The Blog

A week ago, when it seemed less stupid for tens of thousands of people to pack together in line to touch the same iPad, LA had an Election Day.

That Election Day, depressingly, is not even close to over. There are still about 32% of votes left to count. The guy who runs our elections, County Registrar Dean Logan, is taking his precious time “making sure the results are accurate” or some stupid thing. More like Slow-County Registrar Dean Logan!!!!

But we have a decent idea of what went down at this point. The newest update should come later this afternoon (Tuesday), at which point this post will be updated.

Here’s what happened in some of LA’s most important local races:

CITY COUNCIL 

LA has 15 Councilmembers. They’re the most powerful city legislators in the country: each of them has more than 250,000 constituents, they control a $10 billion […]

It’s Monday, March 9th! Last week was a big one, with voters going to their polling places voting centers all over the county for the first major election of the year.

First, Alissa brings up the way that the fear over Coronavirus has and hasn’t changed our behaviors locally. Many of the people who stand potentially at risk of the virus, and particularly seniors, don’t have information from the City and County about the disease. Helping your neighbors out and checking in with them is preparation!

Scott wants to talk about city council redistricting, which will begin ramping up later this year and get going in earnest following the completion of the decennial census. In Los Angeles, redistricting is extremely political and districts are gerrymandered to break up potentially powerful voting blocks. Scott says that as recent election cycles have continued to show the emergence of a powerful progressive politics locally (and perhaps for the first time), city councilmembers might be trying to figure out how to dilute that power during redistricting.

It’s Monday, and we’re back with another episode. Hayes is out of commission (feel better, Hayes!) but Alissa and Scott are holding it down in his absence.

First, we talk about how hard it is to find a Metro electric bike in the central city’s bike share network. It turns out only 40 out of 1000 bikes are electric. This is a bummer for people who are not that into being sweaty when they show up at their destination!

We’ve also been noticing that Uber’s dockless Jump bikes have been making a comeback, after they all but disappeared from city streets following a fight between the ride-hailing giant and the city of Los Angeles over user privacy last fall. Scott and Alissa discuss why Uber is the only company who seems to have a problem with LA’s data requests and whether or not it actually poses a risk for user privacy. At CityLab, Laura Bliss has an article that breaks down the […]

Los Angeles needs more shade trees. We deserve more oaks, willows, and the lesser-known (but equally distinguished!) camphor and pepper trees. We need them to cover us at boozy picnics or our children’s soccer matches. On a cloudless July sky, a walk around the block feels more like a plunge into a sea of asphalt. Planting more shade trees would bring a vast improvement to our city’s climate resilience and public health. 

And yet, they are missing from our most vulnerable neighborhoods. Instead we get palm trees, and we love them so much for what they symbolize that we perpetuate their suffering until they retaliate.

Palm trees are the first things I look at when I sense an earthquake or a storm. A disaster feels imminent when they rock nauseously from the bottom of their stalks. Other times it’s the […]

Hi! This is the complete, probably unnecessarily thorough voter guide put together by the hosts of LA Podcast, a weekly podcast about what’s going on in LA.

Every measure and candidate at the state, LA county, and LA city level are described and endorsed with our opinions below. We didn’t cover any local elections for cities other than Los Angeles, though.

“Wait. I do not want to read this entire thing. I just want a cheat sheet I can save to my phone and use in the voting booth, then go back to living my life.” Okay, here you go:

If you finish this guide and are still thirsty for more hot ballot action, we recommend checking out Voter’s Edge California and the DSA-LA voter guide, which has a ton of campaign finance information that we didn’t cover.

Here’s a table of contents:1. State Props2. LA City and County Props3. Statewide Elections4. Congressional Elections5. State Senate6. State Assembly7. Sheriff […]