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Dan Walters' suggestion to eliminate limits on how much money California elected officials can raise from special interests would weaken disclosure, increase the power of wealthy donors, and take us back to the days of huge campaign contributions that led to the recall of Gov. Gray Davis.

Dear Assembly Member Feuer, Please accept this letter of support for AB 1436, which will help extend provisional ballots to voters who register after the 15-day prior registration deadline for elections.

Californians’ approval rating for their legislature has fallen to a historically low nine percent. Why then, don’t voters unelect them? Part of the reason may be that powerful interests who benefit from the current system have perfected techniques of directing huge sums of campaign funds toward candidates whose election will benefit them. As a result, candidates who aren’t favored by the donor class don’t raise much money and don’t win elections. When donors matter more than voters, low voter approval ratings don’t translate into electoral upheavals. This stark reality no doubt keeps many qualified candidates from even running in the first place.

An affiliate of California Common Cause, the Sacramento Media Group comprises community members who represent the League of Women Voters of Sacramento County, Access Sacramento, the community access cable television station, and faculty members from local colleges. SMG, along with numerous state and national public interest organizations, has long expressed concern about the quantity and quality of television news and public affairs coverage. This report directs its attention to local broadcast television stations and how they carried out their public interest obligations while playing a role in the 2008 primary election cycle.

What type of news gets covered in Los Angeles on local television newscasts? And how much of it is even local? To answer these and many other questions, a media reform group associated with California Common Cause monitored the local Los Angeles late-night television news broadcasts for a snapshot of news content.

This is the Executive Summary to the report: Sacramento Television Coverage of the November 2004 General Election