The California state Registrar reported 41% turnout on teevee, lower than their prediction [of 42%].
I don't believe the _Times_. (But I don't believe my local TV guys, either, they are horrible liars).
This was California's first "open primary" (meaning voters could cross registered party lines and also the first in living memory where one candidate used force of law to close the campaign offices of his opponent. Attorney General Dan Lungren is running for Governor on the Republican ticket. His order closing the local Cannabis Healing Center also closed the offices (on the same premises) of long-time medical marijuana activist Dennis Peron, who is _also_ running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Despite hearings on 26-27 June (I attended), Judge Cahill ruled that Peron would effectively have to run his campaign from the street, without access to his own rented premises and with a limited amount of time to gain access to files, switch the telephone banks, and so on. In effect, Lungren forced his Republican opponents' campaign office to close, permanently, eight days before the election.
Some socialists might be inclined to snicker at some of the ironies of that case, but consider: if this sort of repression can fall on a Republican candidate in an election campaign in hyperdemocratic California, it is Not A Good Thing for the rest of us.
- David Stevens
(San Francisco)