Was there an election yesterday. A record number of you, even those who actually registered to vote, didn’t bother. I know it wasn’t just because you forgot. It was virtually impossible to stay below the campaign radar for the last few days. Was it because you don’t care who sits in those offices and makes decisions which might change your life? Or was it because you didn’t want any of those people whose names were on the ballot to be sitting in those chairs? If that’s the case, what choice do you have and what can you do about it? Precious little. There’s apathy, for sure, but it’s not an "I don’t care." kind of apathy; it’s a "This sucks and there’s nothing I can do about it," kind of apathy. I liked what Chamba said this week in discussing the cheery topic of stolen elections. He said that our only hope is the ballot initiative. Most people would vote for well-crafted initiatives for campaign and election reform. Now who’s going to gather all those signatures?

I have a couple of modest proposals which I trot out nearly every time we have a statewide election. Campaign finance reform seems pretty simple. Don’t allow any candidate for public office to accept any money from anyone, not even him or herself. Instead, the government establishes a fund to publicly finance campaigns, and make it stingy. Every candidate who qualifies to run for the same office gets the same amount of money, regardless of party affiliation. That would level the playing field and force the Asses and Elephants to change their deceptive ways. For primary elections, instead of forcing the voters to vote only among candidates of the party to which they are registered, put all the names on the same ballot and let anybody vote for anybody.

For obvious reasons, you know, the usual stuff about money and power, some very powerful people are pushing very hard for electronic voting systems in which the count the computer spits out can never be verified. Whether elections are being stolen with the aid of such systems or not, the solution to that seems simple, too. A ballot initiative requiring a paper trail with full public access probably need be only a couple of paragraphs long. Unlike my proposals about campaign finance reform, nearly everyone would vote to keep the paper trail. The only opposition would come from those who make the voting machines and those who want to steal elections. Of course, those are some of the most powerful people in the world, so maybe it’s not so simple after all.

So it’s Angelides who gets to duke it out with Arnold for the next five months. He tries hard to look like he has some warmth, but it always looks like he’s stretching. He talks a good game on the environment, but the possibility of having a rich real estate developer as governor terrifies me. How would you like to be Steve Westly. He’s said to have dropped $35 million out of his own pocket in a losing effort. The papers and the talking heads went on and on about what a dirty, negative campaign it was. How can you expect to win an election without pointing out why you think your opponents aren’t as good as you? Anyway, the "negative" stuff Westly and Angelides threw at each other was just small change. Westly said Angelides promoted sprawl and built in flood plains. Well, he is kind of a sprawl guy, but he was a builder in Sacramento where there’s no place that isn’t a flood plain. Angelides criticized Westly because, as State Controller, he awarded a contract to a friend who then took the money and did exactly the work for which the grant was intended. He just did what we all do. He relied on someone he knew and trusted. By now Westly and Angelides are making nice to each other and talking about uniting to capture the governor’s office in November.

I haven’t said a word before about the apparent bad blood and loose books in the Nevada City Hall, because I don’t quite understand it. Apparently the city manager doesn’t think much of Cathy Wilcox-Barnes and put her on paid administrative leave from her full-time job with the city. "Paid administrative leave" is a euphemism for "I’d like to fire you, but I don’t have the goods on you, so just stay the hell out of the office." She’s still in the office, however, because she’s also the City Clerk, an office to which she was reelected on Tuesday. Pretty strange politics. Her only opponent at the time, Yolanda Bachtell, essentially withdrew after it was too late to get her name off the ballot, so she went around telling everyone not to vote for her. Then city treasurer Neil Locke decided he was running for the job as a write-in. He finished third. In other words, he was beaten by someone who told the voters she didn’t want their votes. When Neil was elected treasurer by a margin of three or four votes, he told me his new nickname was Landslide Locke. Same nickname this time, but for a different reason.

The City Council gets a new look next year with both incumbents on the ballot being defeated by Sheila Stein and Barbara Coffman. We hope these new people can make some sense out of the apparent dogfight among the staff. Kerry Arnett finished just four votes behind Coffman, so he might want to see the ballots counted again. On the other hand, if he’s still a loser after the recount, he has to pay for it. That probably costs more than a city councilman gets paid.

The Union ran a piece on Monday about a flyer attacking Stein being distributed last weekend. Stein said it was a low blow because she didn’t have time to respond, and The Union said it was unprecedented. The Union has a short memory. Dave Tobiassen used the same surprise last minute attack strategy on Paul Matson in a county supervisor race a few years ago, because Paul hadn’t been paying his parking tickets. Paul paid up, but he lost anyway.

Kathleen Smith beat back a challenge by Gregory Diaz to hold onto the job of county Clerk-Recorder. This is more important than it sounds, because the person who sits in that chair gets to count the votes. Smith’s election probably will make things uncomfortable for some people who work under her. At least a couple of them have publicly criticized Smith and urged people to vote for Diaz.