Cal & SF's Props, P&F & Green Results at 88% Cal precincts reporting

With 88% of California precincts and 100% of San Francisco precincts reporting, we have the usual reactionary election results of a minority of the population, mostly not the workingclass, voting for gambling statewide and for the police in San Francisco. Peace & Freedom Party and the Greens need to register millions of the workingclass if we are to see better election results.

From the California Secretary of State at http://vote.ss.ca.gov/ we learn that 6.5 million people constitute 88% of the precincts reporting, which means about 10 million people probably voted, out of 27 million adults in California.

In San Francisco, at http://www.sfgov.org/site/elections_index.asp?id=70716, the voter turnout was 209,000, in a city with 600,000 adults. That figure will probably rise to 250,000 when the absentee and provisional ballots are counted.

Gambling is always taking from the needy and giving to the greedy and the voters supported the reactionary gambling propositions 94 through 97 with about 55% of the vote, all of which circumvent labor and environmental laws under the guise of helping the Indians as the owners of these gambling rackets claim that since they are separate nations, they do not have to abide by the labor and environmental laws fought for by the US workingclass, both Indian and non-Indian. The amount of money alone spent on two weeks of daily slick mailers just before election day should have been fair warning that this is a sleazy racket, which gambling always is. The fact that the most educated, most conservative sector of the population voted around 55% for this garbage means this rotten society is in a state of profound decay.

Then we have so-called progressive San Francisco voting for Proposition B to enrich the police, whose department needs to have its funds cut and its police brutality and ticketing of the homeless eliminated. Clearly, most of the workingclass did not vote in San Francisco.

The one bright spot was the defeat of Prop 93, changing the term limits laws. This proposition was the primary excuse for California having this early primary for president only, while all the other primary races are on the June ballot, causing the California taxpayers to pay for 3 elections this year, while the State Legislature refuses to raise the taxes on the rich, those who make over $200,000 a year, but instead they and the fascist governor Schwarzenegger, consider cutting vital programs, including education, needed by the workingclass. The Democrat-Republican team of the Republican governor and the majority Democratic Legislature need to be told to tax the rich and increase all of the programs for the poor, as well as to expand public universities, and abolish the death penalty and the prison-punishment concentration camp system.

The Peace & Freedom Party and Green Party primaries are beauty contests as the candidate for each is decided at the nominating conventions held before the November election. The fact that statewide 74-year-old Ralph Nader is popular among the party regulars of P&F and the Greens means that neither has a strong workingclass base as Nader cannot build voting for these peace parties among the workingclass, the base both must have to grow. While Nader received 2.8 million votes for president natiownide in 2000, he received only 396,953 votes in 2004, clearly demonstrating that his time has passed and it is time to move on. Cynthia McKinney came in second for both parties statewide and came in first in San Francisco in the Green Party. As she is not a socialist, she will make a good Green Party candidate for President. Gloria La Riva came in third statewide, and that may change when 100% of the precincts report. She will make a good candidate for the socialist Peace & Freedom Party. The non-voting workingclass, who are primarily Latino and African-American, must be registered either Peace & Freedom or Green, preferably P&F, and having Cynthia McKinney for the Greens and Gloria La Riva for P&F as presidential candidates will go a long way toward that urgently needed goal.