Yesterday, every living governor in the state stood together at a news event to oppose Prop. 5.  The Yes on 5 campaign had exactly the right response – this shows what a bipartisan failure prison policy has been in California, and continues to be.  Arianna Huffington has a stellar post about this today.

Here is picture that sums up much that is wrong with American politics. Five governors of California, Democrats and Republicans, joining forces to oppose something that is indisputably in the public interest.

This is an image that could be repeated, with different faces, in region after region of our country, involving issue after issue. Public officials standing against the public good, with the disastrous results on display from Detroit to Wall Street. All suffering from the same destructive force: the power of entrenched special interests to cloud the vision of our leaders, causing them to thwart good sense, good legislation, and the will of the people

Huffington rightly points out the horrific state of California prisons.

California’s prisons are a budget-busting debacle. There are currently more than 170,000 inmates crammed into prisons designed to hold 100,000 people. Around 70,000 of these prisoners are nonviolent offenders, with over half of them incarcerated for a drug offense.

A large part of the problem is a parole system the New York Times recently called “perhaps the most counterproductive and ill-conceived” in the U.S.. California’s recidivism rate is 70 percent — twice the national average. This stems in no small measure from the state’s insistence on treating paroled murderers the same way as paroled nonviolent drug offenders. They all spend 3-5 years on parole. This overburdens parole officers, who end up spending very little time with any of their charges — violent or nonviolent (According to the Times, 80 percent of California parolees have fewer than two 15-minute meetings with their parole officer per month.) Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep a closer watch on rapists and killers than on nonviolent drug offenders?

As a result of this dysfunctional system, prison costs have risen 50 percent since 2000, to over $10 billion a year — close to 10% of the state’s budget (and roughly the same amount California spends on higher education). It costs $46,000 a year to keep a nonviolent prisoner in the state behind bars. Is it any wonder California is gushing red ink?

And as bad as this sounds, she leaves something out.  The health care system is so substandard that California is systematically violating the Constitutional rights of everyone it incarcerates, subjecting them to cruel and unusual punishment.  And even after they have been forced by court orders to remedy the situation, the state has refused to do so, setting up a showdown and a possible contempt-of-court order against the Governor himself.  This is how big the failure of leadership is on our prisons.  The only thing politicians can agree on is that we must keep scaring the citizenry into warehousing prisoners over and over, without trying to actually treat and rehabilitate them.

Huffington then describes Prop. 5.

Prop 5 is structured to build on the proven success of Prop 36, a law promoting drug treatment over incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders. It was approved by 61 percent of California voters in 2000, despite almost unanimous opposition from public officials. Since being enacted, Prop 36 has saved California taxpayers $2 billion — and graduated 84,000 people who, according to studies, are far less likely to become repeat offenders […]

Yet Prop 5 is struggling because of a very powerful special interest: the prison guards union. It has funneled $1.8 million into the campaign to derail Prop 5.

For the guards, prison overcrowding means more overtime pay. So the state’s prison industrial complex has unleashed the full force of its financial power — funding an array of ads that blatantly mischaracterize Prop 5. Truth has gone out the window, replaced by overheated claims that the initiative is a “drug dealer’s bill of rights,” “a get out of jail free card” for meth dealers, and a law that will allow parents to abuse their kids and escape punishment.

Goodbye reform, hello fear. The special interests are, once again, overwhelming the public interest.

The prison guards are powerful enough that everyone who might want to be Governor – Jerry Brown, DiFi – would rather break with the stated position of the Democratic Party than defy them.  And so these tough on crime Democrats want to jump back into the rabbit hole and further the absolute and utter failure – maybe the biggest failure in the state, demonstrably so – to stay on the good side of a union who can lavish them with campaign contributions.  It’s utterly disgusting and shameful.

I’m proud to do some work against Prop 10; these are my own thoughts on today’s scandal

In California, Barack Obama is unbelievably popular and is going to win in a landslide. What isn’t popular, is Proposition 10 which is a blank check handout to the Texas oilman funding the initiative. Which is why you see the strange coalition of damn near everyone in the state opposing the initiative. A coalition where the California Labor Federation has teamed up with the Chamber of Commerce to oppose Prop 10. A coalition where Calitics is on the same page as the San Diego Union-Tribune. A coalition where the California Green Party agrees with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. And every major environmental group is opposed, including the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, Environment California, Alliance for Responsible Energy Policy and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Since all the Yes on Proposition 10 campaign has going for it is money, they have now taken to misleading Democrats into thinking the initiative has the support of Barack Obama. It doesn’t (for good reason).

The expansive No on Proposition 10 campaign has demanded a retraction. Full details after the jump.

The No on Prop 10 Campaign issued a strongly worded letter today to Yes on 10 Campaign Manager Marty Wilson and Chair Alison Hart demanding an immediate public retraction for an email they sent associating Proposition 10 with Senator Obama and his energy plan.

Prop 10 is a $5 billion bond measure on the November ballot. The taxpayer cost to repay the bonds is $10 billion over 30 years. Prop 10 was written and paid for by Clean Energy Fuels Corp, a company owned by Texas oil tycoon T. Bone Pickens. A broad based coalition of environmental, consumer, business, taxpayer, labor and civic organizations opposes Prop 10. Nearly 40 newspapers have editorialized against Prop 10. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, State Controller John Chiang oppose Prop 10. Prop 10 has not earned the endorsement of a single newspaper editorial board, independent environmental group, or statewide elected official.

Cross-posted at Project Vote’s blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

In the last two weeks voter registration and early voting has shown that voters are geared up and ready to take part in what has been called a “historical event” on November 4.

Last week, voters scrambled to register at drive-thru election office windows in Southern California, busy street corners in Wichita, Kansas, and post-naturalization ceremonies in Los Angeles County. These efforts to meet the Oct. 20 registration deadlines in some states are seen as evidence of a surge in voter registration among historically underrepresented communities, including newly naturalized Latino and Asian citizens, and Black voters as well as formerly disenfranchised ex-felons.

This week, early vote turnout gave a sneak peek at what voters and election officials can expect at the polls on Tuesday, and it’s “going to be busy as heck” said one official in Orange County, Calif., where registration rates went up 15 percent since 2004. To accommodate the high turnout, which is expected to exceed “the recent high-water mark in voter participation set in 2004,” some states are taking precautionary measures, adding new machines and even extending early voting.

Experts predict “huge turnout” of as much as 132 million people, or 60.4 to 62.9 percent of eligible voters this year, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The last presidential election brought 60.7 percent of eligible voters to the polls, “the highest since 1968, when 61.9 percent cast ballots.” Election officials in many states, including Ohio, Arizona, New Mexico, and Minnesota, have predicted turnout as high as 80 percent.

“We are going to have long lines,” with some states expecting voting machine shortages, according to Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate. “But long lines in this election, as in 2004, are not going to deter people from voting, because of the emotional context of this election. They didn’t deter people in 1992 or in 2004, and they’re not going to deter people now.”

Managing long lines has already been a point of contention in key states. In Georgia, voters waited four to five hours to cast early ballots on Wednesday, in spite of last minute changes Tuesday to reduce the eight hour waits voters encountered on Monday, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. A combination of “high turnout, staff and equipment shortages and state computer problems slowed the process.”

Like Gans predicted, however, these issues are not stopping voters from showing up at the polls bright and early.

“It’s a historical event and I want to be part of it,” said Hampton, Ga. voter, Dara Christian, who arrived at her precinct to be second in line shortly after 5 a.m. on Wednesday. According to a Tuesday AJC report, a million ballots had already been cast during more limited voting in the last few weeks. And about 125,095 of those were cast as of Tuesday night.

While officials in various counties addressed some of the problems by supplying extra equipment and staff, according Tuesday’s AJC report, the Democratic Party and election officials are still pleading with Secretary of State Karen Handel to extend early voting in order to support high turnout, including state Democratic Party chairwoman Jane Kidd and DelKalb County Commissioner Lee May.

“It is not my intention to lay blame on any particular, person or body of government,” May wrote in a letter to Handel and Ga. Governor Sonny Perdue. “It is my desire that we don’t inadvertently squelch the desire of so many Georgians to participate in the political process.”

“Handel said Tuesday that Georgia law doesn’t include a mechanism to allow her or Perdue to extend early voting,” according to AJC. Handel said that even if she could allow the extension, it would be a “logistical disaster,” dismissing Kidd’s plea an “orchestrated effort of that political party across the country.”

In Florida, on the other hand, after record turnout Monday,Governor Charlie Crist listened to similar concerns and signed an order to extend early voting hours  to 12 hours a day, over the objections of Secretary of State Kurt Browning, according to the Miami Herald.

“It’s not a political decision,” said Crist, a Republican. “It’s a people decision.”

In Broward and Miami-Dade counties alone, more than 43,000 people cast their votes Monday, “roughly 5,000 more than on any other previous day.”

Other efforts to help ensure Election Day runs smoothly for voters are underway, including the National Campaign for Fair Elections’ hotline, 1-866-OURVote. The line has already received up to 4,000 calls a day, according to New York Times blog, The Caucus. The group plans to have 20 call centers set up around the country by Tuesday with a capacity of handling 100,000 calls on Election Day.

“The notion behind the non-partisan National Campaign phone line is that if problems erupt at polling places on Election Day, the group will have lawyers at the ready to respond to the complaints,” the Times reports.

“So far, most calls have been from voters experiencing problems with their registration along with those trying to locate their polling place, according to Ken Smukler, president of InfoVoter Technologies, the Bala Cynwyd, Pa.company that which manages the call system.”

Among those who will benefit from the voter protection hotline and other precautions learned are the large numbers of new voters around the country. Since 2004, voter registration rose 15 percent in Orange County, Calif. where citizens were allowed to register at a drive-thru elections office window last week, according to the Associated Press. Alabama has 76,000 new voters since 2004, two thirds of whom are African-American, according to the Mobile Register-Press. Last week, two thousand voters registered on a street corner in Kansas, about a quarter of whom were ex-felons who until then thought they were ineligible to vote, according to MSNBC. Newly naturalized Latino and Asian citizens in Los Angeles County doubled last year’s registration rate with 64,000 new voters this year, according to the Los Angeles Times. Up until last week, community groups were “walking precincts, conducting phone banks, holding forums, and distributing multilingual voter guides” to help new citizens become a part of the democratic process.

Historically, Latino, Asian, and African-American citizens have registered and voted at alarmingly lower rates than their White counterparts. In 2006, just 41 percent of African-Americans and 32 percent of Asians and Latinos, respectively, voted in the midterm election compared to 52 percent of Whites, according to Project Vote report, Representational Bias of the 2006 Electorate.  But that may just be changing this year.

“We want people to know we’re here and our next generation is going to be very important in the process,” said recently naturalized citizen, Carlos Romero in the Los Angeles Times.

In Other News:

In Ohio, Wary Eyes On Election Process: Fears of Fraud and Blocked Votes – Washington Post

CLEVELAND — With Ohio still up for grabs in next week’s presidential election, the conversation here has expanded from who will carry the state to how — the nitty-gritty of registration lists, voting machines, court challenges and whether it all will play out fairly.

Provisional Ballots Get Uneven Treatment – Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON — Provisional ballots, one of the fixes the government implemented following the disputed 2000 election, are often proving to be a poor substitute for the real thing.

Erin Ferns is a Research and Policy Analyst with Project Vote.

( – promoted by Be_Devine)

Two months ago, when Del Martin died, we all lost a beacon of light and Phyllis Lyon lost her wife and companion of 56 years.

Upon Del's death, Phyllis said, “Ever since I met Del 55 years ago, I could never imagine a day would come when she wouldn’t be by my side. I am so lucky to have known her, loved her, and been her partner in all things. I also never imagined there would be a day that we would actually be able to get married. I am devastated, but I take some solace in knowing we were able to enjoy the ultimate rite of love and commitment before she passed.” 

But that's not how those who support Prop 8 saw it. This is how they saw it, as captured by the amazing photographer Bill Wilson at Del Martin's memorial service at City Hall in San Francisco.

These people who hide behind the euphemism of “family values” protested Del's memorial with signs like “MOURN FOR YOUR SINS,” “DON'T WORSHIP THE DEAD,” and “YOU'RE GOING TO HELL.”

The public face of those who support Prop 8 is not their real face.  This is who they are.  Narrow minded, hateful bigots who interrupt a memorial service to tell an 83 year old widow that her wife is going to hell for having loved.

These are the people who want to tell Phyllis that she was never really married to Del.  The ones who want to forcibly end my marriage to Brian.  The ones who think they are wise enough to decide who other people can and can't love.

And just where do these people come from that have donated $4,499,258.05 from 10/27-10/30? It's not surprising that the vast, vast majority of the money donated to the Yes on 8 campaign is from out of state.Take a look at the donations from this week alone.  Only a quarter of the donations to Yes on 8 came from California.  The biggest chunk came from Utah.  Texas had a sizable chunk as well.  Take a look at the graph compiled my by lovely husband, Brian Leubitz.

We need to fight these out-of-state hatemongers with all of our power.  Stop the lies!  Stop the hatred!  Walk, knock, call, e-mail, tell everyone you know that we need to protect our residents and our Constitution.  NO ON 8!!!