My Ballot for November 3, 2026

 

I spend a lot of time deciding how I will vote. The major offices and races are easy. It’s the ones that don’t make the news, or are confusing, that take the most time. I try to sort these out based on endorsements from people and organizations I trust, like Kevin Jenkins, our City Councilmember, and SEIU Local 1021. If I’m still not sure, I read the arguments more carefully. I found KQED and CapRadio particularly helpful.I make the best choices I can with the information available. I exercise my own biases. It’s my vote.

I offer this to my readers not to tell you how to vote, but, if you’re curious and for your own consideration as you mark your ballot.

Statewide Offices

Governor: Xavier Becerra

Lieutenant Governor: Fiona Ma

Secretary of State: Shirley Weber

Controller: Malia Cohen

Treasurer: Eleni Kounalakis

Attorney General: Rob Bonta

Insurance Commissioner: Jane Kim

State Board of Equalization, District 2: Sally Lieber

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Richard Barrera

Federal and State Legislative Offices

U.S. Congress, District 12: Lateefah Simon

State Assembly, District 18: Mia Bonta

Judicial Offices

California Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal: Yes on all judicial retention questions.

Transit Districts

AC Transit Director, Ward 4: Sarah Syed

BART Director, District 4: Robert Raburn

California Propositions

Proposition 1: Yes
Housing affordability bonds.

Proposition 2: Yes
Increases the state’s rainy day fund.

Proposition 3: Yes
Extends the existing high-income tax to provide permanent funding for schools and health care.

Proposition 4: Yes
Allows public financing of election campaigns.

Proposition 5: Yes
Changes the statewide recall election process.

Proposition 37: Yes
Creates a new home loan program for middle-income buyers.

Proposition 38: No
Bonds for immunology and immunotherapy research.

Proposition 39: No
Requires government-issued identification to vote.

Proposition 40: Yes
A one-time tax on billionaires.

Proposition 41: No
Restricts certain new state taxes and requires additional audits.

Proposition 42: No
Prohibits new state personal property taxes and certain retroactive taxes.

Proposition 43: No
Limits voters’ ability to raise revenues for local government services.

Proposition 44: Yes
Requires certain community health clinics to spend at least 90 percent of revenue on program services.

Proposition 45: No
Changes environmental review procedures for certain projects.

Regional and Local Measures

Measure RTM: Yes
Regional transit funding, including BART.

Measure EE: Yes
Changes Oakland’s city government to a stronger-mayor system.

Measure FF: Yes
Changes the real estate transfer tax to eliminate certain foreclosure-related exemptions.

City of Oakland

Mayor: No vote

City Council, District 6: Kevin Jenkins

City Auditor: Michael Houston

School Board Director, District 6: Valarie Bachelor

---

My Notes

A word about age and public office

I am not voting for anyone over 75 for any office, even our amazing Barbara Lee. She’s an amazing person, a good mayor, and I think she should retire rather than stay in office until she’s too old. Make room for the people coming up. We have a great bench. Thank you for your service.

Jane Kim, Insurance Commissioner

I voted for Jane Kim based on her endorsements and experience.

Sally Lieber, State Board of Equalization

I voted for Sally Lieber based on her experience and reputation.

Richard Barrera, Superintendent of Public Instruction

I voted for Richard Barrera because of his experience and my doubts about Sonja Shaw.

Judges

I like that judges are not political. If they’re not controversial, they haven’t been targeted rightfully or wrongfully, and judged competent by their peers, I’m content to confirm them in office.

Sarah Syed, AC Transit

I voted for Sarah Syed because I think she does a good job for us and because of her experience.

Robert Raburn, BART

I voted for Robert Raburn because of his experience and good work, and because Luis Reynoso is a former Republican candidate for Congress and a political gadfly.

Proposition 37: Housing

Anything that makes housing more affordable is a step in the right direction.

Proposition 38: Medical Research Bonds

This strikes me as a personal proposition of Gary K. Michelson, with a substantial share of the funds going to a foundation associated with him. I don’t believe private citizens, even wealthy ones, even good guys, should be able to decide how we issue public bonds.

Proposition 39: Voting Restrictions

This one’s easy for me. It’s the Trump voting restrictions proposition.

Proposition 40: Billionaire Tax

I think this is bad legislation, poorly written. But I find the money being spent in opposition to it disgusting. The advertisements are filled with what I regard as lies and deception. I’m voting for it in spite of my reservations about the legislation itself. Because the opposition stinks.

Propositions 41, 42 and 43: Tax Restrictions

I see Propositions 41, 42 and 43 as poison pills that would undermine Proposition 40 if it passes.

Proposition 44: Community Health Clinics

Again, I don’t like special-interest propositions, but this is a step in the right direction. Let’s spend the money on the programs. I’ve seen too many foundations where the officers make outrageous salaries.

Proposition 45: Environmental Reviews

I see this as developers and the California Chamber of Commerce trying to weaken our environmental laws. I think we need to take another look at CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, but this isn’t the way to do it.

Measure RTM: Regional Transit Funding

I don’t like sales taxes, and I don’t like adding to them. They’re regressive taxes that fall disproportionately on the poor. But until we revise our taxing policies, I see this as the way to keep BART and other transit services operating.

Measure EE: Stronger Mayor

I’m not entirely sure about this measure. But Kevin Jenkins endorses it, and I trust Kevin.

Measure FF: Real Property Transfer Tax

This eliminates loopholes in Oakland’s real property transfer tax. Tax the rich.

Halloween, La Catrina in Oakland

I've told everyone who will listen that Halloween is an Irish contribution to American culture, a survival of the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, brought across the Atlantic by Irish immigrants and transformed into the holiday we celebrate today. I believed it, just another contribution from the Irish to American civilization.

So before writing this, I did a little research, just to confirm what I know already. It turns out that Halloween as we celebrate it is a thoroughly American holiday, a wonderful mash-up of traditions brought here by people from many different countries.  We Irish contributed our bit, the date in particular, but contrary to what I believed, we don't own Halloween.

For a less biased account of the holiday, I recommend Stephen Winick's post in the Library of Congress Folklife blog, Masking and Mumming for the Holidays, Thanksgiving Style!. It describes a custom in New York, Philadelphia, and the Northeast of children dressing up on Thanksgiving and going door to door asking for treats, a practice already well established in the nineteenth century. No Irish element to it.   

Samhain, celebrated at the end of October, marks the end of summer and the beginning of the dark half of the year. The harvest was done, the sheep brought down from the hills, and people began to settle in for the winter. It is a turning point in the year itself, even in Oakland we can't help but notice. The days are getting shorter. Summer is gone. It's chilly and soon we'll be going to work in early morning light and coming home in the dark.

For the Irish, Samhain is a dangerous time. The curtain between this world and the Otherworld dissolves. The dead walk the streets. Banshees, púcas, headless horsemen, witches, and the Aos Sí, the people of the fairy mounds, wander among the living. Fairies can kidnap people, particularly handsome children, and replace them with changelings. 

Irish fairies are powerful, unpredictable beings, sometimes malicious, and certainly deserving of respect. Disguising oneself is a way of hiding from the fairies.  It’s also possible some of the creatures knocking on your door this Saturday aren't children at all.  The fairies are among us.

Dressing up, making noise, frightening away spirits, and celebrating the change of seasons are hardly exclusive to the Irish.

The English have their mummers performing in masks, Morris dancers, and Guy Fawkes Night with bonfires and kids running wild. In the Fall, particularly Halloween there are apple games, bobbing for apples, firing off shotguns to scare away evil spirits and offering drinks to the apple trees in hopes of a good harvest.

Elsewhere in Europe, masking and begging are familiar seasonal activities. German Fasching, although celebrated between winter and spring, offers the same opportunity for disguising yourself, acting like a fool, and escaping the ordinary rules of respectable behavior.  There’s also Mardi Gras and Carnival. 

Mexico's Día de los Muertos brings another tradition into the picture, a blending of Indigenous beliefs about death and ancestors with the Catholic observances of All Hallows Eve, All Saints and All Souls. The three holy days coincide with much older pagan observances.   

What all these traditions share is something more basic than a common ancestry. People everywhere confront the changing seasons, the darkness, the uncertainty of winter, and the mystery of death. They respond with feasting, costumes, fire, music, laughter, and sometimes wild behavior.

And Americans, with our mixture of peoples and traditions, have made something new out of all of it.

When I was growing up in Southern California in the 1950s, Halloween was primarily a children's holiday. We dressed up, went from door to door, and collected candy, with an occasional nickel or dime thrown in.

We had to wait until dark to go out. That was important. The younger children went first. Then came the older kids, and finally the teenagers, who were often more interested in tricks than treats.

Some tricks were just outright vandalism. Halloween was and is an opportunity to rebel against adult authority, to ignore the rules. Sometimes the results are funny, sometimes destructive, and sometimes just plain mean.

There's something in human nature, particularly when people are young. We rebel, we break the rules, we don't have to do what old people want all the time. Halloween almost tolerates vandalism and tricks, and for some it goes too far. Maybe that's the point.

The threat is right in the words: trick or treat. Give us something, or you may regret it.

Back in the day, one of the costumes was a hobo; old clothes, dirt on the face, a battered hat, and a bundle on a stick. I think that is a holdover from the ragamuffins of the nineteenth century and from the 1930s.

Those children dressed as beggars and tramps, going door to door asking for pennies, apples, or other treats. The Library of Congress article makes the case that these Thanksgiving customs contributed to the development of American trick-or-treating in the 1930s. After World War II, with the baby boom and suburban expansion, it became the great children's holiday I remember.

Of course, you don't have to persuade an eight-year-old to dress up and collect free candy. It's a custom that sells itself.

Something else I like about trick-or-treating is just a little bit it redistributes wealth.

Here in Oakland, children from less prosperous neighborhoods sometimes travel up the hill to Montclair or to Piedmont, where the houses are bigger and the candy is better. Kids have always known where the good candy is. Word gets around quickly when somebody is handing out Reese's Peanut Butter Cups instead of the cheap stuff.

Occasionally a skinflint complains about children coming from outside the neighborhood, but most people tolerate the children and some neighborhoods welcome them.

There's no income qualification for trick-or-treating. Poor children can beg from rich people, rich children can beg from other rich people, and everybody gets something. For one evening, adults are expected to give, and children are entitled to ask.

It's ritualized begging, and I think it's a good custom. The gifts are small, but the generosity is real.

Halloween has changed since my childhood. It's now a major holiday for adults as well as children, with elaborate costumes, parties, decorations, and commercial haunted houses. In some neighborhoods, organized gatherings have replaced going door to door. People complain that Halloween isn't what it used to be.

Well, of course it isn't. The Halloween of my childhood wasn't the Halloween of the nineteenth century.

Traditions survive by changing. Each generation takes what it inherits and makes it its own.

The goblins, ghosts, hobos, and fairies wandering our streets are all visitors from the past, although some may be more real than others. At Samhain, the curtain between our world and the Otherworld dissolves, and the inhabitants of both worlds roam freely.

I still like to think the Irish gave Halloween some of its most interesting creatures. We certainly know the dangers of the fairy folk.

And if a banshee knocks on your door this Saturday night, I'd suggest giving her a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Maybe she's a child in a costume. Maybe not.

11 More Days. Then What?

 I think there is going to be a Blue Tsunami on November 3. Americans are dissatisfied with Trump, many of us are angry, and I expect there will be a very high Democratic turnout. Independents will turn out, too, and I suspect a good many Republicans will stay home rather than vote for candidates associated with Trump.

I’m not a very reliable observer. I’ve thought Trump was a loser for more than ten years now, and I’ve been disgusted with him since 2015 and earlier.

Still, I’m not alone in expecting a Democratic victory. The Cook Political Report has been moving congressional races toward the Democrats, as reported by Axios on October 9. The Senate is less certain, but Democrats have opportunities there too.

I think Democrats will take the House, possibly by a substantial margin, and I think they have a good chance of taking the Senate. I could be wrong. Elections have a way of surprising us.

But the size of the victory isn’t what worries me.

I’m worried about what happens after November 3.

I don’t think Trump will accept a Democratic victory, whether it’s a landslide or a narrow win. I don’t think the size of the vote will make any difference to his response. A decisive result might make his opposition harder to sustain, but I believe he will oppose it just the same.

Trump has a history of rejecting election results he doesn’t like. When he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016, he claimed that millions of illegal votes had been cast. After losing the 2020 election, he refused to accept the result, and we saw what happened on January 6, 2021.

I think some of Trump’s allies sincerely believe that only certain Americans should have their votes counted. Their definition of a legitimate American voter seems to exclude people they regard as outsiders, particularly immigrants and racial and religious minorities. I think some of them truly believe it.

And that makes me worry about what they might do.

Reuters recently published an excellent investigation, Nine Ways the Trump Administration Could Interfere With the Midterms. It examines possible actions involving federal law enforcement, election materials, certification disputes, and the seating of elected members of Congress.

I suspect we will see attempts to use several of those tactics. I can imagine challenges county by county, disruptions resembling the Brooks Brothers Riot during the Florida recount in 2000, and federal agencies becoming involved in disputes that properly belong to state and local election officials.

I don’t know how far Trump and his allies will go. I don’t know how far the courts will let them go. I don’t have complete confidence in the Supreme Court and I certainly don’t expect the Vice President or Speaker Mike Johnson to stand up to Trump.

I don’t think they can overturn a national election. I do think they can refuse to abide by its results.

They may be unable to change the votes, but they could try to prevent those votes from producing the government the voters elected. They could challenge certifications, obstruct the transition to a new congressional majority, or create enough confusion and confrontation to make the ordinary transfer of congressional power extraordinarily difficult.

The Constitution and the law provide protections against such actions. But laws don’t enforce themselves. They depend on public officials willing to carry out their responsibilities, even when doing so puts them at risk.

The real fight will begin on November 3.

And that frightens me.

I’m not predicting that Trump will succeed. I don’t think he will. But I don’t think stopping him will be easy either. We may be entering a period when the institutions of our democracy are tested in ways most of us have never experienced.

I expect a great deal will depend on the integrity and competence of state and county election officials, the independence of the courts, the willingness of members of Congress to honor election results, and the preparations already being made by organizations defending the electoral process.

As a citizen and a voter, I can only do what I’m capable of doing. I can demonstrate, write letters, publish articles, and make my voice heard. It doesn’t seem like much, but I will do what I can.

There’s a lot to worry about. The Democrats may disappoint me once they’re in office. I’ve certainly experienced that before. But first they have to be allowed to take office and exercise the authority the voters have given them.

In the meantime, I’ll pray, organize, and trust the American people. I don’t have much choice.

The Professor Has a Hundred Papers to Grade

Imagine a college history professor on Friday afternoon. She has a hundred student essays to grade, and the grades are due Monday morning.

I went to college more than fifty years ago. Maybe professors don't assign papers the way they used to. I hope they do.

A hundred essays on eighteenth-century France, perhaps. Some will be excellent, some acceptable, and some terrible. By Sunday evening, after reading about the French Revolution for the seventy-fifth time, even a conscientious professor might begin to lose her enthusiasm for the subject.

Now suppose she has an AI assistant.

She asks it to sort the papers roughly into Poor, Acceptable, and Good. Originality matters. Accuracy matters. A coherent argument supported by evidence matters. Elegant prose is desirable, but it cannot rescue an argument that makes no sense.

In a few minutes, the machine has done its preliminary work.

The professor still has to grade the essays. She examines the evaluations, reads enough of each paper to satisfy herself that the judgements are reasonable, and gives particular attention to questionable cases. She checks the better papers for originality and the weaker ones for arguments the machine may have overlooked.

Over time, she learns how much she can trust the machine, discovers its weaknesses, and develops her own methods for using it. She remains responsible for the grades and for treating her students fairly.

I suspect something like this is inevitable. Professors are no more likely to spend an entire weekend doing work a machine can help them do than they are to insist that students submit typewritten essays corrected with white-out.

And if professors can use AI to evaluate essays, why shouldn't students use AI to write them?

When I was in college, writing a paper involved considerable mechanical labor. There were outlines, drafts, handwritten corrections, typing, retyping, and trips to the library. A professor might receive a thoughtful paper that was badly typed, misspelled, and covered with corrections.

Word processors changed much of that. Spell-checking helped enormously. Nobody seriously argues that a student who uses a word processor has cheated.

AI goes considerably further, of course. It can research, organize, suggest arguments, write paragraphs, and sometimes produce a remarkably good first draft.

But what matters is what the student does with it.

A student might ask AI to write an essay on eighteenth-century France, accept the result without reading it carefully, and submit it as their own work. I would call that cheating.

Another student might begin with an AI draft, spend hours examining sources, correcting errors, questioning interpretations, developing an original argument, and rewriting the essay until it expresses what the student actually thinks.

That student has done considerable intellectual work. Why should the resulting essay be regarded as less worthy because a machine helped produce it?

I would judge the essay.

Are the sources genuine? Does the evidence support the conclusions? Is the argument coherent? Does the student have something original to say? Is it interesting to read?

I certainly wouldn't rely on an AI detector that announces, with impressive mathematical confidence, that an essay is 100 percent AI-generated. Such a score tells us very little about the intellectual work that went into the paper.

If a student believes an AI-assisted grading system has made a mistake, there should be an appeal. The student can bring drafts, notes, sources, or whatever else helps establish the case. The professor then exercises her own judgement.

She might say, “I believe you spent twenty hours writing this paper. Unfortunately, it's still a C.”

But there is a harder question.

Suppose AI produces an excellent essay without much help from the student. The sources are accurate, the argument original, and the writing genuinely good. The student reads it, makes a few changes, and submits it.

Does that essay deserve an A?

My first inclination is to say no. The student hasn't done the work. But what if the student knows the subject thoroughly, recognizes the quality of the argument, and knows how to direct AI to produce exactly what they wanted?

Wouldn't those be valuable skills in the world outside the university? An employer might be delighted to have such a person.

Still, there's a difference between recognizing a good argument and knowing how to construct one. The intellectual struggle of putting ideas together is itself part of an education.

When I was at UCLA, we took examinations in blue books, those little booklets of lined paper in which students wrote answers by hand. No library, no telephone, no AI, just what you knew and could think about while sitting in a classroom.

I remember a Shakespeare class in which students took copious notes, presumably expecting to reproduce what the professor had told us. Then came the examination question:

Discuss Shakespeare's concept of tragedy.

That's something I wouldn't want universities to lose.

Perhaps the solution is to let students use AI in preparing papers while also requiring them, occasionally, to demonstrate what they know without it. A blue-book examination would do. So might a short oral examination in which the student explains and defends the argument in a paper bearing their name.

We could judge the quality of the work and the knowledge of the student without pretending they're necessarily the same thing.

There is another complication: originality.

I've admired the extraordinary fanciful creatures created by the Mexican artist Pedro Linares, the alebrijes. His imagination gave them a vitality that many of the imitations sold in Mexican curio shops seem to lack. Some are beautifully made, but something is missing.

I sometimes have the same reaction to AI writing. It can be excessively orderly, pleased with its own clarity, and remarkably reluctant to say anything awkward or unexpected. It may be technically accomplished and yet lifeless.

We sometimes call that missing quality soul.

But what exactly is it? Human beings produce plenty of lifeless writing, and a beautiful work doesn't cease to be beautiful because it was influenced by another artist. Art has always borrowed, imitated, and transformed what came before.

AI makes the question more complicated because it can already do so much of what humans do when they create. Whether it can produce that elusive quality we call soul, or whether we will even be able to recognize the difference, I don't know.

And I certainly wouldn't want a professor grading a student's paper on the suspicion that it lacked a soul.

I would rather judge the writing for what it accomplishes and find other ways to determine what the student has learned.

After all, universities aren't simply factories for producing essays. Their purpose is to educate people. I want students to learn history, to think critically, to question sources, to recognize good arguments, and to communicate clearly. I also want them to learn how to use the tools that will be part of their working lives.

AI can help with all of that. It can also become a substitute for doing any of it. The challenge is to know the difference.

And professors should use their own intelligence and experience to make those judgements, even when a machine helps them reach them.

The professor has a hundred papers to grade.

Let her use a little help.

Let the students use some help, too.

And let them both exercise good judgement.

An Ordinary Morning in East Oakland

Two days after finishing my third cycle of BCG immunotherapy for bladder cancer, I am either sick or just old. Probably some of both.

I'll be eighty next month.

When we moved into our house in Oakland in 2015, I could ride my bicycle from 55th Avenue to San Leandro and back, 15 miles, without thinking much about it. This morning I rode from the Shell station in the Laurel to Santana's coffee shop, maybe a mile. I arrived tired. It was work. My heart was beating hard, and I was out of breath.

But I'm out and about.

I didn't particularly want to get out of bed this morning. Everything ached. The immunotherapy, BCG, takes a day or two or three to work its way through me, and staying under the covers seemed reasonable. Eventually I got up at 7:30 and made coffee.

It was a disaster. The paper filter slipped in my AeroPress and the water went straight through the grounds. I ran it through again, then once more, added another couple of spoonfuls of coffee and somehow rescued it. Not bad actually, recovered coffee.

Our 2014 Honda needed a smog check before I could renew its registration. That gave me somewhere to go.

I drove to the Shell station near 35th Avenue. Chris, the owner's son, took care of me. He grew up in the neighborhood and now helps his father run the station. His father has owned the garage there for over 25 years.

From the back of the Honda I took my bicycle, with its newly pumped tires, and rode down the street to say hello to my friend Barry at the bicycle shop.

He wasn't open yet. Barry and I share bladder cancer, although his muscle-invasive form took him through a much rougher course than mine. It's an odd thing to have in common.

I bicycled the mile or so to Richard Santana's new café.

I had put breakfast off too long and was hungry. Coffee and a poppy-seed bagel with egg and cheese, too close to the barrio and too far from the shtetl for lox and bagels. I brought my computer because I thought I might write for an hour while I waited for the smog check.

The new Santana's is more open than the old place. Perhaps nicer in many ways. The neighborhood is less commercial, not so busy, and the café seems to fit easily here. The coffee roasting machine has been moved to the new place but is sitting idle, waiting for permits before Richard can hook it up.

The café is already popular.

Maybe it's too comfortable.

Inside, nearly every table had one person sitting at it with a computer. The old Santana's was cramped. People talked. There were computers, but not so many. I think there was a shortage of outlets. The computers hadn't taken possession of the place.

I sat at a table for three, my computer open, waiting for my coffee and bagel. I was uncomfortable. I was becoming exactly what I complain about: one man and one computer occupying a table where three people might sit together and have a conversation.

When my breakfast came, I went outside.

Now it is almost noon and I have the outside mostly to myself.

A trash truck has arrived, one of those enormous mechanical beasts with arms that grab the bins, hoist them into the air and dump them inside. Even with all that machinery, it still requires a swamper on the ground, arranging the bins so the machine can grab them.

Across the street is a small, cramped apartment building. A gardener is working out front. Sitting on the porch along the front is a woman in a wheelchair who has no legs. There are flowers, a large cat, little knickknacks and bits of people's lives accumulated over the years.

While I watch, the very large brown-and-gold cat, maybe twenty pounds, wanders away from the apartments and up the street. He appears to be making the rounds.

Around it all is the sound of MacArthur Boulevard.

The continuous whoosh of tires on pavement. A bus rattles past. The trash truck works. Neighbors talk. Another bus, another car, tires whooshing on pavement.

It's the sounds of the city we usually ignore.

We think of the countryside as quiet, but of course, it has its own background of sound. The sounds of traffic, engines, tires, and machines are replaced by the sounds of birds, water, and wind.

Sitting here, with the soundtrack of the city, there is calmness too.

This is East Oakland, between the Laurel and the Dimond. It's not picturesque. Traffic moves along MacArthur. Somebody tends a garden. Chris is smogging my old Honda. Richard is waiting for permission to hook up his coffee roaster. A cat patrols the neighborhood. I'm eating a bagel and writing.

My cycling isn't what it was eleven years ago. Neither am I.

But I don't think the morning has diminished.

It's different.

I'm here. And I'm enjoying it.