Well, seems like I should post wrap-up, opinions, and #takes on what just happened.
At the most local level, Measures M, S, and RR all passed by landslides. Good; the local community seems happy to fund things that need funding (schools, water district, and Caltrain). Though the margins were big, they needed to be, since it took two-thirds majorities for those things to pass.
Statewide propositions were mixed. From a criminal justice reform point of view, things went well. Prop 20 (felony shoplifting) failed by a landslide, and prop 17 (voting rights for parolees) passed. Excellent.
Prop 25 (keeping the cash bail ban) law failed, but a lot of the advertising was about how the alternative (algorithmic pretrial detention) was also horrible, which isn’t wrong.
The stupid dialysis proposition (Prop 23), where a labor dispute plays out over ballot proposition, failed. Again, like last year. I hope they stop trying this nonsense.
The property tax propositions baffled me. Repealing prop 13 for corporations failed, albeit barely (Prop 15) and removing prop 13 protections for some inheritances passed (Prop 19) passed; I expected the exact opposite. Still, the margins were slim (51–49 and 52–48, as of the current writing, but may yet have minor changes in those margins). Messing with Prop 13 in minor ways is controversial but doable, it seems.
Unfortunately, the CA constitution continues to become more and more cluttered with things the legislature can’t touch. The consumer privacy proposition passed (Prop 24) and the uber-bought one also passed (Prop 22) and the repeal on the ban of rent control failed (prop 21). So now privacy law, AND employment law for app-based rideshares, AND rent control can only be touched by more propositions. So… expect more and more propositions each election year. Great… Or, they can only be touched by the courts “interpreting” them, which isn’t much better.
Not sure what to make of the 17-year-olds-voting-in-primaries one (Prop 18). It’s a bit of an odd duck. Sad it failed, but don’t have anything to say about its consequences.
No big deal about prop 14 passing, either. Nice. Californians don’t seem to mind spending money on things, same as with the local propositions. Works for me.
Sad about the ban on affirmative action not being repealed. Not surprised; so many people, even among those who claim to want to oppose racism, take the “Don’t see color” approach.
In terms of candidates, most of the races here were unsurprising. Democrats won, incumbents won.
Larry Klein won Sunnyvale mayor, which is good, but in a three-way race he won 36–33–30. Honestly, multi-way winner-take-all races are such a travesty. Literally anything is better than that — having primaries to narrow it down to two, or approval voting or ranked-choice/IRV.
National politics remains a fight— most of the country supports Democrats, but Republicans continue to subvert democracy to try and ensure white minority rule. Same as it has been. The fight continues. Though next year, (after some frantic donating and letter-writing for the Georgia senate runoffs) I’m going to be try to be more intentional about budgeting time and money, and supporting long-term grassroots efforts rather than focusing on one election at a time. Though I guess that’s because we’ll have a moment to breathe, now that our President won’t be a literal foreign agent.
