‘Smoldering mess’ isn’t McCarthy’s doing; it’s because of flaws in state’s handling of elections
In response to Robert Price’s March 10 column (“McCarthy left us with a smoldering mess”), the following should calm his obviously frayed nerves. Or maybe not, as I’m not sure Price has much of a record writing anything positive about McCarthy’s 20-plus years in elective office.
And to be fair, Price isn’t the only one generating frantic concern about special elections as other local media are promoting the concept of electoral frenzy.
Here are the facts:
■ There have been over 60 special elections in California for the Legislature and Congress since 1989 — and since 2013 there have been 36. Plus, cities hold their own special elections — last year, 2023, the cities of Sacramento, Los Angeles, Alameda, Oxnard, Berkeley and more held special elections.
■ Vince Fong didn’t have to go to court to “overturn” state law; he went to court because our secretary of state would not “uphold” state law. That law says whenever an incumbent does not file for reelection, the filing deadline opens for anyone for five days. Fong filed in that five-day window and the judge said absolutely he had every right to.
■ The reason there is a hiccup in the election for our next state Assembly member to replace Fong is because neither our secretary of state nor our esteemed Legislature noticed that the state election code fails to provide a simple solution when an incumbent for one office — mayor, supervisor, council member or dogcatcher for that matter — files in that fiveday extension when they earlier filed for election to another office.
A simple solution in election law would be that a candidate’s name would be removed from the previous filing. Also, since by law a person cannot run for two offices at once, our secretary of state could have done that last December, but chose not to.
One more thought — or actually two:
Why do liberals — including those in the media — rush to complain about the cost of elections, not the cost of the 10 million other taxpayer-paid-for government programs in dire need of reductions in spending? No, they target the cost at the one place Americans get their two cents in the process: voting.
And talk about wasteful spending. How about the printing cost for these changes recently demanded by the California Democrats controlling our Legislature: Besides sample ballots, now live ballots with postage-paid envelopes are mailed to every voter, or basically every address in this state, whether they asked for it or not.
Previous to the Democrat takeover, the California process for decades was if a voter didn’t vote at least once every four years, that name was removed from the voter rolls, and later they could choose to reregister. That concept saved tax dollars by removing from voter rolls people who died or moved, etc. Yet today if you visit any post office or apartment complex, you’ll find live ballots in the trash due to voters having moved from that address or P.O. box — a huge waste of tax dollars in unnecessary postage and printing costs.
As a reporter, Price could report on this statewide multimillions in wasteful spending, rather than continue to poke at someone who served 20-plus years in elective office.
But maybe, Mr. Price, you just can’t pass up one more chance to take a whack at a person most of us know as a good man and was a terrific representative for us in Congress, Kevin McCarthy.