The cities of Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Leandro all use the new method of Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) to elect most of their city officials. But in my experience, even if you live in one of those places, you likely have only a rough handle of how that specific system works. Which is a…
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Knowing and Fighting the American Health Care Act
I’m writing this for people who want to know with the ACA (Obamacare) repeal: What on earth is going on? How much trouble are we really in? And is there anything I can do about it? Fundamentally, of course, nobody really knows what’s going on – it’s all a blur of Republicans and meat. And…
Local ballot initiatives for Oaklanders, analyses
I am concluding my election writing with analyses and recommendations on local measures on the ballot for Oaklanders. In this case, our measures are those being voted on in the city itself, Oakland Unified School District, Alameda County, the AC Transit District (buses), and the BART District. I am going from biggest areas (BART) to…
Cheat sheet: Statewide and local proposition recommendations
Since I know I took up a lot of space with all my Important Thoughts™ on the statewide ballot measures (part 1, part 2), here are all my recommendations in handy tabulated form – with internal links, even, so you can jump to specific ones. Again, the “utilitarian” recommendation is trying to answer whether the…
Ballot initiatives, California statewide, 2016, part 2
Thank you for reading my analyses and recommendations on the California statewide. Read Part 1 (51 through 57, bonds and constitutional amendments) here. In this Part 2, I am moving on to 58 through 67, which are all initiative statutes, items that become part of law, but not the Constitution, and could be amended later…
Ballot analyses, California statewide, 2016 – part 1
Once again, I’m attempting to digest and communicate the substance of what propositions are up on the California November ballot, with the detail and contextual perspective I and others would want to see. I explicitly do not impose a neutral or “moderate” viewpoint, but do try to be intellectually honest about pros and cons and…
Minimum wages, and other local measures
I’m going to conclude my spree of ballot-initiative opinions with those in the parts of California I and my friends live in most predominantly – Oakland and San Francisco. Most of these can be dealt with quickly, but the biggest issue, the minimum wage, is on the ballot in both cities, so I’ll bring those…
Yes on Props 1 and 2
Moving on to Propositions 1 and 2. Prop 1: Yes. I can’t claim as much detailed knowledge of water infrastructure as of health policy, so I’ll keep this briefer. Prop 1 would give the state authority to borrow up to $7.1 billion, by selling bonds, to fund a large number of water capital projects. $2.7…
State propositions 45, 46, 47, and 48
Once more I’m writing summaries and recommendations on the propositions on the California ballot for people wanting more than warring assertions. Point of view not checked at the door. Although they come first on the ballot, I’m going to put Props 1 and 2 in a later installment, because they’re trickier. Hopefully tomorrow. After that…
California June Ballot: Statewide
We Californians have a pretty thin primary ballot this go-round, but here are my summaries and recommendations on the two propositions: 41: Yes. Prop 41 is a $600 million bond initiative for housing low-income and homeless veterans, but in a certain light it’s not even new spending. In 2008 the voters approved $900 million in…