Sacramento leads in uncounted votes + Bonta declares victory over Google + California is liberal
Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!
SACRAMENTO, PLACER COUNTIES LEAD IN UNCOUNTED VOTES
Three weeks after Election Day, there are still nearly a quarter of a million uncounted votes in California, more than half of them in Sacramento and Placer counties, according to a Monday report from the California Secretary of State’s Office.
Sacramento County has 89,000 ballots yet to be processed while Placer County has 38,910, the report said.
The slow count has sparked many complaints, including from Rocklin Republican Assemblyman and Congressman-elect Kevin Kiley, whose race was called by the Associated Press on Nov. 22.
The Capitol Bureau’s Jenavieve Hatch and David Lightman explained in this piece just what is taking so long.
Thousands of votes remain uncounted in other counties, including Los Angeles (15,105), Lake (12,397) and Orange (10,713).
As it happens, some of the closest races in the state are located in the above-mentioned counties, including the Democrat-on-Democrat clash between Dave Jones and Angelique Ashby for Senate District 8 and Democratic incumbent Ken Cooley and Republican challenger Joshua Hoover for Assembly District 7.
GOOGLE SETTLES WITH FTC, CALIFORNIA, OTHER STATES FOR MISLEADING RADIO ADS
The Federal Trade Commission on Monday announced that it has secured a settlement, along with the attorneys general for California, Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York and Texas, with tech giant Google and iHeartRadio. The issue is allegations that Google paid to have iHeartRadio DJs describe personal experiences with the Google Pixel 4 — a cellphone that most of them never actually used.
This constituted a violation of California’s False Advertising Law and Unfair Competition law.
Google will pay $9 million to settle the lawsuit, with $2.7 million going to California, according to the California Attorney Generals’s Office. iHeartMedia will pay out $400,000, with California receiving $125,000. However, Google neither admits nor denies any liability regarding the allegations.
Of course, given that Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is worth an estimated $1.24 trillion, this isn’t likely to be a big loss.
Still, California Attorney General Rob Bonta used the occasion to take a victory lap, saying in a statement, “Google tried to take shortcuts in advertising its products, and now it’s paying the price. Asking DJs to share personal experiences about a product they had not used is misleading — and a violation of state consumer protection laws.”
CONSERVATIVE GROUP DECLARES CALIFORNIA PROGRESSIVE
A top conservative group has released a new report finding that California is trending more progressive these days.
The Center for Legislative Accountability (CLA), a joint project of the Conservative Political Action Committee Foundation (CPAC) and the American Conservative Union Foundation, conducted an analysis of all 7,400 state lawmakers in the United States, and found that the California Legislature trails only Rhode Island, Hawaii and Massachusetts as the most liberal state lawmaking body in the country.
The survey looked at voting records across 186 policy areas, ranging from cultural and life issues to tax, fiscal, and regulatory policies, according to a statement announcing the findings. Even California’s Republican lawmakers weren’t all that conservative, CLA says. Just 17 GOP legislators earned awards from CPAC for conservative-friendly ratings of 80% and above.
No California Republican earned 100%. The highest rated lawmaker was Donald Trump favorite Kevin Kiley, with 98%. Others to score a 90% or higher included Sens. Melissa Melendez (97%), Brian Jones (92%) and Andreas Borgeas (90%), and Assemblymembers Frank Bigelow (95%), Thurston Smith (95%) and Kelly Seyarto (90%).
On the Democratic side, 72 lawmakers earned CPAC’s ‘Coalition of the Radical Left’ award for conservative ratings of 10% or below. Fifteen registered a granular 2%: Sens. Benjamin Allen, Josh Becker, Sydney Kamlager, John Laird, Monique Limón and Anthony Portantino and Assemblymembers Steve Bennet, Richard Bloom, Isaac Bryan, Laura Friedman, Reginald Jones-Sawyer, Kevin McCarty, Luz Rivas, Miguel Santiago and Mark Stone.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Ready to roll for a new legislative session: 1. Walk and Talks Around the Capitol, coming back in January! 2. Please send legislative ideas to our leg. team. 3. I take face to face meetings, coffees, or zooms. Schedule with my scheduler. 4. Lobbyists don’t assume a position, talk 2 me.”
- Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton, via Twitter.
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