Talk:California State Legislature, 2013–2014 session

Even-Numbered Senate Districts

The even-numbered Senate districts appear to be all messed up.

If a senator is elected to a particular even-numbered district, they still represent that district. It does not matter that new even-numbered districts have been created. It does not matter which new district the senator lives in. Senators in these districts should be shown by old-district numbers, not some invented mapping to new numbers. http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_18346248 http://romickinoakley.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/redistricting-some-odd-circumstances-even-for-those-who-may-be-unaffected/ http://greaterlongbeach.com/24/09/2010/senate-redistricting-could-double-your-representation-or-eliminate-it

Even with the special election in district 4, that was held within the boundaries of the old district 4, not the new one. The old one includes Del Norte County, and the new one does not. The Secretary of state shows Del Norte results for this race. http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/state-senate/district/4/county/del-norte/

The same use of old districts will take place when special elections are held to replace Negrete McCleod and Vargas. Those will be old districts 32 and 40.

The mixture of even and odd districts during this term will mean that consituents in old even districts and new odd districts will be represented by two senators. In the case of Leland Yee, his old even district is entirely turned into pieces of new odd districts. Every one of his constituents is still his constituent but is also a constituent of someone else just elected in those odd districts. That does not mean that Yee is no longer the representative of the old district 8.

The even stranger case is people in old odd districts and new even districts. Their old representatives will have ended their terms when the new class is sworn in, but people in this situation have not yet elected someone to their new district. They have no elected representative. The Rules Committee will appoint a senator to be a custodian for each of these areas. In many cases, the last person elected to these areas is still in the senate in a new odd district that covers a different area and would be a likely custodian. Where the old odd district was represented by Alquist, Blakeslee, Runner, Lowenthal, Dutton, or Harman, it is less clear what the committee will do. It could be nice for this page to show the custodial mappings once assigned.

On a separate note, the Sacramento Bee has declared Galgiani the winner in that close race. http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/11/cathleen-galgiani-overtakes-bill-berryhill-in-hot-senate-race.html http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/11/new-sen-galgiani-said-voters-responded-to-issues-not-mud.html --RichardMathews (talk) 19:25, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

In addition to the Sacramento Bee, we now have the Modesto Bee saying that "votes remained to be counted ... but not enough for Berryhill to conceivably overcome his Assembly colleague" and the San Jose Mercury News declaring, "Galgiani has won." http://www.modbee.com/2012/11/26/2471145/galgiani-declares-victory-in-state.html http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_22069733/democrats-gain-1-more-seat-state-senate

--RichardMathews (talk) 07:48, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

McLeod Resignation Date?

This page says she resigned on Jan 2, 2013. The page on her (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Negrete_McLeod) says she left office on Nov 30, 2012. Why the discrepancy? RayKiddy (talk) 06:44, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

The date in her article is wrong. While legislative terms do end on November 30, she was midway through her term. Also, the Senate journal should be authoritative on these matters, so I fixed the date on that side. --Kurykh (talk) 19:32, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Hey, thanx! RayKiddy (talk) 21:37, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Start and Stop Dates for Legislators?

I am never sure how much integration of information is too much. I have a database related to the CA legislature that I have been building up (in various forms) for a while. One basic thing it has is that part of the entity graph looks like this:

   bill <---->> bill_versions <<---->> authors <<---> person

A person has a WP URL, for example. So, an author has a few things, the particular form of their name as it appears in legislation (these follow arbitrary and sometimes odd rules), the house, the district number and the start and end of their "authorship". Usually these are the beginnings and end of terms, but there is a new object when, for example, the bills went from "Bonnie Lowenthal" to "Lowenthal", which happened once Alan Lowenthal left the Assembly. So, anyways.... Would a start and stop date for each entry in the legislator table for these sessions be too much information, a good idea, not compatible with others, anything else?

RayKiddy (talk) 21:40, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

I have been wondering for quite a while about how it may be possible to use rules to look at, analyze, link to, or access structured information. For example, it seems reasonable that the leg info box that the state legislators have has structured information, including a start and stop date for offices held and the data is often consistently presented. So, if that is true, one should not need to manually enter the info for the legislator table on this page, no? The leg table here could be a "view" of information derived from the structured elements on the individual legislators' pages. Yes? Or maybe not.

RayKiddy (talk) 21:46, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're referring to. What do you mean by start and stop date? If you mean the dates when each individual legislator was in office, then that's simply too much information and will clutter up the page. --Kurykh (talk) 22:48, 2 September 2013 (UTC)