It’s Time to VOTE! You should have received your ballot in the mail already. Send it in at least a week early to ensure that your county has adequate time to verify your ballot before election day.

As for who/what to vote for? Well, the Democratic endorsements are a pretty good place to start. And finish, for your statewide races. The statewide endorsed candidates are all well-qualified. A particular shout out to Ricardo Lara, who would be the first out LGBT statewide elected official, and Tony Thurmond, who is in a tough state superintendent race against the charter school candidate, Marshall Tuck. Lara is in quite a tough race as well, with Republican turned independent Steve Poizner. Poizner maybe found it tough to get traction with the extremists in the CA GOP, but he’s still very conservative, and we don’t need him back in statewide office.

How about a nice table on how the parties endorsed on the ballot measures? You can find a lot more information on the very informative California Choices November summary page.

A few of these deserve special mention: it is imperative that we vote NO on Props 5 & 6. Prop 5 would strengthen (!) Prop 13 in the state, despite sounding like a nice simple handout to seniors. Problem is that it mostly goes to wealthier seniors, and is paid for by younger homebuyers. Prop 6 is the gas tax referendum. While the gas tax measure wasn’t perfect, for a multitude of reasons, we need to ensure that it doesn’t get overturned at the ballot.

Now, go find your local ballot measure pamphlet and start researching, the election is three weeks from tomorrow!