With California voters turning increasingly to the mail box to cast their ballots, five counties have set up an expanded vote-by-mail system for this year’s elections. Sacramento, Madera, Napa, Nevada and San Mateo are swapping out more than 500 neighborhood polling places and replacing them with nearly 80 high-tech “vote centers.”
Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee, addresses colleagues on the Senate floor.(Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)To environmentalists in California, across the nation and around the world, she is a trailblazing leader. To the California Chamber of Commerce and many Republicans, she is the unrealistic author of job-killing, la-de-da legislation. To some, she is a futurist who predicts gas stations will disappear in 10 years. She is Fran Pavley, a pleasant, gray-haired Democratic state senator from Southern California who does not come across as a firebrand but can grow passionate about protecting the environment.