Word: balloters
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...cable news channels, in which the prize is a budget mess to clean up and 34 million ungovernable Californians to lead. As the final deadline for entering the race passed Saturday evening, Conan the Candidate was one of several dozen vying for that responsibility. Among the others on the ballot: socialite turned populist cable pundit Arianna Huffington, ex--baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, pornographer Larry Flynt and porn star Mary Carey. Representing the et tu, Brute wing of Davis' party is his Lieutenant Governor, Cruz Bustamante...
...only prediction that seems safe to make at this point is that the recall election will get weirder. In the latest TIME/CNN poll, only 35% of registered voters say they would vote to keep Davis, which will be the first question on the ballot. At the same time, Californians will be asked who should replace him. In a field this jammed with candidates, the next Governor could conceivably be a candidate who is the choice of 5% or even less. It's entirely possible that 49% could vote to keep Davis as Governor--he needs more than 50% to defeat...
...money and putting it all on television. The public has reacted to these soulless exercises with disdainful apathy; Californians tend to be more interested when the state's nutty kernel of political extremists put some hot-button initiative--about race, immigration or taxes, inevitably--on the ballot. Indeed, there is a weird karmic genius to the current electoral gimmick, the movement to recall Governor Gray Davis from office. It has turned politics itself into a ballot issue--with Davis in the dock, representing a system run aground...
...public's right to recall a defective politician in California, as well as the right to pass legislation by ballot vote, was a populist reform inserted into the state constitution 100 years ago. These changes assumed a responsible electorate and a powerful, corrupt political class. The first assumption was overly romantic and the second overly cynical. Today California suffers from an excess of democracy and a dearth of citizenship. In the past 25 years--starting with the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, which limited the increase in property taxes to 1% per year--California has passed a slew...
...current recall process is particularly ridiculous. The ballot will have two questions. The first will be yea or nay on Gray Davis; the second will be a list of candidates--not including Davis--to replace him. Davis might lose the governorship with 49% of the vote and be replaced by Candidate X with 10%. There will be dozens, perhaps hundreds, of candidates. All it takes is $3,000 and 150 signatures to get on the ballot. Larry Flynt of Hustler Magazine has declared. Both millionaire Michael Huffington and his egregious ex-wife Arianna may run. Darrell Issa is running; William...