Elections

California is home to the first woman vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, and first female House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. So why does it lag on women holding power in the statehouse?

In the corner of California where Vice President-elect Kamala Harris grew up and launched her political career, residents cheered, danced, honked horns, donned American flags and popped champagne to celebrate the Democratic ticket’s victory over President Donald Trump. As the news broke early Saturday morning, revelers took to the streets wearing bathrobes, banging pots and […]

Goodbye, state of resistance. Hello, state of influence.  California’s status has shifted dramatically with the inauguration of Joe Biden as the next president. The reasons are both political — deep blue California will have more inroads to a White House controlled by Democrats — and personal: For just the second time in American history, a […]

A proposal to give younger people a greater voice in elections was resoundingly rejected by about 55% of California voters. By some measures Proposition 18, which would have allowed 17-year-olds to vote in primary elections if they turned 18 by the next general election, should have been a shoo-in. It had the support of Governor […]

California officials credit new vote centers for a substantial drop in time-consuming provisional ballots this election cycle.

Buried in the mountain of yet-to-be-deciphered popular will of Californians lie the fates of too-close-to-call statewide propositions and dozens of congressional and legislative races. Patience for the final electoral tally may not come naturally to election watchers in Georgia and Pennsylvania — nor, for that matter, the president of the United States. But Californians should […]

California still must count 4.5 million ballots, a bigger job than what it faced two days after the election in 2016.

California voters rejected the Legislature’s decision to end cash bail. While it doesn’t mean the end of criminal justice reform, it does signal more work ahead.

Months before Election Day, tensions had been building in Bakersfield between Black Lives Matter supporters and a group of Trump backers calling themselves the 1776 Patriots. They’ve clashed in parking lots, on sidewalks and in the road, leading to three arrests–one of a BLM protester brandishing a firearm, another of a 1776 Patriot openly carrying […]

As President Trump and his supporters moved to stop the counting of mail-in votes in key battleground states yesterday, local activist groups greenlighted rallies in several Bay Area cities. Their message was simple: count every vote. Anxious, scared, but cautiously optimistic, hundreds of protesters peacefully gathered in parks and plazas in the aftermath of an […]