Republican political operatives aren’t accustomed to chasing down last-minute voters this close to Election Day. But, in yet another reflection of what a strange year 2020 has been, they are. And they aren’t happy about it. According to figures collected by the electoral information firm, Political Data Inc., a surprising...
Challenging the Model Minority Myth: Asian-American Students Divided Over Affirmative Action
The moment he stepped into Clovis High School, Chali Lee — now a first-year at Clovis Community College — left his Hmong identity outside its doors. Other students, he said, saw him as just another Asian male, another model minority — someone taking up all the seats at colleges. Lee...
Cash Blitz: Who’s Spending the Most to Influence Your Vote for California’s Legislature?
By Ben Christopher and Laurel Rosenhall State law caps the amount donors can give to a legislator’s campaign — but these special interests can spend as much as they like mounting their own campaigns to praise or trash candidates. And the money interest groups are pouring into these “independent expenditure committees”...
Is It Too Late to Mail in Your Ballot? Here’s Why You Don’t Need to Panic
A week before Election Day and anxiety over the postal service’s ability to ferry voters’ ballots to county election administrators on time has ratcheted up yet again. Here are the reasons the alarm bells are ringing anew: Back in May, the United States Postal Service’s top lawyer advised voters across the country to put...
Here’s the Challenge of Implementing Historic Groundwater Law
California celebrated the passage of historic legislation six years ago when Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, written to achieve sustainable groundwater management for basins throughout the state. The groundwater law requires governments and water agencies to halt overdraft and bring groundwater basins into balanced...
Slated for Deception? Beware of All Those Glossy Mailers Telling You How to Vote
Amid the torrent of laminated campaign ads churning through the postal system this season, the slate mailer stands out as a perennial — and many say unseemly — California political tradition that dates back to at least the 1950s. Though new restrictions may be on the way. You’ve seen these before: A...
Juvenile Justice Overhaul: How the Governor’s Plan Shifts Care of Serious Offenders to Counties
For decades, California teens who committed the most serious crimes – robbery, assault, murder – were sent to state juvenile prisons to serve their sentences. Now that is about to change. A controversial new law that takes effect next year will dismantle the state’s current juvenile justice system and transfer responsibility...
Replacing Cash Bail: Fairer Justice or Robopocalypse?
California is either about to right decades of inequality between rich and poor defendants by eliminating cash bail, or it’s about to turn over its justice system to robots. The question of what to do about the system that decides whether people should be free while awaiting trial will be...
When Will Your Ballot Be Counted? The Perks of Voting Early.
Flo Hodes is doing everything she can to avoid post-Election Day BS. A Democratic voter living in Oakland, she has watched with mounting concern President Donald Trump’s refusal to say whether he will abide by the reported election results, his continued efforts to undermine public confidence in voting by mail, and recent...
Prop. 20: Should California’s DNA Bank Expand to Shoplifters, Opioid Offenders?
DNA evidence — a speckle of spit or a drop of blood — can exonerate a suspect or help put them behind bars. Now California voters are being asked to expand the pool of DNA data that law enforcement taps into. A little-noticed provision of Proposition 20 would require law enforcement to...