For many California drivers, there have been few worse plagues than the red light cameras that once operated in more than 70 cities. At their peak, red light cameras featured tickets costing upwards of $450 for “offenses” like stopping for a red light, but with the front bumper a foot over a painted restraining line, or stopping before making a right turn, but having the camera “see” it as not a stop. Judges never allowed …

Almost one year from today – Jan. 26, 2016 – voters in New Hampshire will don parkas and trek through snowdrifts to tell the rest of America who should be running for President and who should not. That vote will come eight days after the Iowa caucuses draw a few tens of thousands of diehard activists from both major parties to give their version of the same thing. Within less than three weeks, Nevada and South Carolina will follow, ensuring yet another …

Now that U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer has made it official she will retire when her fourth term ends in early 2017, fellow Democrats are lining up to seek her job. A Senate seat is a plum job anywhere, especially for Democrats in California, where it has been decades since any of them lost a reelection bid for statewide office. Whomever takes Ms. Boxer’s place can expect to become …

After 12 years of favoring big utility companies over individual consumers, Michael Peevey has at last left the state Public Utilities Commission. Many of his ill-considered — some say corrupt — decisions will linger. Mr. Peevey departed in a carefully stage-managed mid-December commission meeting, forced by scandal to abandon previous plans to seek reappointment by Gov. Brown for another six-year term. Just how problematic was the Peevey reign?

Weeks, perhaps months, before taking their oaths of office for statewide posts like lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, attorney general and insurance commissioner, the five Democrats in those jobs were thinking of their impending runs for higher office. For the first time in more than 20 years, there is a strong likelihood that …

The two major parties will be arrayed as usual when Gov. Brown looks out from the podium of the state Assembly chamber as he delivers his combination inaugural and state of the state speech, Democrats on one side, Republicans on the other. But that will be slightly misleading. For voters have succeeded in …

The reports came in from all across America during the recent election: Electronic voting machines were flipping some votes from Republican to Democrat in some states. From Democrat to Republican in others. In one state with several close races, Wisconsin, electronic vote-counting machines registered just 16 votes in a city where about 5,350 persons cast ballots. Other reports came from states as diverse as Connecticut and Texas, North Carolina and Illinois. No problems in California. Beware, though, that good news may not last much longer. Serious potential problems with electronic voting machines built by companies like Diebold and Election Systems & Software became a major fear in the middle of the last decade, and it could …

If there is one main reason for the distrust Californians feel for government and elected officials at all levels, it may be the way special interests regularly pour millions of dollars into election campaigns while managing to mask or obscure their identities. A major example last year was Prop. 45, voted down by a 59-41 percent margin even though it led by about that same amount in polls taken before the campaign began.

When ex-Gov. Schwarzenegger and former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made their way onto a hot, sunny alkali flat just west of the I-15 freeway between Barstow and Las Vegas in late 2010, they were opening an era of giantism in solar electricity. They and utility executives went to …

It pays to read between the lines whenever the state Legislature or a city council makes changes to longstanding election routines. One example: Almost all cities that lately have switched local elections to even years so they coincide with federal and state voting feature Democrat-dominated city councils whose members know both that …