"Republican
Lynn Daucher's
lead shrank to 361 votes with Monday's ongoing count of absentee ballots, but time may be running out for Democrat
Lou Correa to make up the difference in the 34th state Senate District race," reports the Register's Martin Wisckol.
"Estimates range from 7,000 to 10,000 absentee and provisional ballots left to count in the race. Daucher leads 50,433 votes to 50,072 votes – 50.2 percent to 49.8 percent."
"'This is going to come down to the wire,' said
Mike Levin, executive director for the county Democratic Party."
Meanwhile, "[n]early 100,000 absentee ballots
remain uncounted in Riverside County."
"That number is up from the 60,000 ballots estimated last week. Another 61,000 absentee ballots already were tallied in the election night count on Nov. 7."
"Officials should know today where the ballots are from."
"The outstanding ballots could greatly impact eight competitive races in the county."
"Two are in the Coachella Valley: the 80th Assembly District race with incumbent
Bonnie Garcia and challenger
Steve Clute; and the Coachella Valley Unified School district board, where two candidates are tied."
Garcia currently has a 1,135 vote lead.
Dan Walters
looks at who voted last week. "The turnout of voters for last week's gubernatorial election hit an all-time low. Although there are still late absentee and provisional ballots to be tallied,
as few as 7.5 million Californians cast ballots, well under 50 percent of registration and only a third of the 22.7 million adult citizens who could vote, if they wished. Whatever the final number turns out to be, it will be much lower than even the most pessimistic pre-election forecasts."
"The characteristics of voters, derived from news media exit polls, stand in stark contrast with those of California's overall population. The Los Angeles Times exit poll, for instance, found that
75 percent of voters were non-Latino whites, even though whites have dropped to well under 50 percent of the overall population."
"Federal judges
should move toward capping California's burgeoning prison population, prison-reform advocates said in motions filed Monday in two long-running, class-action lawsuits," reports Josh Richman in the Contra Costa Times.
"The state prison system now holds about twice the number of people for which it was built; the motions say
the overcrowding amounts to cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in 2004 determined its population shouldn't exceed 138,000 prisoners, a number it had reached around 1996; today, there are more than 170,000."
"Monday's motions ask the courts to create a three-judge panel to decide whether the state prison population should be capped."
"'Court intervention is necessary to achieve constitutional conditions because the State of California has been unable to respond in any meaningful way to the prison overcrowding crisis,'
Donald Specter, Prison Law Office director and a lawyer for the prisoner plaintiffs, said in a news release."
In more legal news, Richman reports "Gay-rights advocates
asked the California Supreme Court on Monday to overturn a lower court's decision that the state's ban on same-sex marriage is not a violation of constitutional rights."
"The state's highest court, which all parties always have expected would have the final word on this issue, has up to 90 days to accept or decline the case."
The NY Times' Felicity Barringer says
Californians were a big part of the environmental wave in this year's elections. "Last week’s election whipsawed the Congressional committees that are crucial battlegrounds for environmental and energy legislation. But even many environmentalists believe that an ambitious new agenda is unlikely.
The leadership changes are striking. Senator
Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, who favors mandatory cuts in emissions linked to global warming,
will become chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, replacing Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who has called the scientific consensus on human-induced global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind.”
In the House,
Jerry McNerney, a California Democrat and wind-energy executive, will replace the current chairman of the House Resources Committee, Representative
Richard W. Pombo, a Republican who fought to open public lands to private interests."
And the
Headline of the Day goes to NBC's Web site in Los Angeles, which reports, "
Frozen Pigs Fly Across Golden State Freeway."
"The southbound Golden State Freeway's truck route was open Tuesday morning after the closure of a section in Sylmar that was prompted by an accident that spilled frozen pig carcasses, authorities said."
So, look out for that.
