Photo by Ray Buse via ShutterstockIn counties like Los Angeles, we see almost no increase in Latino share of votes cast from 2014-2022, and even drops in electoral impact of older Latinos.
Illustration of a get-out-the-vote message with the American flag. (Photo: Felipe Sanchez, via Shutterstock)California voters — those who hadn’t already voted by mail, anyway — headed to the polls Tuesday on a rainy, blustery election day marked by close attention to key Congressional races and high-stakes ballot propositions, while California’s statewide contenders almost got lost in the shuffle.
2210901167Heading into Election Day we have seen shifts nationally that appear to advantage Republicans, putting the GOP on track to regain control of Congress and pushing a number of competitive races in California into “toss-up” territory. But with Republicans knocking on the door of potential gains, even despite a redistricting that appeared to reinforce Democratic districts and weaken Republican-held seats, could their own messaging on vote by mail get in the way?
CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Political data-cruncher, and frequent Capitol Weekly Podcast guest, Paul Mitchell joins us to read the political tea leaves, 30 days out from the 2022 election.
CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: With some 22 million ballots at large, should we be worried about voter fraud? When it comes to ballots and the California election process, Kim Alexander of the California Voter Foundation is the person to talk to. She joined us to talk about the upcoming Primary and California’s Vote-by-Mail process.
Dermonstrators in front of the U.S. Post Office in Torrance protesting federal funding cuts. (Photo: Vince360, via Shutterstock)Vote-by-mail ballots have been sent to all registered voters in Amador County, with Solano reporting they will be mailing ballots today, while Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego counties — and maybe others – will be mailing next week. These counties are getting ahead of the Oct. 5 deadline for California counties to mail ballots. In other states, meanwhile, voting has been taking place for weeks.
A photo illustration of whisper campaigns and conspiracies. (Image: Valery Sidelnykov, via Shutterstock)In our culture, conspiracy theories are running rampant, and elections seem to be particularly prone to the craziest among them. Republicans, led by the president, have claimed that vote-by-mail is unsafe, non-citizens are registered to vote and casting ballots. Ballot “harvesting” is causing rampant voter fraud, President Trump says, and the system is being rigged against him. Even Attorney General Bill Barr claimed, incorrectly, that vote-by-mail eliminates the secret nature of voting in the US.
Kim Alexander at Capitol Weekly's Post-Mortem of the 2018 Election. Photo by Scott Duncan, Capitol WeeklyFollowing the harrowing scenes of voters braving long lines and exposure to the coronavirus during Wisconsin’s primary election last week, there is a renewed discussion of the importance of vote-by-mail options.
A California voter casts a ballot by mail. (Photo: vepar5, via Shutterstock)When Californians went to the polls in March, the big news was the consolidation of the Democratic primary contest. Few would have expected that we were also effectively seeing the end of the primary election season — with subsequent elections throughout the spring either cancelled or run under the cloud of a viral pandemic.
A Sacramento political rally for presidential contender Pete Buttigieg, who has since dropped from the race. (Photo: Chris Allan, via Shutterstock)For the past year, we’ve been conducting tracking polling of the dozens of candidates for the Democratic nomination. A consistent thread in those surveys was change: The front runners shifted from former Vice President Joe Biden to Massachusetts Sen.Elizabeth Warren to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Yet, everything has changed in the last 36 hours, and we are now set for one of the most tumultuous California election nights in recent history.