According to Green Party Watch, three California Green Party members won important non-partisan elections. Gayle McLaughlin was re-elected Mayor of Richmond, California. Dan Hamburg (who was the Green Party’s gubernatorial nominee in California in 1998) was elected to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. Bruce Delgado was re-elected Mayor of Marina, a city in Monterey County.
The write-in votes for state representative have not been counted yet in Gunnison County, Colorado. Gunnison County is the most populous county in Kathleen Curry’s district, and is her home county. Without Gunnison County’s votes, Curry is not winning. She is Colorado’s only independent legislator, and she was being forced to run for re-election as a write-in candidate. See this story about the vote-counting. Curry did carry Hinsdale County, the least populous of the five counties in the district.
The Marin County, California District Attorney dropped charges against Laura Wells. See this story. Wells was the Green Party gubernatorial nominee. She was arrested for trespassing for attempting to use a valid ticket to sit in the audience at one of the Jerry Brown-Meg Whitman gubernatorial debates.
The Independent American Party appears to have won four partisan races for county office in Nevada. The party re-elected the County Clerk/Recorder in Eureka County. It also elected the District Attorney of Esmerelda County, a County Commissioner in White Pine County, and the Public Administrator in Nye County. Thanks to Cody Quirk for this news. The Eureka County win was by only three votes, so that result is not yet certain.
On November 2, redistricting reform ballot measures passed in both Florida and California. In Florida, the measures require the legislature to draw congressional and legislative district boundaries without regard for partisanship and without regard for helping incumbents. The lines must respect county boundaries to the extent possible. Both measure (one for U.S. House boundaries, and one for legislative boundaries) needed 60%, but both attained it.
In California, over 60% of the voters voted to transfer authority for drawing U.S. House district boundaries to the same Citizens Commission that was already in place for drawing legislative boundaries. A rival measure, to eliminate the Citizens Commission, failed with only 40% of the vote.
