1. The Great Stupid won’t go down with out a fight! Especially in California. The University of Southern California canceled a debate among candidates for governor less than 24 hours before it was supposed to take place this week. The reason was that there weren’t any non-white candidates. I kept seeing that in headlines and couldn’t believe it. I just assumed it was right-wing spin, and really dumb spin at that.
Nope. Eight Democrats and two Republicans are currently leading a typically huge field running in the Golden State June 2 primary. The debate was scheduled to include the six candidates who were leading in the polls, plus an extra Democrat, the Mayor of San Jose, who has been raising a lot of money for his campaign lately. If he had been black or Latino, that may have saved the debate, but he’s just another white guy. Students objected, and the school, being run by cowards and woke weenies like most universities today, chickened out.
The controversies over who got a place on the stage “have created a significant distraction from the issues that matter to voters,” the university said. And so rather than hold a debate that would help voters distinguish between the candidates who currently have a chance to win and maybe teach students something, the fact that none of the candidates are “of color” means that there won’t be a debate at all.
Ethics Alarms 
1 – Imagine UCLA cancelling a political debate among a bunch of candidates “of color” because the students protested the lack of white candidates in the mix. I’m sure USC would completely understand the logic behind it and support the decision.
Alternative thought: Blacks and hispanics in California are clearly smart enough NOT to run for governor.
2 – It’s MSNOW, it’s John Brennan, fish gotta swim.
3 – I’ll wait for the analysis from “A Friend”…which (spoiler alert here) will be something along the lines of, “A lot of commenters disagreed strongly with her story and those comments weren’t deleted, so the NYT can’t be biased.”
A solid majority of the people in this country see the same problems with mail-in ballots that caused them to be outlawed in most other countries. And the vast majority of that solid majority still supports the notion of absentee ballots.
Here’s where I’ll go off on my election rant. I love elections or at least the idea of a fair proper election because it’s the only poll of the people that matters, and it’s supposed to be all inclusive and final. I hate that I don’t feel great about elections anymore and it’s not because the Right Wing tells me that elections are stolen, it’s because the Left Wing tells me that reasonable assurance activities should not be allowed; even in the face of incontrovertible evidence of impropriety.
I want to see voter rolls consistently cleaned up, even wiped clean so that everyone can reaffirm an accurate registration. In Colorado, registration is so easy. You hit a website and plop in a few details and poof, you’re on the voter roll. So why is it disenfranchising ask for regular review and affirmation of your registration?
More than that, in Colorado, we famously have probably the country’s oldest all mail voting….and there’s something good about that, but there’s also something bad about that. We’ve been a solidly blue lefty state since with no hope of having competitive elections. In all honesty, I accepted those election results without question because of all the California influx and because I view Colorado Republicans, largely, as a special breed of stupid. (When we do find a good Republican (Bill Owens, Cory Gardner, Niel Gorsuch) they are an island unto themselves. Reasonable, amenable, and responsible….but they don’t have any staying power due to a lack of conservative political infrastructure. So voters here would rather see incompetent liberals than have to suffer the vitriol injected by both sides.)
So, now, I have to consider what would be better than our mail ballot system…and honestly, I look to my own behavior to devise the recommendation. I’ve probably said it here before, but here it is: every election should be a mail-out & check-in system. Send the ballot to the voters on October 1 and have election day be the final day of FOUR days of checking in ballots, in person, at precincts. With the check-in process, you can easily implement whatever other controls are agreeable/necessary such as duplicate/multiple voting, ID check, etc.
You could even implement hybrid / parallel processing for a ballot. Maybe Voter 1 wants to hand over the ballot for automatic processing because he’s very trusting, but maybe Voter 2 wants to take their pre-filled and completed ballot into a voting booth to insert into a machine and see all of the items tabulated in a summary format with options for final correction and upon confirmation, the paper ballot is ingested to a secure lockbox within the machine, the voting results tabulated, and the voting summary is printed for the voter on a receipt to take as a souvenir. I mean….what would be wrong with this setup?
I also always take this to the next step of considering our elderly population. I know many such facilities of elder care – massive sprawling 2,000 person campuses or 100+ patient buildings. It’s a challenge, but I like the idea of establishing a mobile precinct or those places being designated as a precinct polling place – but what I want to ensure is that only those that want to vote are the actual people voting and making their own decisions.
So there’s my rant. Thanks for hosting this outlet! Way cheaper than therapy!
I think California should push the participation-trophy mentality to the logical conclusion and allow all the candidates onto the debate stage. Perhaps let all the candidates be governor, too. I mean, that’s equity, right?
I heard something earlier to the effect that competitive Democrats wanted less competitive Democrats (which included all of the “colorful” candidates) to drop out.
the reason? California puts the top two candidates on the ballot. All those Democrats candidates might dilute the vote to the extent that the two balloted candidates are Republicans.
the cancellation of the debate (and limiting the participants) would be consistent with an anti-dilution strategy by the Democrats.
-Jut
Don’t you just love that editorializing headline of Erica’s, though? It’s almost as if she needn’t have written an article at all or that it was necessary for anyone to read it.
About point 4 regarding mail-in ballots, being a Dutch citizen I look with disgust at the lack of integrity of elections in the United States.
I have voted in Dutch elections via mail-in ballots for years. The Embassy sends every citizen registered with them who is eligible to vote a named invitation to vote, and a voting form. You return this invitation, and a filled out voting form, plus a copy of your passport, and return it on time to the Embassy so the vote can be counted at Election Day. People who vote in person have to bring a named invitation to vote (which the local government at county level will send to all citizens eligible to vote), plus proper identification provided by the government. This system is waterproof.
Articles such as the one attached at the bottom of my comment give me little faith about the integrity of elections in the United States; this is about Sheriff Bianco in Riverside, CA seizing 650000 ballots over an election disputed claiming he is acting on allegations that the county’s tally was inflated by more than 45,000 votes.
Why are the Democrats so obstinately against the SAVE act, requiring proper ID when voting? Is this because the Democrats think they benefit from corrupt election practices such as ballot harvesting, ballot stuffing, dirty voting rolls, and voting by illegal citizens? Just asking, not trying to be cynical.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/jeff-charles/2026/03/23/sheriff-chad-bianco-seizes-over-650000-ballots-over-election-dispute-n2673264
Pet peeve of mine.
It’s akin to a group of friends deciding to cater a dinner together. They can’t decide where to order from, so they take a vote, and the majority wins. Then, the food arrives: when the people who voted against the winning choice eat, are they now hypocrites?
I think, in general, subsidies are a very bad idea. I would absolutely vote against them. But if I have the opportunity to get one, legally, of course I’ll take it. I’m still against it, but I’m also still being forced to pay for it.