The Official Dan Boland Voter Guide for the 2020 Los Angeles, California, and US General Election

👈 You’re the one that’s listening to this person about how to cast your votes, so 🤷‍♂️

It’s the 2020 election, it’s been called the most important election of our time, and finally, finally, we can finally actually just fucking vote in it.

Let’s get right fucking to it†.

† Your ballot may be different from my ballot, if you, say, aren’t me, living in my home with me. If you don’t see something on my list that is on your ballot, you’ll have the responsibility of figuring it out for yourself.

† Also, because I know you’re asking already, the California State Ballot Measures (aka “The Props”) are on down the page, so get to scrolling. This guide proceeds in the order of my ballot, so there will be judges and Community College Board Members to talk about first.

LOS ANGELES CITY GENERAL MUNICIPAL ELECTION Member of the City Council, 4th District

✅ Nithya Raman

Nithya is easily the best thing going on in Los Angeles politics and I’m thrilled that I get to vote for her. If you don’t know Nithya, please do yourself a favor and follow her on Twitter or Instagram. Her Twitter threads (which she reposts on IG in Cute Form™) are simply stated THE BEST political information coming out from anybody. An example:

Even if you are not in CD4, or even if you are not in Los Angeles, please take the time to click through and read the thread, click through and read the affordable housing report and plan. It’s breathtaking. Everything she and her excellent team present is incredibly well researched, her policies are exceedingly straightforward (and obvious????), thorough, and incredibly honest. Imagine how this city could live up to our ideals with people like Nithya! It’s exciting!

LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT Member of the Board of Trustees

Seat 1
✅ Dr. Andra Hoffman

Seat 3
✅ David Vela

Seat 5
✅ Nichelle M. Henderson

Nichelle is the only candidate for the Community College District Board of Trustees that I’m going to talk about. The other 3 are incumbents, they are doing fine work, and we can approve of their records by re-electing them.

Nichelle is the only challenger that we’ll be voting for here. In addition to Nichelle being a part of the same crew from #CollegesWeAllDeserve that the incumbents we’re also voting for here are, she’s challenging a current Board Member who has got to go. From the [excellent] DSA-LA Voting Guide:

Her incumbent opponent Scott Svonkin, a former parole officer, was censured after threatening Board President Andra Hoffman and frequently insults non-white students in public comment.

What the living fuck? Reject this chump. This person should not hold office in representative government. Blessedly, there are 7 people running against this chump (read the start of this LA Times endorsement if you’d like to learn why there are so many people on the ballot for these LACCD Board seats, and why it is so very dumb!). Nichelle seems to be the best of the bunch.

An affirmative vote for Nichelle is a vote for a candidate who has proven her focus is on helping LACC students who are navigating homelessness, food insecurity, and other economic hardships, especially as they attempt to navigate furthering their education in the Covid-19 climate. This is the kind of candidate that will serve us very well in the coming years.

Seat 7
✅ Mike Fong

MEMBER OF THE STATE ASSEMBLY 43rd District

✅ Laura Friedman

While Laura does not have a flawless progressive voting record, and progressives love to self-immolate over a less than perfect record, the general consensus seems to be that she has demonstrated a willingness to listen and to adapt when her constituents call her out on policies that are not progressive enough for our district.

Also her only opponent is a Republican who is in no way a serious candidate, who is running a campaign of preventing housing expansion … in California … ??????

UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE 28th District

✅ Adam B. Schiff

I mean, whatever. You’ve heard of him, you’ve seen him on TV. He’s a far better troll of Trump on Twitter than he is a representative for our district, and he’s not exactly an outstanding troll of Trump on Twitter.

The time to make a different decision than Adam Schiff was in the primary, and we didn’t do that.

But we’re obviously not going to be voting for this chump Republican who is in no way a serious person nor candidate.

LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT — MEASURE RR

✅ YES

This measure would extend existing property taxes that were set to expire, so, nobody is paying more, some people just keep paying the same, depending on their situation.

Progressives have some concerns about $450MM of the $7B being earmarked for Charters, but these concerns are massively outweighed by the much-needed upgrades to schools to deal with Covid-19 and also just the general need for modernization of facilities and equipment.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY

✅ George Gascón

JACKIE LACEY MUST GO !

Over 600 Angelenos have been murdered by law enforcement during Jackie Lacey’s 8-year term, and she has yet to prosecute a single case.

It is unacceptable.

In addition to harshly rejecting Lacey’s failed tenure in this office, we can affirm Gascón’s vision for what is the largest local criminal justice jurisdiction in the United States. Gascón has a proven record of decriminalizing drug possession, expunging marijuana convictions, and advocating for reinvestment from jails to mental health programs.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT

Office №72
✅ Myanna Dellinger

Dellinger is a Fulbright Scholar in climate change and law policy, a law professor at USD, and an easy choice over her opponent.

Office №80
✅ Klint James McKay

McKay is an empathetic champion of working people, currently an administrative law judge trying ACA appeals cases. He also is not a prosecutor, like his opponent.

Office №162
✅ David D. Diamond

Listen I love a lawyer named Diamond, I can’t help myself. Let’s quote the Times here:

He has worked as a family lawyer, a civil litigator and a criminal defense lawyer. He’s a former member of the Burbank Police Commission. He’s the better choice over Scott Andrew Yang, a young deputy district attorney who has acknowledged using his middle name on the primary ballot to capitalize on the name recognition of then-presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

lmao. Whatever.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY MEASURE J

✅ YES! ABSOLUTELY YES. YES BECAUSE OF REASONS!

With Measure J, we have the opportunity to dip our toes in real actual policy of Defunding the Police, in a way that can start to prove the efficacy of this approach to community safety, and hopefully serve as a model for further progress.

Reimagine LA is the name of the movement behind Measure J, and if you took part in, supported, or witnessed the massive protests throughout the city this summer, this is the thing that you vote YES on to create outcomes from those protests.

“This is literally how we start to defund the police.” –The Knock

Measure J would move 10% of unrestricted general funds away from LA County Sheriff Department and “into social services like mental healthcare, job training, access to capital for small minority-owned businesses, rent assistance, and restorative justice.” [from the above linked piece from The Knock]

The Sheriff, who we will be voting out harshly in 2022, has stated that this 10% budget decrease will make, “the streets look like Mad Max.”

Any American who has returned to work since the Pandemic began is familiar with budget cuts. Most of us are dealing with budget cuts way north of 10%. That the Sheriff is losing his mind this much over Measure J tells us that it is not at all about the dollar amount being reinvested, and that it is 100% about an idealogical debate that the Sheriff chooses to approach with fear-mongering.

There is no doubt in my mind that, should J pass, the Sheriff will go on a temper tantrum for the remainder of his failed term, surgically singling out progressive areas of the county for “reduced services due to budget cuts,” rather than doing his damn job. We’ll talk more about that in 2022.

Meanwhile, we will prove that Defunding the Police is a policy that works to create a safer and more just Los Angeles County.

✅STATE BALLOT MEASURES! ✅ THE PROPS! ❌ HERE THEY ARE! ❌ RIGHT HERE! ✅

STATE MEASURE 14
❌ NO!

Yeah that’s gonna be a nah for me, dawgg! We support stem cell research (even when it has unintended consequences like saving the life of Donald Trump), but Prop 14 undermines the public interest. I’ll quote the DSA-LA guide here:

The results of publicly-funded research should be provided to the public at a reasonable cost. Unfortunately, Prop 14 perpetuates the lack of accountability and makes it worse by exempting its programs from legislative oversight, with any amendment requiring a 70% vote. These flaws might be due to a real estate developer putting this measure on the ballot without even direct input from the existing stem cell board, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Finally, as a bond measure, Californians will have to pay back nearly double the amount that we borrow from wealthy people to finance it.

And from The Knock: “The biggest problem, though, is the revenue from patents developed in this institute will not go to the public, and there is no commitment to make medical gains made through this research available to the public at reasonable cost.”

Nope.

STATE MEASURE 15
✅ YES!

This is the part where I stan our good friends at LA Taco who are absolutely knocking the journalism game outta the park in LA.

They have excellent, thorough reporting on each of these measures on the LA Taco Voter Guide 2020, and I highly recommend keeping up with them in general.

They explain how the bad law of 1978, Prop 13, which has for 40 years allowed property owners (homeowners and commercial real estate alike) to use the original property assessment as the basis to calculate their property tax burden forever.

A Yes Prop 15 will make that no longer the case for the COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE side. Prop 15 has no affect whatsoever on homeowners in California. Prop 15 also only assesses the new taxes on commercial real estate property owners with property worth over $3MM.

STATE MEASURE 16
✅ YES!

In 1996, California made the incredibly goofy decision to ban any form of Affirmative Action in the public hiring policies of the state for public employment (think, education, civic employees, and also contractors!).

A yes on 16 reverses that, repealing the 1996 Prop 209 in full.

STATE MEASURE 17
✅ YES!

On the long road to restoring voting rights for ALL, this measure starts with restoring voting rights to convicted felons once they have completed their prison term (even if they are on parole).

Everyone should be able to express their right to vote.

STATE MEASURE 18
✅ YES!

We out here back on our expanding voting rights bullshit!

This time we are choosing to allow 17 year olds to vote.

But but! They are only voting in PRIMARY elections IF they are going to be 18 by the General Election. We already smartly allow 17 year olds to register to vote if they are going to be 18 by election day. This would allow people who are eligible to vote in the General Election (November) to have a say in the very same Primary (usually the previous March or June or whatever).

STATE MEASURE 19
❌ NO!

Prop 19 is another one of those “let the rich olds take their 1960s property taxes with them for the rest of their lives no matter how many millions of dollars they sell their house to Millennials for” Props that we seem to vote on literally every single election? Ends up rich olds can collect lots of signatures.

As LA Taco says, “Prop 19 is the purest form of that kind of bullshit.”

Prop 19 would perpetuate the wealth divide, it would exacerbate gentrification, and it would further erode working class communities in California.

STATE MEASURE 20
❌ NO! HELL NO!

This bullshit would be the actual opposite of ending mass incarceration, especially of black people. If you have voted on the last few criminal reform ballot initiatives that we successfully passed to ease “tough on crime” stances that had our prisons so overcrowded that the US Supreme Court had to step in and order the immediate release of inmates to ease, well, guess what buttercup, Prop 20 would reverse all of that progress. It would put us right back where we were a decade ago.

Prop 20 would drop the threshold between Petty Theft (misdemeanor) and Grand Larceny from its current $950 to a draconian $250.

Prop 20 takes another draconian approach by forcing people convicted of misdemeanors to submit their DNA to law enforcement databases.

Supporters think that it is the successful criminal justice reform we’ve achieved over the past decade that is the source of our homelessness crisis. So, that’s crazy and stupid. Like that is not a serious policy position.

Send these fools packing.

STATE MEASURE 21
✅ YES!

Allows local jurisdictions to determine their own rules about Rent Control. If you’re not familiar with California’s housing crisis, you must be a landlord.

STATE MEASURE 22
❌ NO!

Motherfuckin Fuck a Uber and a Lyft and especially a DoorDash.

One way that you can tell that this is bad law created by absolute fucking crooks, is that part of the law requires a 7/8ths majority to undo it.

I cannot express my Fuck This strongly enough via text. Fuck This.

Tech companies like Uber and Lyft and DoorDash can only make their terrible models work if they abuse and don’t pay their employees. It’s sorta like how textile mills could only make their terrible models work if they abused children for their labor. This is the that of this century. Reject it completely.

They’ve spent $180MM funding this measure.

It’s just so obvious.

STATE MEASURE 23
✅ YES!

Okay friends, here’s the one You’ve All Been Wondering About from your pal Dan Boland, who you know suffers a chronic autoimmune disease that makes his kidneys try to kill themselves all the time.

Are you familiar with what dialysis is? Do you know what your kidneys do? Your kidneys filter your blood, constantly. When your kidneys fail, your blood is no longer getting filtered. It’s super mega fucking gross, what’s going on in your body all the time. Dialysis is the process of hooking you up to a machine, and pumping your blood out of your body, through the machine’s filtration system, and then back into your body. You have to do it 3–4x week, because our bodies are disgusting when they don’t work right.

It is entirely likely that I will, at some point in my life, rely on kidney dialysis for my survival. Given that fact, that last time we voted on this very same shit, way back in ye olde 2018 two years ago, I was extremely adamant about my loved ones not doing anything to limit access to dialysis in California, which is something that I felt that the 2018 Prop 8 (not that Prop 8, the other Prop 8) would have done.

My views have evolved.

I truly hope that I never have to rely on dialysis for survival, because dialysis sucks. But for the many Californians who currently do have to rely on dialysis for survival, a grossly disproportionate amount of whom are black (especially in LA), they are being failed by a predatory industry. That “Big Dialysis” is a thing that exists in this world is pretty fucking disgusting in and of itself. But the particular 2 monopolistic organizations that own most of dialysis access in California deserve to suffer.

The requirement of doctors in the Prop as written bothers me, because the doctors don’t need to be Nephrologists (kidney doctors) nor do they need to be trained in emergency medicine. And I tell you what happens when dialysis fucks up, well, it’s an emergency involving the kidneys. However, the law also allows a nurse practitioner instead of a doctor. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than the current *neither a doctor nor a nurse practitioner are required to be available in functioning dialysis clinics*. A lot better.

The law also creates a more labor-friendly environment in which the dialysis center employees will be more able to unionize. And that’s great, because fuck “Big Dialysis.”

STATE MEASURE 24
❌ NO!

This is a contentious one! Nobody seems to have a true up or down!

This is a 52-page ballot initiative. That alone fills me with doubt and dread. It also creates a 50-PERSON new oversight board at the State level, and wow, 50 people is a lot of people on an oversight board. Like what.

California passed the nation’s foremost privacy laws in 2018 with the California Consumer Privacy Act. You may remember when you started getting ALL OF THE NOTIFICATIONS ABOUT COOKIES ALL THE TIME SWEET FUCKIN JESUS.

Yes, the cookies notifications are extremely annoying to deal with, and the act of actually “opting out” of having your data mined is essentially impossible. Thus, I do submit that the CCPA is a less than ideal law that has had some messy consequences, and likely needs to be cleaned up. It is also a law about Tech and Tech changes really quickly, so, we should probably keep up with it.

Tech companies are also extremely good at finding loopholes in laws, likesuchas when Google and Facebook decided that by stating in their EULAs that they are “sharing” your data “with partners” instead of stating in their EULAs that they are “selling” your data “to buyers” that that exempted them from the law’s intent.

Prop 24 has its heart in the right place in attempting to close some of those loopholes and strengthen the CCPA. In that noble effort, I support it.

However, a 52-page initiative about the incredibly nuanced complications of Big Tech and Data Privacy simply is not something that you can take to the public for an up or down vote. I’m all for democracy, but, literally if you are reading these words, you are not informed enough a voter to know what you’re doing with a Prop like this.

And that, friends, is why we vote representatives to government at the State Assembly and State Senate. If CCPA is not doing its job well, the Assembly should create legislation to fix it.

For these reasons, I recommend a NO on 24. But as I said, I support the intent, and I think 24 passing will give us a *new* set of bullshit to deal with even as it solves some of the old bullshit, but I don’t think it would be dangerous or bad to pass it.

I’d just like to see something *better* crafted at the Assembly (oh! Prop 24 was crafted by 2 assemblymembers!) rather than this kind of incredibly complicated lawmaking going directly to voters, who genuinely can barely keep anything together at all right now.

STATE MEASURE 25
❌ NO!

Prop 25 replaces the Cash Bail system (which, we agree, is bad) with a system that is entirely worse and even more racist! Wow! How did they achieve it!

Algorithms have been proven to be racist, often by design (fully have seen programmers defend computers thinking that white is better than black).

Prop 25 automates racial profiling through racist “risk assessment” algorithms.

I highly recommend reading the LA Taco report on Prop 25 at the bottom of this page, because it is thorough and links out to a bunch of stories about why algorithms are racist and Minority Report’ing our risk assessment system would be a horrifying mistake that would again increase mass incarceration rates for black people.

It is the opposite of what we want to do.

🇺🇸 CONGRATULATIONS, CITIZEN! 🦅

You have made it to the end of my voter guide.

If I need to tell you to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris instead of Donald Trump and Mike Pence, go fuck yourself.

🙃 RESULTS ✅

✅ — Jackie Lacey is gone
✅ — Measure J passed — we are going to be a model for Defunding the police
✅ — Nichelle Henderson ousted the chump Scott Svonkin on the Community College Board
✅ — Mark Ridley-Thomas has a huge lead for Council District 10
✅ — Nithya Raman’s race is tight but she’s pulled ahead well enough so far
✅ — Parolees have their voting rights restored
✅ — Killed the “tougher on petty crime” mass incarceration cop love fest Prop 20
✅ — We did not replace our very bad Cash Bail system with a new system that is even more racist and way worse

☹️ No change to commercial property taxes
☹️ No affirmative action
☹️ No 17 year olds voting in primaries
☹️ Old rich people can take their low low property taxes with them
☹️ No Rent Control, again. Again. Again. Never gonna get rent control.
☹️ Uber, Lyft, & DoorDash can abuse their labor forever now
☹️ We passed that not great stem-cell research bond, but, eh, it’s not the end of the world

🙃 We did pass that consumer privacy thing but nobody really knows what that means
🙃 We shot down the dialysis thing again. Maybe the workers will just unionize and stop bothering us about it?