Thursday, October 25, 2018
Richard Markuson
The California general election is next Tuesday, November 6, 2018.
The Governor's race is driving the "top of the ticket." The statewide Constitutional offices (Controller, Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Insurance Commissioner, Lt. Governor, and Secretary of State) are each up for election, and all 80 state Assembly seats and half of the state Senate seats are up for election this November.
Your state Assembly district has an election and your state Senate district may very well have one too. Here are a few resources to help you:
- You can find your polling place here.
- You can find your representatives here.
- You can find General Election information from the California Secretary of State's office here.
Beyond these important state officeholder elections, there are numerous initiatives concerning statewide policy matters on the ballot as well:
- housing and water bonds
- children's hospitals
- property tax
- gas tax
- daylight savings
- kidney dialysis clinics
- rent control
- work breaks for private ambulance employees
- confinement of certain farm animals and limitations on their sale
The Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) has provided fiscal and policy advice to the Legislature for 75 years. It is known for its fiscal and programmatic expertise and nonpartisan analyses of the state budget. The office serves as the "eyes and ears" for the Legislature to ensure that the executive branch is implementing legislative policy in a cost efficient and effective manner.
An additional area of responsibility for the LAO is to provide some scrutiny of the ballot initiatives facing voters this November. The office estimates the fiscal effect on state and local government of all proposed initiatives and prepares analyses of all measures that qualify for the statewide ballot.
A link to their review of each ballot initiative is here with the goal of providing you with a resource (not an opinion or recommendation for your vote) that describes what each initiative does and what the fiscal impact will be to your state and local government.
WECA has also prepared several resources for you to use.
You can obtain our list of recommended state candidates here.
You can obtain the WECA legislative scorecard on how members of the State Legislature voted on bills important to WECA here. Since this document does not make a specific recommendation to support or oppose a specific candidate, WECA believes it is safe to distribute to your employees or post. WECA suggests you confirm this with your HR department.
Obviously the election next week is an important one as it will determine the direction of both the US Congress and the State Legislature. Please be sure to vote!
We'll have a recap on the election results in two weeks--although some election analysts have observed that final California results in close races may not be know until December.
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