Moderate line outside Los Alamitos Fire Station polling place shortly before 5 tonight. Anyone in line before 8:00 will be allowed to vote or drop off their vote by mail ballot.

5:40 update: At 5 pm lines at Los Al polling places weren’t that bad, as seen in the photo below/above.   If  you haven’t voted yet, or turned in your vote-by-mail ballot, as long as you’re in line before 8 tonight you will be able to vote.  Regardless of the outcome of the national races, your vote is still vital for important local races, as you can see from the following post.

Check back later this evening for local results as they come in, probably beginning around 9 p.m.   Our “your reporting” post will go up at 8:00.

(11/6/2012, Los Alamitos) The election on which you and I have the most influence is the election about the future of the place we make our homes, spend our time, and raise our families, and this election gives us a rare opportunity to end once and for all the  division, corruption and incompetence that has plagued Los Alamitos for the past twenty years or more!

• This is the first election after a Superior Court Judge ruled that Ken Stephens and his majority colleagues “voted to break the law.”
• This year a smart, independent, caring long-term resident has a very good chance to turn our Council from a 3 -2 divide to a group of five independent thinking neighbors working together for the good of our town as a whole.
• But that resident, Richard Murphy, is handicapped by not only having less name recognition and no deep-pocketed special interest supporters  but also being last on the ballot.
• However, Murphy benefits by being the only candidate endorsed by the Orange County Register.

Two years ago only 20 votes separated the last candidate to make it from the first candidate who did not.  That’s less than 3 votes per precinct!

Two years ago only 90 votes Dean Grose from again embarrassing and humiliating our town simply by being returned to office.

Now is the time to call, visit, or e-mail your friends and neighbors to make sure they skip over the other three candidates (or at least the other two men) on the ballot and vote for  Richard Murphy, the last & best candidate on our City Council Ballot.

And, while you’re at it, perhaps point out that the deceptively labeled prop DD’s promised “tax reduction” is more than offset by it’s massive expansion of the phone tax into a technology tax that includes technology not even yet invented!

Who Says?

1.  The editorial Board of our County’s Newspaper, the Register:

• Editorial:  Richard Murphy for Los Al Council
• Editorial:  No on Los Alamitos Measure DD

2.  I do!   I’ve lived in Los Alamitos for 24 years, and written the City’s only political blog for the last four, and I’ve observed Richard Murphy time and again rise in City Council Meetings to present logical independent analyses of the issues before the Council.

I’ve also seen Murphy unanimously elected by our divided Council to serve on our Traffic Commission–proof he’s earned the respect of both sides of our divided Council.

And I’ve served on the Traffic Commission with Richard Murphy, and found him to be a smart and honest advocate for the concerns of our residents.

Sadly, I’ve also  watched the carrying on of our Council Members at meetings and behind the scenes, including Ken Stephens and Dean Grose.

I discovered that in some ways we’re in worse shape than Bell.  For fifty years our Trash Contract was never put out to bid. . . and when it finally was the trash man organized a massive campaign to oust two of the Council Members that voted to put it out to bid. . . and replace them with Ken Stephens who joined Dean Grose to form a new majority.

A majority that eventually broke the law by voting to give the trash contract to the second highest (and fifth lowest) bidder–the employer of the man who’d spent thousands to put them in office!

It’s all documented in post after post in our Trash Contract (57 posts),   George Briggeman (28 posts), Dean Grose (36 posts) and Ken Stephens (5 posts) Categories.

Please Help!

So  throughout the day, please remember to

1. Do whatever it takes to get to your local polling place and vote or return your vote-by-mail ballot (more on that below).  You’ve got until 8 tonight to get in line. Click here to find your polling place quickly and easily.
2. Be sure to skip down to the last name on your ballot for Los Alamitos City Council and vote for Richard Murphy.  (Vote for Demi Devaney if you want, or make your vote more emphatic and only vote for Murphy.)
3. Use the “Share” link below to e-mail this post to all your friends, enemies, and family in Los Alamitos right now so they’ll have this information.
4. Click the “Like on Facebook,”  link below (as well as the Google + and Tweet buttons if you have use those networks) to further help spread the word.
5. If you get a chance, check back later this evening and again tomorrow morning for the results.

Remember, your vote counts more in our city election than in any other–and affects you the most directly!

F0r our recommendations on the Sewer District and more info on the Council, see “Your Los Alamitos Election 2012 ‘Cheat Sheet.’”

Click here to find your polling place using your street number & name, no matter where you live  in Orange County.

More OC Voting Info:

• All Orange County polling places are open from 7 am to 8 pm.  If you’re in line by 8 pm, by law they must stay open until you vote.   
•  If you received a vote-by-mail ballot it’s too late to mail it.  You can turn it in at any polling place in the return envelope it came with, or you may surrender it at your polling place and vote there by machine.  If you lost it, you can still vote at your polling place provisionally.
• Click here for the OC Registraar of Voters informative website: OCVote.com.  Use the search box in the upper right or look through the various options. [ad]

Don’t put it off!

• Use the share, Like, and  Tweet buttons below to spread the word.
• Plan to vote before noon if possible.
• See if your elderly neighbors need help getting to the poll or turning in their vote by mail ballot.

Many have given their lives to give us the right to cast our vote:

 Use it wisely!

As always, all comments and perspectives are welcome, as long as they’re diplomatically stated in “family friendly” language appropriate to our family friendly town!