California Election Reforms: Almost Enough

California's election laws are being challenged at the polls in November 2010 with one major initiative having qualified for petition signatures and another measure being reworded and re-submitted to the Attorney General after the first draft was grossly misconstrued by the Attorney General Jerry Brown's office. The two measures would follow voters recent passing of a measure that will change how boundaries are drawn for State Assembly and Senate Districts, essentially an attempt to eliminate or minimize gerrymandering of districts by the political parties.

California has many problems that are the result of the political structure and laws governing elections and offices. Paramount among them is the gerrymandered districts following the 2000 census which resulted in the vast majority of districts in California being "safe" for one party or the other--most generally safe for any Democrat running for office--as the districts are drawn with significant majorities of one party or the other. The result is no competition at the polls, no compelling reason for any candidate to listen to or acknowledge any moderate ideas or citizens. All a candidate must do is prevail in the party primary and they will be elected to office. To win the primary the candidate needs more money than their opponent, to get that money they must pander to the "base" which tends to be entrenched on the either the left wing of the Democratic Party or the right wing of the Republican Party.

While the initiative to take the drawing of political districts away from the Legislature and putting the process into the hands of an "independent panel" appointed by both parties, it is just a start to the reform needed to cure California of the structural problems in its election and governance processes. So are "Vote Safe Now" and "Citizen Legislature Act" both are worthy initiatives but do not complete the necessary reform to overhaul our state government to bring sensibility, accountability and good governance to Sacramento.

"Vote Safe Now" is an initiative proposal from State Senator George Runner that is very simple in its proposals. The main aspect of the initiative is the requirement that all voters must show identification to cast their ballots. You show your identification to purchase a pack of underwear with a credit card at Sears, but you can exercise the most important right you have just by signing a name with no verification the signature is your own. We must show our identification to board an airplane but not to decide the President of the United States. If you purchase tickets to a Dodger game and go to Will Call to pick them up you must show your identification but to vote on whether same sex couples can marry you just walk into a polling place give a name and a signature and receive a ballot. Voter fraud is so easy to accomplish in California. Every campaign has available lists of registered voters and whether they have voted in the past several elections. Seeing a voting pattern of someone who does not vote it is quite simple for the campaign to send fake voters to the polls posing as the actual voters, no ID required, get the ballot and cast the votes. Easier than buying underwear.

Runner's initiative has two other provisions as well, one protects the ballots of California citizens serving in the military and the other requires absentee ballots be verified by election officials matching signatures and identification. With almost 50% of California ballots now being absentee the opportunity for fraud increases dramatically. Runner's initiative is meant to protect the votes of California citizens by eliminating illegal ballots that would cancel out those cast legally. The initiative was submitted to Attorney General Jerry Brown for title and summary for the ballot, the Brown's summary was blatant in its negative language to attract "no" votes so Runner pulled the initiative and will resubmit at a later date to qualify for the November 2010 ballot. He is also taking the Attorney General to court over the title and summary language issued.

"Citizen Legislature Act" is in the process of collecting signatures to make the November 2010 ballot and is being put forth by Citizens for California Reform, a group organized and run by Gabriella Holt. The initiative is quite simple, it will reduce the amount of time the Legislature meets and create a part-time governing body. Holt's premise is that with less time to meet the Legislature has less time to create and pass so many bills, over 2,000 per year at this point, that cater to special interests and intrude more and more into our lives. As was recently seen during the budget crisis in Sacramento, while the State was operating on IOUs members of the Assembly and Senate were writing and putting up for votes bills that had nothing to do with the budget. Instead of working to solve the fiscal crisis they had created they were spending time and resources on bills that were so insignificant to the situation as to be laughable.

A very big benefit to the CLA would be the cutting back on the staffing and benefits for the members of the Legislature, saving the tax payers millions and millions of dollars. With less time to meet the meetings must be more efficient to accomplish the major requirements of the state. On the Citizens for California Reform website has a great chart comparing California's full time legislature with the legislatures of the other forty-nine states, a very interesting chart I recommend everyone read. Also on the website is the petition for the Act which can be downloaded for signatures.

The Vote Safe Now and Citizens Legislature Act are measures worthy of the ballot, and in my opinion worthy of being enacted, combined with the redistricting power being taken away from the Legislature to reduce the prospects of gerrymandered "safe" districts the measures take big strides in voters regaining control of their government. However the three initiatives do not go far enough, we need one more initiative on the ballot: eliminate term-limits for the Assembly and the Senate.

The explosion in spending by our state government can be tied in a time-line to the introduction of term limits for our Legislators. With only two or three terms in office our politicians must be on the prowl for their next elected office, a new set of voters and a new campaign needing cash. Even though they are in safe districts a new primary for a new office means they no longer have "incumbent" under their name making the primary the difficult election. To win the primary they need to have support from their party base and its donors. To get this support they need to curry favor while in their current position. All the term limit laws have done is recycle our elected officials between Assembly and Senate and moved them further away from the average voter.

Term limits were enacted in large part to eliminate the power that had been accrued and wielded by then Speaker Willie Brown. Brown ran Sacramento his way and had so much power there was no way an election would oust him from office. Brown also controlled a Legislature that for the most part had balanced budgets, surplus budgets and was able to have some sort of vision for the future. But at least he was up for election every couple of years and there was the opportunity to mount campaigns against him. Slim yes, but a chance nonetheless. Further, the members of the Assembly, and the Senate, were also able to focus on their jobs, be somewhat responsible to the voters in their districts and temper the wild swing to the left our state has taken since the first class of term limit officials were elected.

If we are to have a part-time legislature then we need to eliminate the term limits as well. We must have elected officials who are vested in the future of the state and its citizens and not using the office to pad their campaign coffers for the next open seat primary they will be entering. Yes incumbents are elected disproportionally, but maybe many of them deserve to be re-elected. Not all of the politicians in Sacramento are thieves, carpetbaggers or egomaniacs. Many are honest Californians who try to help our citizens and state, but their ability to do so is limited by the term limits.

To entice the removal of term limits, should there be such an initiative I suggest including that no one may run for office with their elected title or the word "incumbent". While knowledgeable voters, and aren't those the ones we really want voting, would know who the incumbent is, other voters would be more apt to look at the person and their ideas.

Require voter identification at the polls, reduce our Legislature to part-time and eliminate term limits. Those are three ideas that would improve our state governance. Two are on their way to the ballot, one is an idea that has not yet generated any support--I hope it does.

.

We Are Californians Not Colonists

In 1765 the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a tax which was imposed only on the American Colonies. The purpose of the tax was to fund the presence of the British military in the American Colonies, where they remained after the conclusion of the French and Indian War. While later repealed, the Stamp Act was a major factor in coalescing the American Colonies into a single political unit for the purpose of fighting the Stamp Act and other taxes later imposed on the American Colonies by the British Parliament. The British saw the Colonies as a source of revenue and also a source of geopolitical advantage in spreading their control across the American Continent using the British Army and Navy now garrisoned in America.

Of course the most important phrase to come out of the Stamp Act was the rallying cry that began in Boston and spread through the Colonies, "No Taxation Without Representation." And Representation began with every colony sending representatives to Philadelphia which later became the Continental Congress; which as we know later became the Constitutional Congress and still later the Congress of the United States of America.

Now we find ourselves in the 21st Century on the far side of the North American Continent from the original American Colonies in the State of California. Like the 18th Century American Colonists citizens of California are finding themselves subject to increasing amounts of taxation to support what they see more and more as a foreign government, when in fact it is the government of their own making. And like 18th Century American Colonists more and more Californians are feeling their taxation is coming without representation, when in fact they cast the actual votes that have elected those passing the taxes. Juxtaposing a more modern phrase with that of the American Revolution, if perception is reality than in many Californian households there is taxation without representation.

There are numerous factors that have led our State Legislature, abetted by the signature of whomever held the Governor's office, to the current state of financial collapse in state finances. The most basic and over-riding cause has been the explosion of spending in Sacramento over the past ten years or more that has doubled the size of the California government expenses. This has been enabled by the combination of term limits and gerrymandered legislative districts which ensured not only a Democratic majority for both the State Assembly and Senate, but ensured further that each District is so gerrymandered that only the most Democrat of Democrats or Republican of Republicans stand any chance of getting elected in the jigsaw shaped district they represent.

Further compounding the issue has been the question of representation. Who exactly have the Legislators in Sacramento been representing? The middle income families who are paying the highest income tax rate in the nation? The lower income families who are paying the highest sales taxes in the nation? The children in the State's public schools who while having the highest paid teachers in the nation score near the bottom in standardized tests? The business owners who have been taking their businesses out of the state, and during the sustained period of economic growth from 2002 through 2007 did not open new businesses in our state? Are any of these groups represented by the budgets passed in each of the past ten fiscal years by our Legislature? The answer is no, and because of that we ask, do we have taxation without representation in the State of California?


We get what we elect and the majority of Californians have blindly followed the path of campaign ads, political flyers and what the letter is inside the parentheses on the ballot--for the Legislature if there is a (D) then it gets elected in almost 60% of the State. And who funds that (D)? Prison guards who created the most expensive prison system in the United States. Teachers' unions who have the largest amount of spending on education in the United States and the highest teacher salaries. Unions representing almost all of the 235,000 state workers from Chula Vista to Redding, the most of any state in the United States. Year after year, election after election these groups have poured millions of dollars into state political campaigns, almost exclusively funding the candidates of one party, and year after year we have seen budget after budget paying these groups back with increased numbers of employees, higher salaries and higher benefits. And now the people of California are waking up to the reality of what has happened to them.

The Governor and other officials up and down the State have been on a tour trying to scare the people into voting for Propositions 1A through 1E on Tuesday. The message is the same, if we do not pass these measures we will face an even greater budget deficit. We will have to lay off some government workers (at latest count about 2%), we will have less money for schools, for prisons, for the fixing of infrastructure.

What they do not say in these Scare Rallies is the even if the voters do pass Props 1A-E, and increase the highest taxes in the nation for even longer, if we will still have deficits in the coming years because of the massive give-aways in the previous ten budgets. None of these Propositions unravel any of the previous spending or contracts, all they do is perpetuate them.

Just as the Colonists formed the Stamp Act Congress which eventually led to the Declaration of Independence, the People of California need to band together and overthrow the ideas of those who govern us. We need to defeat everyone of the Propositions on the ballot and force our Legislature and Governor to address the real problems we face: too much government, too much government spending and too much of our hard earned money that is taken from us in taxes going to pay too many people salaries and benefits that are too high.

It is time for the people of California to quit enabling Sacramento while disabling our schools and communities and future.

Vote NO on Propositions 1A through 1E. Tell every elected official in the State "No more taxes, no more spending."

Political Calculus

There are those who follow politics the way others follow baseball and box scores, there are hits, runs and errors. These days in the City of Long Beach, and the State of California, one needs not a box score but a calendar. For any politician, or anyone thinking of becoming a politician in Long Beach, a calendar is the most important tool in the box; well besides financing from unions.

Term limits are the root cause of our state's political and budgetary problems. While term limits in the city create problems locally, even our city budget issues can be traced directly to the term limits for elected officials in Sacramento. Enacted in 1990 by voters, primarily to get then Speaker Willie Brown out of office, members of the State Assembly are limited to three terms of two years each and members of the State Senate are limited to two terms of four years each.

Further compounding the problems caused by term limits on the state level has been the drawing of legislative districts that create "safe seats." In the last election voters passed one of the few worthwhile propositions we have seen in the past two decades, Proposition 11 took the ability to redraw legislative districts out of the hands of the legislature and gave the power to a panel appointed by a commission of auditors. If the Prop 11 re-districting commission works as voters hope then after the 2010 census our state's legislative districts will be redrawn to more accurately reflect population and geographic boundaries than political party boundaries. However, big however, the changes will not be in effect until the 2012 state elections at the earliest.

Virtually every seat in the California Assembly and California Senate is a "safe seat". Our Bixby Knolls abode sits in the 55th Assembly District and the 27 Senate District, it does not really matter who the elected representatives are because they have been and will be Democrats due to the districts each being over 65% registered Democrat. So while we have term limits for those currently in office, what we have is a revolving door of the same person in a different body always in the Assembly and the Legislature.

Everyone knows when a seat will become available, and everyone knows who will get elected. In all but 3 of the Assembly and Senate seats whoever has a (D) next to their name on the ballot in November will win the election. In the other seats the winner of the Republican primary will win the election. So if you live in the Bixby Knolls area your Assembly representative, Wayne Furutani who was elected in a special election in 2008 will be leaving office in 2016 (finish his special election term then finish his two terms under term limits).

Of greater interest locally is when will Bonnie Lowenthal be termed out of office following her election to the State Assembly in 2008? Following her re-election in 2010 (and with the safe districts how can she not?) Lowenthal is termed out of her seat. And already individuals are lining up to take a run at her seat which overlaps parts of the both the Long Beach 1st City Council District and the Long Beach 7th City Council District. If my map reading and knowledge of home addresses is correct, this confluence of term limits and current district boundaries presents a 2014 showdown between two very bright up and comers in the Democratic Party.

Earlier this month Robert Garcia ran a perfect campaign on the Obama blueprint and won a special election for the Long Beach 1st Council District (filling the seat vacated by Bonnie Lowenthal). Garcia was attacked by the local Democratic Party because he is a "newcomer" to the party, but make no mistake Garcia's politics are very aligned with the Democratic majority in the region. Everything about Garcia makes him star material for the Democrats, born in South America, immigrating with his parents as a young child, received amnesty under President Reagan, left the Republican Party, Hispanic, homosexual, working on a PhD, incredibly bright and articulate and handsome to boot; Garcia is a great political package and he has a political future beyond the Long Beach city council. Garcia will be finishing his first term, presuming he wins his re-election in 2010, which he will by landslide, when Lowenthal is termed out of office in 2014.

Further uptown Long Beach City Council 7th District Representative Tonia Reyes Uranga is being termed out of office in 2010 and her husband Roberto Uranga was a stated and obvious candidate to keep this seat under family control. Uh, not so fast. You see the 1st District is not the only geographic area of the state with young, intelligent and political savvy individuals. A few days after Garcia won the election for the 1st District, James Johnson announced his candidacy for the 7th Council Seat in 2010.

Johnson gets a complete breakdown of his experience in the City of Long Beach on the Long Beach Report, while I am generally not a huge fan of the site's primary contributor his history on Johnson taken in context is pretty thorough. Johnson is very intelligent and also a rising star in the Democratic Party. He apparently is also good at math as if he wins the 7th District Council seat he will be ending his first term when....Bonnie Lowenthal is termed out of office.

Now there is a chance that the 54th Assembly District Boundaries could be redrawn before the 2014 election, but with the natural border of the 710 Freeway on the western edge of part of the district any redrawing will probably include the home bases of both Garcia and Johnson. Looking beyond the Assmebly both are in the same California State Senate District as well as the same Congressional District.

Because of term limits both these intelligent young men know what is avaiable politically in 2014, know their best chance of winning the prize of the Assembly is to have experience on the City Council to help boost their fund raising and friend making, and know that even with re-districting their district will not change much demographically--it will still be solidly Democrat. Further, both being bright they know that incumbents within the party are extremely difficult to beat so they must win in 2014 to continue their political futures.

So sports fans, grab some popcorn and a lawn chair. The race for the 7th District Council Seat in Long Beach is a race for much more than just that seat. Due to political calculus and term limits it is also a race to set up opponents in 2014 between two of our city's brightest young men with equally bright political futures...potentially.