Report #14 on the Six Californias Signature Verification Process

September 6, 2014 steve.chessin 5 Comments

Two more counties have finished their random sampling, according to today’s update from the Secretary of State’s office: one large (Orange County, with a validity rate of 67.9%), and one small (Amador County, 68.1%). The overall validity rate is unchanged at 67.6%, so with 769,154 projected valid signatures, Six Californias may be headed for a full count.

Fourteen counties still have to complete their random sampling, which by law they must do by next Friday. With Orange County having reported, the top ten (by the number of raw signatures they reported) are now Los Angeles (311,924 raw signatures), Fresno (38,382), San Luis Obispo (12,906), El Dorado (11,649), Humboldt (7,230), Tuolumne (4,732), Nevada (4,322), Yuba (3,720), Lassen (2,066), and Glenn (1,910). The top two have to check 3% of their signatures; the others have to check 500 (unless they want to check them all).

–Steve Chessin

President, Californians for Electoral Reform (CfER)

www.cfer.org

The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of CfER.

Uncategorized

California Supreme Court rules that franchise employees are not “joint employees”

September 5, 2014 Hendy

In a case not mentioned in the major print or broadcast media in the golden state the California Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, has ruled that an employee of a Domino’s Pizza franchisee is not a joint or co-employee of the parent company and franchisor, Domino’s Pizza. The case is Patterson v Domino’s Pizza.

This decision by the California Supreme Court (CSC) is timely as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is reviewing the same issue relating to a claim by employees of a McDonald’s franchisee. The General Counsel of the NLRB has ruled that the plaintiffs are “joint employees” of both the franchisee and McDonald’s Corporation.

It is my understanding that the full NLRB has yet to rule on the General Counsel’s opinion, but It is very likely that the Democratic majority on the NLRB will agree. If the NLRB does agree, McDonald’s will appeal in federal court.

The Domino’s case involved a young woman who worked at a Domino’s franchise location in Southern California, who sued the franchisee for sexual harassment and included the franchisor in the lawsuit as a defendant. Domino’s litigated the specific legal issue of the right of any plaintiff to claim that employees of a franchisee are also employees of Domino’s Pizza. Domino’s won at summary judgement at the trial court based on California’s current franchise and basic contract law. The franchise agreement between Domino’s, and its franchisees, is explicit that franchisee employees are not employees of Domino’s. However, the California Second District Court of Appeal overturned the trial court decision and Domino’s appealed to the CSC. The decision by the CSC is on the issue of whether, by law, the case could go to the trial court to determine if Domino’s met the test to be considered a co-employer of the plaintiff. Below is a link to the Court’s website that has a link to both the actual opinions, as well as the briefs filed in this case.

http://appellatecases.courtinf…

The case was covered by an online business journal and their summary is here:

http://www.therecorder.com/hom…

The CSC decision will have no direct impact on the NLRB, and its decision process, and no formal impact on the likely federal litigation. However, the information in the opinions and briefs in the Domino’s case will be well used in the federal McDonald’s litigation, by both sides. The McDonald’s case is likely to end up at the SCOTUS, if McDonald’s were to lose at a lower court.

The management and business friendly Forbes also covered the case, and the opinions, with a jab at the Obama administration thrown in for good measure. Their article is here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/da…

Jerry Brown

Governor’s Debate Gets Fiesty

September 5, 2014 Brian Leubitz 1 Comment

Governor and challenger spar in sole debate

by Brian Leubitz

Neel Kashkari had his big moment in the spotlight last night at the governor’s debate. Jerry Brown remains the prohibitive favorite with a 19.5 point lead in the RCP polling average. At this point, it would take something of a disaster on multiple fronts for Kashkari to surge past Brown.

But Brown is taking nothing for granted. His big war chest remains at the ready in case anything changes, and he is directly taking on his challenger. It began with a strong barb at Governor Brown from Kashkari:

His 40 years in government has left them out of touch with the struggles of working families. He has declared a governor — a california comeback. It is not only go we have the had the best schools in california. Today’s schools are ranked 46th out of 50 states. We used to have a vibrant job market. Today it is 44th out of 50 states. (CSPAN transcript)

And it just got more testy as it went along, closing with a nice summary by the Governor:

Four years ago when i came to Sacramento the place was in a shambles. A majority of people in California now feel we are on the right track. Five years ago only 13% felt we were on the right track. We are taking care of water and workers compensation and created a rainy day fund. {Before I arrived…}We lost 1.4 million jobs. Since i have been elected almost 1.3 million have come back and that isn’t by accident.

And today’s Field Poll confirms that topline number:

Californians are taking a more positive view of the direction of the state than then did four years ago when near record proportions (80%) felt the state was seriously off on the wrong track. Currently, slightly more voters believe the state is moving in the right direction (43%) as feel it is off on the wrong track (41%).

That is a big change. Yes, there is still work to do, but today California functions in a way it never did under Gov. Schwarzenegger. There are a lot of factors for that, but certainly Brown can claim a big chunk of that credit. He has made a difference in Sacramento, bringing competence and a steady firm hand on the tiller.

Kashkari attempted to talk about his “middle class plan” at every opportunity, but fundamentally it is just more Arnold-esque hooey. Lower taxes, and the jobs will flow. Meanwhile back in the real world, Brown can point to what he has already done with Prop 30 in bringing financial stability to the state for the past few years.

The whole debate is just under an hour, and worth a viewing (or two). You can watch it here or use the handy iframe to the right.

Uncategorized

Debate Goes Down Tonight

September 5, 2014 Brian Leubitz

CSPAN will air and live stream debate

by Brian Leubitz

Neel Kashkari will have his big moment in the spotlight tonight at the governor’s debate. Jerry Brown remains the prohibitive favorite with a 19.5 point lead in the RCP polling average. At this point, it would take something of a disaster on multiple fronts for Kashkari to surge past Brown.

But Brown is taking nothing for granted. His big war chest remains at the ready in case anything changes, and he is directly taking on his challenger.

California

Report #13 on the Six Californias Signature Verification Process

September 4, 2014 steve.chessin 1 Comment

Two more counties have completed their random sampling according to today’s update from the Secretary of State’s office; one large (Riverside, with a validity rate of 73.3%), and one small (Santa Cruz, with a validity rate of 60.1%). I note that Riverside has a very high validity rate for a large county (74,478 raw signatures). No county with more raw signatures has a validity rate higher than 69.5%. (Of course, we still have to hear from Los Angeles County.) The largest county with a validity rate higher than 73.3% is Ventura (27,134 raw signatures, validity rate 82.2%).

The overall validity rate is 67.6%, up somewhat from the 67.0% validity rate in my previous report. That gives a projected valid signature count of 769,154 signatures, up sufficiently from the 762,328 in that previous report for Six Californias to qualify for a full count. This bodes well for Six Californias as long as the remaining counties average roughly a 67.3% or better validity count.

Sixteen counties still have to complete their random sampling. (According to the Secretary of State, they have to complete the process by September 12th, a week from this Friday.) The top ten (by the number of raw signatures they reported) are now Los Angeles (311,924 raw signatures), Orange (52,217), Fresno (38,382), San Luis Obispo (12,906), El Dorado (11,649), Humboldt (7,230), Tuolumne (4,732), Nevada (4,322), Yuba (3,720), and Lassen (2,066). The top three have to check 3% of their signatures; the others have to check 500 (unless they want to check them all).

(Note that I had made a mistake in Report #11, carried over in Report #12, where I had included Kern county in the list of uncompleted counties even though they had completed their random sampling. I have corrected those previous reports and triple-checked the list in this report.)