California GOP Shuts Independents Out of Presidential Primary

GOP Bans Independents 

from Voting Republican

• As the California GOP keeps shrinking and shrinking we see the corrupt Elites that run this clown house of a party keeping millions of independent voters from voting Republican in the primary. After all who needs new voters?

(Bill Moyers.com)  -  Though California has long been a grand prize of presidential campaigns — “the big enchilada,” as Richard Nixon put it — in most elections, the state’s June primary has kept its voters from having much say in picking the presidential nominees.

But in a year when Golden State voters could well determine whether Donald Trump gets enough delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination, party officials are limiting who can participate in their presidential primary. In doing so, they appear to be operating in express opposition to the will of California voters.

The brewing controversy has implications not just for the Republican nomination fight but for a national effort to reform what many critics regard as an exclusionary primary process that depresses voter participation and encourages hyper-partisanship.

California has been in the vanguard of the reform effort. Under Proposition 14, approved by state voters in 2010, all candidates, regardless of party, run in the same primary in which all voters, regardless of party, get to cast ballots. The top two vote-getters advance to the general election— a move with the stated aim of encouraging the election of more moderate, less extreme candidates.

Independents will not
be able to vote for
The Donald

The system covers elections for most offices, including US Senate, Congress, governor and state legislature. But not presidential primaries. The rules for those contests are left up to the parties, and this year California’s Democrats and Republicans have decided to play by different sets of rules. Those differences mean more than twice as many Californians, 11.5 million, will be eligible to vote in the Democratic primary as in the Republican primary, 4.8 million.

Many registered voters may not realize they can’t cast the ballot they want until it is too late.

“Independent voters, some of them are going to face a rude awakening when they’re used to being able to vote for whoever they want but cannot do that for the presidential primary,” said Richard Hasen, elections expert at the University of California-Irvine law school. “I think people are going to be complaining, ‘What do you mean I don’t get this ballot?'”

The state Republican Party allows only registered Republicans to cast ballots for the party’s presidential nomination, while the Democratic Party allows independent voters as well as registered Democrats to cast ballots in the race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. As in other states, each party selects how its delegates are awarded based on the voting.

Democrats have 43 percent of California’s registered voters, or 7.4 million, according to figures from the secretary of state’s office. The party exercised its right under state law to open the primary to another 4.1 million voters – those registered as having no party preference. Independents are the fastest growing group of voters in California. Since 2008, their numbers have increased by more than 1 million.

The once dominant Republican party has seen its registration decline to 4.8 million. The decision to hold a closed presidential primary means that fewer than 28 percent of the state’s 17.3 million registered voters are eligible to make the potentially momentous decision about Trump. Pitney theorizes it could hurt the insurgent by limiting his ability to draw new voters into the process. “In other states Trump has tended to do better among people who were not registered Republicans,” he said.

State Sen. Anthony Cannella, a Republican from Ceres in the Central Valley, said in a statement released by the Independent Voter Project that “the state shouldn’t be in the business of disenfranchising voters who’ve chosen to not belong to a party from voicing their opinion in the presidential primary.”

California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte, a former state senator, declined to be interviewed for this article. 

Read More . . . .

34 candidates on California Senate ballot

"Corruptus in Extremis"

November could see two Democrats running against each other

• In a corrupt back room deal the Democrats and Republicans abolished the primary system allowing only the top two candidates to appear on general election ballots.
• Now as if by "magic" the voters are only allowed to vote for Democrats and Republicans in November.  The corrupt big parties have effectively banned all independent candidates and smaller opposition parties from all future general election ballots.
• Other countries who have banned opposition parties include Cuba, North Korea, Iran and China.

(Los Angeles Times)  -  If elections officials could send just one message to California's 17.2 million registered voters about the U.S. Senate primary in June, it would probably be this: Read the instructions carefully.

"It's not necessarily intuitive on how to properly mark this ballot," said Kammi Foote, registrar of voters for Inyo County. And a mistake could keep a ballot from counting.

On primary day, the race to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer will feature 34 candidates. Only four of those candidates have received appreciable support in public polling so far, and five will appear at the first Senate debate Monday night.

But the full field is larger than any single roster of statewide contenders since the colossal list of 135 candidates who ran in the 2003 special election that recalled then-Gov. Gray Davis. (To make the ballot, candidates must pay about $3,500 or collect 10,000 signatures.)

A
Welcome to Authoritarianism
It's Democrat vs. Democrat.

In the 6th State Senate District the corrupt "top two" phony
election system gave the voters a "choice" of only one political party. 
There was no Republican on the ballot and all small opposition
parties and independent candidates are banned.  The corrupt Elites
have even made your write-in vote illegal. (More)

In some ways, the Senate election is so far beyond the capacity of the system that it’s requiring a unique set of solutions. "You're not just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, you're trying to fit a skyscraper in a round hole," said Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley.

In most races, with a handful of candidates, names appear in a single column on one page of the voting booklet, a clear sign to voters that they should only pick one. But with 34 candidates, the geography of ballot templates tends to favor listing the names in two, side-by-side columns, on facing pages of the voting booklet.

That's where the trouble lies for the Senate race, as voters could mistake the two columns as two distinct races and choose one name from each list. That would result in an "overvote," a ballot cast for two or more candidates, which is thus disqualified.

Some counties have been able to fit all 34 names in a single column on the June ballot, making clear that those candidates are competing against one another. California holds a "top-two" primary that sends only the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, to the Nov. 8 general election ballot.

Los Angeles County's electronic voting machines will require two entire pages of Senate candidates. The first page will include a large red warning icon with instructions to vote for only one candidate.

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.Sample of the old free elections in California

Voters had real choices on their ballots

California 48th congressional district special election, 2005
Party		Candidate	Votes	Percentage
	Republican	John Campbell	41,450	44.7%
	Democratic	Steve Young	25,926	28.0%
	American Independent	Jim Gilchrist	23,237	25.1%
	Green	Bea Tiritilli	1,242	1.3%
	Libertarian	Bruce Cohen	880	0.9%
Totals			93,138	100.0%
Voter turnout			%
	Republican hold

[

California to give health care to illegal aliens

Free Stuff For Everyone on Earth

• Democrats can't wait to steal every American citizen's money and redistribute that wealth to illegal aliens from all nations on Earth.

(The Desert Sun)  -  Another big expansion of California’s low-income health plan is expected to take effect next month when the state extends full Medi-Cal benefits to low-income undocumented children.

And while their parents are not eligible for state-supported health insurance — a gap advocates still hope to fill — the change still makes California the largest state, but not the first, to open the program to poor children under 19 in the country illegally.

Among the tens of thousands of families the change is expected to help is Jose Garcia of Mecca and his 13-year-old son. They came to California from Mexico 11 years ago and are both undocumented. Garcia and his wife are separated, so he said he fills the roles of dad and mom.

On a recent Thursday afternoon, Garcia brought his Mexican ID card, California drivers license and a pay stub from his job packing dates to the Mecca Family & Farmworkers Service Center. Adelaida Gutierrez, an enrollment assistant with the nonprofit health clinic Clinicas de Salud de Pueblo, walked him through the Medi-Cal paperwork in about 30 minutes. A county office will review the application and decide if he’s eligible for benefits.

More than 170,000 children are expected to get more comprehensive health coverage because of the new law, which state lawmakers approved last year. More than 6,000 of them live in Riverside County. And while many of those children were already signed up for emergency Medi-Cal coverage, thousands more, including Garcia's son, are getting coverage for the first time that includes dental, vision and mental benefits.

The state is working to get the program up and running May 16, with coverage effective retroactively to the first of the month.  Children qualify if their families meet income requirements, which equate to $64,505 annually for a family of four. Medi-Cal coverage is free for the lowest-income families, while others must pay monthly premiums of $13 up to $39 per child.

Due to its expansion under the federal Affordable Care Act, Medi-Cal already covers one third of California residents.

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The Trump campaign has landed in California

The New Trump Campaign 

Director Takes Charge

(San Francisco Chronicle)  -  If you’re a Donald Trump supporter in California, what is more worrisome to you: that the candidate just hired his state director last week, less than two months before the nation’s largest state’s primary puts 172 delegates up for grabs, or that the new director has never met Trump?

“No, we haven’t met,” Tim Clark said 24 hours after taking the gig. He caught the Trump campaign’s attention after writing a March 3 opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee where he compared Trump to Teddy Roosevelt, saying, “Conservatives want someone who will knock some heads and stop the madness in Washington.”

Clark also wrote: “Yes, Trump has a track record of abrasiveness, of knocking heads and brazenly firing people. ... In normal election times, these might be liabilities. But, in the eyes of conservatives, Trump has the right qualifications to be president at this time in history.”

Only in the 2016 presidential demolition derby can you refer to someone as abrasive and then be hired — sight unseen — to run that campaign in the nation’s most populous state. And so the GOP presidential reality show, California edition, begins.

At first blush, Clark’s late hiring smells like the West Coast version of the improvisational, cult-of-personality campaign that Trump has been running — and winning with — elsewhere. He’s ahead in California polls, too.

While Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign has been busy for months recruiting and vetting three delegates — and alternates — that every California congressional district gets in the GOP primary, the campaigns of Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich have been — well, let’s just say they’re not as far along.

But Clark is a well-respected Sacramento political operative who has run statewide campaigns over the past two decades, including for Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, a rising star in the California GOP. He’s thrifty and sharp, too. Last year, Clark spent only $200,000 to help John Moorlach win an Orange County state Senate seat over an opponent who spent roughly four times that much.

What’s initially jarring is that Clark is as relentlessly sunny and positive as Trump is apocalyptic. During our conversation Clark didn’t rip anybody as a loser, a liar or low-energy. But he does share Trump’s penchant for thinking and talking big. Crazy big.

“My directive is clear,” Clark said. “There are 53 congressional districts in the state. I have to deliver a comprehensive plan to deliver (all of California’s) 172 delegates.

“I’ve looked at it, and I’ve analyzed it,” Clark said. “And I think it’s an achievable bar.”

To put that into perspective, sweeping California would mean that Trump would have to win the Republican primary popular vote in both Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district and Rep. Barbara Lee’s Oakland district. Good luck with that. Some Republicans who live here would be run out of Bakersfield as socialists.

“Most statewide campaigns would be happy to get 200 volunteers,” Clark told me. “We could have 10,000.”

Where are these people?

Clark said Trump’s people are on Facebook. They’ve been commiserating — communicating — for months, a loose network of online Trump fan clubs, some openly talking on social media, some chatting in tightly monitored chat rooms. They’ve just been waiting for someone to stitch them together and, in many cases, to show them how to register as Republicans before the May 23 deadline.

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Donald Trump to speak at California Republican Party convention

The Donald Cometh

(Sacramento Bee)  -  Donald Trump will address California Republicans at the state party’s spring convention, joining Ted Cruz and John Kasich at the Bay Area gathering ahead of the state’s critical primary, the party announced Wednesday.

Trump, the frontrunner in California, said in a prepared statement that “California, like much of the rest of the nation, has struggled to regain its full economic success.”

California’s June 7 primary is expected to play a decisive role in the Republican nominating contest, likely determining whether Trump can amass the 1,237 delegates necessary to secure the nomination.

Trump will speak at a lunch banquet the opening day of the state convention in Burlingame, on April 29. Kasich will speak that evening, followed by Cruz the next day.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article71633217.html#storylink=cpy

(sacbee.com)

Democrats jack up family-leave benefits

Gov. Jerry Brown
(AP file photo)

Free Money For All

---- Democrats hand out "free" money to voters.

(Los Angeles Times)  -  Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday will sign a bill expanding California’s pioneering family-leave law to help more low-income workers and provide better benefits.

The action comes 15 years after California became the first state in the nation to guarantee workers paid time off to care for a new child or ailing family member.

California's program provides workers — men or women — with 55% of their wages for up to six weeks.

The measure Brown is signing Monday afternoon will allow people earning close to minimum wage to be paid 70% of their salary while on leave, while workers with higher pay, up to $108,000 annually, will get 60% of their salary during leave. The change takes effect in 2018. It comes one week after California raised its minimum wage to $15 by 2022.

San Francisco last week approved the best benefits in the country, mandating that businesses give new mothers and fathers six weeks of fully paid time off.

The bill was supported by a broad cross-section of business and labor groups, as well as Attorney General Kamala Harris, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Jenya Cassidy, director of the California Work & Family Coalition.

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GOP blows Central Valley special election

Candidates for the vacated 31st Assembly District, Clint Olivier and Joaquin Arambula, cast their votes for the open seat in the special election Tuesday, April 5, 2016.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/election/article70056032.html#storylink=cpy

If only the GOP stood for something

• You can't win elections by being "Democrat-lite".  The GOP could have put a proposition on the November ballot to repeal the bullet train fraud. That would give Republicans a unifying issue to campaign on.  But no. Too many GOP big shots are sucking at the bullet train cash cow.

(Fresno Bee)  -  In the days leading up to the 31st Assembly District’s 2004 election, then-Assembly Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield made a prediction: “Someday, this will be our seat.”

That day may never come.

There was a special election Tuesday to fill the unexpired term of Fresno Democrat Henry T. Perea, who resigned a year early to take a job with the pharmaceutical industry, and it appears all but certain that Kingsburg Democrat Joaquin Arambula will win the race. Just before midnight, his main opponent, Fresno Republican Clint Olivier, conceded.

Republicans always like their chances in special elections, which historically have low turnouts. Because of that, the GOP saw this as its best chance to steal the seat away from the rival Democrats, who have held it for 40 years.

With all precincts reporting but some absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted, however, Arambula, an emergency room physician, had 52 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Olivier, a Fresno City Council member. Caruthers Democrat Ted Miller, an engineer and the third person in the race, had 5.7 percent of the vote.

31st Assembly District

Though Arambula holds a 10-percentage point lead over Olivier, he had to win more than 50 percent of the vote Tuesday to avoid a June 7 runoff. Olivier would have to win an almost impossible number of the remaining ballots to force Arambula below that threshold.

“Tomorrow is a new day,” Arambula said. “I’m excited to head to Sacramento and be a representative for the Valley. I truly intend to be a public servant. Someone who listens more than I talk, and I’m excited about the possibilities for where we can go.”

Olivier remained optimistic early in the evening even as initial returns put Arambula well ahead in the race – and above the 50 percent needed to avoid the runoff. As more ballots were counted, Arambula’s lead held, and Olivier eventually conceded after the Fresno County Elections office finished counting for the night.

The election was high-profile and expensive as Republicans pushed hard to put the seat in the GOP column, the same way they had done during a 2013 special election in the 14th state Senate District, which overlaps part of the 31st Assembly District. In that district, Hanford Republican Andy Vidak won in a special election and then held the seat in 2014 for a full term after Bakersfield Democrat Michael Rubio resigned early to take a job with Chevron. Democrats, in the meantime, have always viewed the 31st Assembly seat as theirs. Currently, 47.2 percent of voters are Democrats, 28.5 percent Republican and 19.9 percent are registered with no political party.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/election/article70056032.html#storylink=cpy

“Obviously things didn’t go as we had hoped,” he said. “I’m proud of my campaign team and I’m especially thankful to the thousands of people who voted for change Tuesday.”

R

Heading into Tuesday’s election, Democrats had posted 19 consecutive wins in the 31st District stretching back to 1976. Now Arambula looks to have made it 20 straight.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/election/article70056032.html#storylink=cpy

Democrats were well aware of the political realities of special elections, and responded accordingly. Arambula has raised more than $930,000 for the special election, including more than $405,000 from the state Democratic Party. Olivier in turn raised close to $500,000, with the state Republican Party chipping in more than $254,000 of that total.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/election/article70056032.html#storylink=cpy

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POLL - Trump beats Cruz by 11% in California

(Desert Sun)  -  The Democratic presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is tightening in California, while Donald Trump has a comfortable double-digit edge over his Republican rivals, a poll found Wednesday.

The Public Policy Institute of California survey found Hillary Clinton notched 48 percent among likely voters — Democrats and independents who can vote in the party’s primary election. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was pegged at 41 percent.

The survey, conducted March 6-15, included interviews with about 1,000 likely voters. For the overall group, the margin of error was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points, though it was higher when the two primaries, Democratic and Republican, were considered separately.

Among Republicans — their presidential primary is open only to registered GOP voters — Trump had 38 percent, trailed by Ted Cruz and John Kasich.

Trump held the edge across age, education, gender, and income groups, the survey found.

When the responses were recalculated to exclude Rubio, Trump maintained his 38 percent support, while Cruz’s support increased to 27 percent. Kasich was at 14 percent.

The poll found many voters remain unfamiliar with the race to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California. The largest group of voters remains undecided — about one in three.

Among Democrats, Attorney General Kamala Harris snagged 26 percent support, with congresswoman Loretta Sanchez at 17 percent.

The Republicans, Tom Del Beccaro and Duf Sundheim, were in single digits. Republican Ron Unz entered the race after the survey was completed.

Read More . . .