Working towards restoring election funding to the Calif. state budget

One reason for California's abysmal voter turnout is the fact that voter turnout is not a priority for our political leaders. After all, the system worked just fine as-is for them.

Through the California Voter Foundation, I've been working with folks from a number of different organizations to urge our legislators and governor to demonstrate their commitment to improving the election process in California by restoring funding to the budget to pay for programs the state funded up until 2011, when the financial crisis hit the state hard and lots of programs got cut.

Now that the state is back in the black, it's time to start paying counties the funds that they are, by law, entitled to receive from the state when it imposes new programs on counties. See the April 24, 2015 edition of CVF-NEWS for an update on our recent victory, getting $77.4 million restored to the budget in the Senate's budget subcommittee to pay for election mandates. Also covered in this edition are two bills CVF is supporting - SB 365/Pavley and AB 477/Mullin - to implement recommendations stemming from our 2014 vote-by-mail study.