite many investigations over three decades, no one has yet found evidence of significant fraud in mail voting. Oregon, for one example, has staged all-mail elections since 1998, with no hint of corruption.

           Common anti-fraud tactics include signature matching, multilayer security envelopes, and bar codes for tracking.

          Then there’s Trump’s theory that voting by mail skews elections to the Democrats. If this were true, it would be because of the well-established political reality that the heavier the turnout in any election, the more likely Democrats will win. That’s one reason Republicans often do better in lightly-attended special elections than in massive general votes.

          But Stanford University research indicates there is no partisan advantage at all in mail elections.

          Researchers there studied voting in California, Utah and Washington state because their use of mail balloting varied by county, allowing for comparison of areas that had ubiquitous mail ballots and others that did not.

          The findings showed the change in the share of voters registering as Democrats ranged from negative 0.1 percent to plus 0.3 percent, negligible differences that can also be explained by population shifts.

          “We don’t have any reason to think there are going to be big differences in partisan outcomes,” the researchers concluded.

          So there should be no real obstacle or disadvantage to all-mail elections here or elsewhere – except for the long-held Republican fears of any extremely large-scale voting.

                  

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     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

NEVER MIND CALEXIT; OTHER STATES MAY WANT TO GET RID OF CALIFORNIA

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 3, 2018 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “NEVER MIND CALEXIT; OTHER STATES MAY WANT TO GET RID OF CALIFORNIA”

       Petition carriers – mostly volunteers -- have been on the streets and in the parking lots of California for a few weeks now, eager to qualify an initiative for the next available ballot asking this state’s voters to set a date for a formal referendum on whether to leave the Union.

        The last time anyone tried something like this, the central issue was slavery and the brutal Civil War ensued, still the most deadly of all America’s conflicts.

        But that might not happen this time, if California voters decide in a couple of years to divorce the rest of America.

       For there are signs much of the rest of America might cheerfully let California go, just to get rid of us.

       Perhaps the most significant of those indications takes the form of a lawsuit that essentially says California has gotten too big for its britches.

        This isn’t about California’s lifestyle choices or its “resistance” to President Trump’s administration and its edicts, even though he became President over the strong opposition of most California voters.

       Rather, it’s about a spate of measures passed in California that impact commerce in and among other states.

     The lawsuit bears the name of a group of egg and poultry growers in the Canadian province of Quebec, with fully one-fifth of America’s states either listed as co-plaintiffs or friends of the court supporting the anti-California action.

         “California is flouting the limits federal law puts on California’s regulatory reach…California lacks power to regulate agriculture or commerce beyond its borders, but…California is enacting law after law governing other states’ economies,” says the action, filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

          Essentially, the Quebecois and 11 states supporting them object to laws like the 2008 Proposition 2, which mandates that eggs and poultry sold in California must come from chickens that can turn freely in their cages.

       The other states also don’t like California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, aiming to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. “This standard makes businesses that sell fuels in California reduce the carbon intensity of their fuels by 10 percent…,” gripes a friend of the court brief submitted by the state of Missouri. Essentially, the bill severely cut use of out-of-state ethanol in gasoline, seriously impacting Iowa and other corn-producing states.

        Objecting states also worry that California may start a contagion affecting their businesses negatively. “Worse still,” their brief adds, “other states like Massachusetts and Colorado have begun to follow California’s lead and pass extraterritorial laws themselves.”

         In other words, we dastardly Californians are not only impeding interstate commerce, we’re setting a “bad” example.

       Nowhere is this more clear than in the Northeast Consortium of states, a region extending from Maine south to Maryland which automatically adopts California’s smog standards shortly after they take effect here. This has been a major hindrance for Trump and the ironically named Environmental Protection Administration he now controls as they try to eliminate environmental protections begun and inspired by California.

       Moan the objecting states, “California has become so emboldened by failure to enforce (federal laws against interstate trade barriers) that it has taken the unprecedented step of sending agricultural inspectors into other states to register and inspect.”

     The new lawsuit is not totally unprecedented: Other states have filed actions against specific California regulations before. But the new case is different.

       “This is an escalation,” says Marcus Ruiz Evans, president of the Yes California! organization now circulating the pro-secession initiative petitions. “This makes very bold statements about how California is a threat to America itself.”

       The lawsuit, then, seems to reinforce Evans’ earlier prediction that no civil war, no war of any type, would follow if California declared its independence.

       But a lawsuit against Californians who demanded (by a 63 percent majority in 2008) that their eggs be at least something approaching free range is very different from the rest of the country willingly releasing the state that provides more tax dollars and military personnel than any other.

      Much of the rest of America may resent California for its salubrious climate, its mix of lifestyles and its liberal politics, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will cheerily wave goodbye and good luck if California suddenly decides to secede.

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     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

VERGARA TIME BOMB STILL HANGS OVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

 FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 3, 2015, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “VERGARA TIME BOMB STILL HANGS OVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS”

          Like a time bomb, the court decision in Vergara v. California has been mostly dormant since the last election season ended in November 2014. But its explosive potential remains as large as ever.

          Vergara, to refresh memories, is the ruling by a previously obscure Los Angeles County Superior Court judge that would essentially throw out California’s teacher tenure system and end rules making it harder and more expensive to fire teachers than other public employees.

          This became one of many areas of disagreement in last fall’s politics, with Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown opposing and appealing the decision by Judge Rolf M. Treu and Republican rival Neel Kashkari strongly endorsing it.

          It was even more of an issue in the much tighter race for state schools superintendent, with incumbent and eventual winner Tom Torlakson insisting that while “No teacher is perfect, only a very few are not worthy of the job. School districts always have had the power to dismiss those who do not measure up.”

          Challenger Marshall Tuck, former chief of a large charter schools company, responded that “Kids should not have to sue to get a quality education.” He decried the fact that teachers, who can get tenure after two years on the job, often are assured they’ll win that status within only 16 months of starting work, in his view not nearly long enough for them to prove they’re worthy of a lifetime sinecure.

          But after the bombast of the campaign season, the controversy over Vergara – which can’t be acted on until and unless it survives all legal appeals – disappeared for about six months until state legislators took notice of its issues again.

          In late spring, Republican lawmakers submitted several bills to short-circuit the court process by simply adopting most of Vergara’s basics as law. One proposal declared seniority could no longer be the sole factor determining who is laid off when times get tough.

          Sponsoring Assemblywoman Catherine Baker of Dublin said using experience alone to decide who stays “constrains school districts from making decisions that are in the best interest of students and fair to teachers.”

          Another measure from Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside, now a Republican candidate for U.S. senator, would have added a year to the time a teacher needs to work before getting tenure. It would also have allowed districts to revoke tenure from teachers who repeatedly get negative performance reviews.

          A third bill aimed to base teacher performance ratings in part on how students perform on standardized tests.

          Democratic critics, many of whose campaigns are union-funded, claimed these changes would “crumble the central pillar of teacher job security.” They also charged the changes would deprive teachers of due process.

          Since Democrats enjoy strong majorities in both legislative houses, these bills had little chance of passage and were deep-sixed quickly, not likely to be seen again until after the next statewide election, at the earliest.

          This means the Vergara case, filed by nine students whose lawyers contended state firing and tenure rules deprive them of the Constitutional right to a solid education, will see its issues resolved by judges, not politicians.

          Appeals by Brown and Torlakson are still active, and the state’s two largest teacher unions joined them in May, claiming Vergara “was never about students.” Said California Teachers Assn. President Dean Vogel, “During two months of trial, (the students’) attorneys failed to produce a single pupil who had ever been harmed by these (existing) laws, while teachers, principals, school board members, superintendents and nationally recognized policy experts offered dozens of examples of how these laws have helped…millions of California students.”

          One essential claim of Vergara opponents is that easing tenure rules could render teachers subject to political threats. Said 15-year kindergarten teacher Erin Rosselli, current teacher of the year from Orange County, “These laws ensure I won’t be fired or laid off for arbitrary reasons or in retribution for standing up for kids…”

          Lines are hard and resolute on both sides of the tenure/firing issue. And because most current state appellate judges were appointed by Democratic governors, it’s very likely the Vergara time bomb will be defused long before its intended explosive effect is ever felt.

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

CITY PENSION VOTES SHOULD BOOST JERRY BROWN’S PLAN

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 3, 2012, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“CITY PENSION VOTES SHOULD BOOST JERRY BROWN’S PLAN”

          If there was one message that went out strongly from the early June votes on local pension changes in San Jose and San Diego, it was this: Private sector workers are tired of seeing six-figure pensions go to some public employees while their own pensions are steadily cut or become increasingly uncertain.

 

          Some might call this envy, and in a way it is. But the more realistic way to look at those votes is that they are a logical reaction to the reversal of some traditional assumptions.

          They should also be a boost for Gov. Jerry Brown’s pension proposals for state employees, even if some conservatives have chosen to interpret the results differently.

          The presumption for many decades was that civil servants and other workers on the public payroll enjoy more job security than most persons who work for private companies. There was little risk of them ever getting fired or laid off because unlike private businesses, governments could never go broke so long as they had the power to tax. The tradeoff for that was lower salaries for public employees than those in private companies, and lower pensions, too.

          Much of this equation has gone by the boards. State and local governments have little power to tax anymore, because the 1978 Proposition 13 demands a two-thirds popular vote to approve almost all new local levies and a two-thirds legislative vote for new state taxes. Government workers have been laid off in droves over the last few years. Hundreds of thousands in California alone.

          Meanwhile, the rich pensions and higher pay private industry offered through much of the 20^th Century began eroding significantly even before the 21^st Century began. Most definitive pension plans have disappeared for new private hires. Workers who used to get them now usually receive 401(k) plans that make retirement benefits subject to the vagaries of the stock market. But private sector jobs overall remain less secure than government work and public employees now often draw better pay and benefits.

          This was the background to the public employee pension votes held in usually conservative San Diego and generally liberal San Jose.

          In San Jose, where pensions made up more than 20 percent of the latest budget, almost 70 percent of voters approved a plan imposing on public workers the choice between boosting their own contributions to pensions up to 13 percent of their pay, a jump from the current range of 5 percent to 11 percent, or switching to a lower-cost plan with reduced eventual benefits. To bowdlerize the old oil filter ad, public workers have been told they can pay more now or get less later.

          In San Diego, voters eliminated definitive pensions for all new city workers except police, substituting a 401(k)-style program. San Diego also froze “pensionable” pay levels for five years.

          Voters, said Democratic San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, “understand the connection between skyrocketing pensions and the cuts in services we’ve suffered.”

          All this was taken by some as a shot across Brown’s bow, since public employee bargaining rights increased considerably when he was governor in the 1970s.

          That’s a skewed view. For Brown, as often, was way out in front on this issue. As early as last January, he issued a 12-point program of proposed pension changes that would put new state employees into partial 401(k)-style plans involving some market risk, while also asking state workers to increase contributions to their pensions. Republican state legislators have accepted that plan, but not Brown's fellow Democrats.

          After the June vote, though, there were no I-told-you-so’s from Brown, much of whose electoral support in 2010 came from public employee unions. “The pension vote in San Jose, which is a more liberal city than the state as a whole, is a very powerful signal that pension reform is an imperative,” he said in a video interview. “…people should have confidence that pensions and their reform are on the agenda, right at the top.”

          We will shortly know about that. The Legislature has only until the end of the month to place a measure on the November ballot to make at least some of the changes Brown’s seeks.

          But Democratic legislators who control both the state Assembly and Senate so far evince none of the urgency Brown conveys, nor have they acknowledged that the San Jose and San Diego votes, not to mention the failure of the recall vote against Wisconsin’s governor, have wider implications.

          That’s an ostrich approach. Yes, some lawmakers say they plan to get pension reform done by the end of the current legislative session. That’s not soon enough. The magnitude of the margins in the two big cities demonstrated that voters feel great urgency about restoring equity between public and private sector workers. And legislators had better listen, or those in competitive contests this fall could feel heavy consequences.

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     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

LOOK FOR MORE SURPRISES IN THE RUN FOR GOVERNOR

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 3, 2009, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
"LOOK FOR MORE SURPRISES IN THE RUN FOR GOVERNOR"

There have already been plenty of surprises in the ongoing contest to become the next governor of California, and chances are there will be plenty more.

For 2010 marks the first campaign since 1998 with no incumbent involved, and that situation always invites the unexpected. No one guessed in 1998, for instance, that the underfunded Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who spent less than $7 million in the primary, would triple the vote of Northwest Airlines mogul Al Checchi, who spent $39 million?

Or that state Attorney General Dan Lungren, who drew 34 percent of the vote in winning the Republican primary, would end up with just 4 percent more in the November runoff, losing to Davis by a whopping 57-38 percent margin?

One of this year's surprises has been the emergence of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom as a serious candidate. Previously best known around the state for legalizing gay marriage early in his first term at City Hall, Newsom later became notorious for an affair with his best friend's wife, which ended barely a year before he married a movie starlet.

Another surprise was the lackluster showing of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in his city's early March election, when he could net just 55 percent of the vote in a reelection bid against several minor league candidates who lacked money, name recognition and any background in government. The 45 percent tally for those opponents demonstrated that Villaraigosa's base in his own city might not be strong enough for him to mount a solid campaign for governor.

Villaraigosa surprised again when local media revealed his affair with a TV news reporter, his second such involvement in two years. The first broke up his 20-year marriage.

Then there was stunningly straight talk from current Attorney General Jerry Brown, the ex-governor who plainly wants another shot at the job. "There's a lot of potential for failure," Brown allowed, saying there are no easy answers to California's fiscal problems, "just pain."

A far cry from the usual happy talk heard on the campaign trail.

And there was the dropout of Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, now running hard for a soon-to-be vacated seat in Congress that looks like a far easier goal for him to reach than the governor's office.

Getting less attention is Jack O'Connell, the state school superintendent also in the running. He could still pull some surprises, but not likely. None of these leading Democrats has much money of his own to toss into the campaign, a major shift from 2006, when two wealthy Democrats contested the nomination and one eventually lost to Schwarzenegger.

But there are two zillionaires on the Republican side in Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former eBay head Meg Whitman.

Either could make the sums spent by Checchi and Jane Harman ($14.4 million) in the 1998 Democratic race won by Davis seem paltry.

But the Checchi example, plus those of past self-financed candidates like Michael Huffington (Senate, 1992), Norton Simon (Senate, 1970), Steve Westly (governor, 2006) and William Matson Roth (Senate, 1974), haunts them both.

Poizner hopes that holding state office for four years prior to the next vote gives him a leg up on his rivals. But that didn't help Westly, who was state controller before his failed run.

If there's a Davis-like shock on tap for the big-bucks Republicans in this race, it might come from Tom Campbell, the former Silicon Valley congressman, Stanford law professor, UC Berkeley business school dean and state budget director.

Like Davis, Campbell has run for statewide office before, so his name is familiar to many voters. Like Davis, he's counting on voters to favor experience when they contemplate the problems facing the next governor.

Campbell lacks substantial funds, but could surprise as the campaign moves along, especially if the extreme conservatives who dominate most Republican primaries split between his two big-money rivals. Or if one or both make serious mistakes. Whitman already made one faux pas, coming out against the state's initiative system, a rookie political error.

Ordinarily, a Democrat might be favored as the ultimate winner from this large field. But, says Bob Mulholland, chief campaign adviser for the state Democratic Party, "When you've got two billionaires, you can expect a competitive race."

Then there's the wild card, Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She now says she's unlikely to enter the lists, but doesn’t fully rule herself out. If she does run, look for substantial reshuffling as other Democrats settle for lesser offices. A Feinstein candidacy would surprise most Democrats, especially after she pulled back from the 1998 race partly because of "the difficulty of campaigning" and the "deteriorated nature of California campaigns." They certainly have not gotten easier or cleaner in the intervening 11 years.

But in this year of political surprises, Feinstein might pull the biggest one yet. If she does, she'll be the overwhelming favorite from the moment she gets in, billionaire opponent or not.

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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net