Posts Tagged: archives

CA120: California’s Voters Choice Act and the 2020 elections

Voters in their booths casting ballots in a Los Angeles election. (Photo: Joseph Sohm, via Shutterstock)

by PAUL MITCHELL posted 11.04.2019

One constant in California elections is change. In the past 20 years, we’ve seen changes to when the primary is held, then changed back, then back again. We’ve seen an open primary, then another version of the open primary. We shook up the Legislature with term limits, then imposed different term limits. We have moved increasingly to vote by mail, shifting the timeline of our elections.

Although U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin serves as poster ogre for anti-Communist crusades of the early 1950s, Congress’ most notorious “Red Scare” investigations took place under the purview of the House Un-American Activities Committee. HUAC, as it was known, pre-dated McCarthy by 14 years and continued for more than a decade after his demise.