News Clips

Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of California Common Cause, a government watchdog group, said they are not opposed to remote voting provided that lawmakers are participating from a known location and safeguards are in place to make sure they are not being influenced by someone off camera. But he opposed the Assembly’s plan to let lawmakers cast votes by proxy. He said proxies are not allowed to change their vote if new facts or arguments come to light that might be important to consider, undermining the deliberative function of the Legislature.

Still, the big-dollar donations are impossible to ignore, argued Sean McMorris, a policy and organizing consultant with California Common Cause. “Those campaign contributions are going to create goodwill between [industry donors] and politicians — whether they be direct or through independent expenditure committees that benefit a particular candidate. The message is received. Any politician who says they can disconnect themselves from the large sums of money is lying.”

While the Latino pool had been cut in half, there was still a 90.4% chance, according to Jonathan Stein of Common Cause, that the random draw would select at least one Latino. Yet, against those odds, and much to the consternation of many involved in the process, the first eight selected included zero Latino commissioners.

“The removal of seven of the 14 Latinx finalists by legislative leaders has been controversial, especially because the strikes are shrouded in secrecy, compared to an otherwise transparent selection process,” said Kathay Feng, Common Cause national redistricting and representation director. “The closed-door striking of finalists … leaves open the question of why so many qualified Latinx applicants were removed from the pool, undermining the voters’ mandate of creating a commission that reflects the state’s racial and ethnic diversity.”

“The legislative strikes could have increased the Latino percentage further,” he said. “Not only did they not do that, they made Latino underrepresentation worse. There were truly exceptional Latinos and Latinas removed by the Legislature.”

Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director at California Common Cause: “Given that the state legislature has passed a law codifying the governor’s executive order and the lawsuits are now obviously moot, plaintiffs are only continuing them to interfere with California’s elections and to sow confusion among our voters. These lawsuits were based on the flimsiest of claims to begin with. Now they have no basis at all.”