#elections

#elections

Unlike the sheriff or the district attorney, people often ask me: "What exactly does the assessor do?" My answer surprises them. "The assessor is not a political position." Their reaction is almost always the same: "But you get elected, don't you?" Yes, the law requires election, but after the ballots are counted, there is nothing political about managing the Assessor's Office. In fact, it would be unethical - or even illegal - for politics to influence the appraisal or assessment of property.

The European Commission president was in Serbia as part of her tour of the Western Balkans to discuss EU enlargement with candidate countries in the region. That day, she invited Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to come to Brussels a month later so that the two could "take stock together." That was October; this is December. According to multiple sources who spoke to DW, the meeting was postponed because Serbia had no progress to report.

The Supreme Court strikes down the Voting Rights Act yesterday, DOMA today and clears the way for gay marriage in California. In Austin, Democrats run out the clock on the Texas abortion law. Weiner edges ahead in polls on New York's mayoral race. The immigration bill looks set to pass the Senate this week - the House, who knows? Later, we look ahead on politics with Political Junkie regulars Anna Greenberg and Vin Weber.

A few weeks ago, Katie Porter's campaign for California governor was reeling. A day after an irritable TV interview went viral, an old video surfaced of the former Orange County congresswoman cursing and berating one of her aides. Around the same time, the race for U.S. Senate in Maine was shaken by a number of disturbing online posts. In them, Democratic hopeful Graham Platner disparaged police and Black people, among other crude remarks.

St Lucian prime minister Philip Pierre's Labour party (SLP) has held its legislative majority, putting Pierre on course for reelection after a campaign centered on economic management, violent crime and passport sales. Official election results on Tuesday showed the social democratic SLP winning at least 13 seats in the small Caribbean island's 17-seat House of Assembly, matching its current majority with two seats left to be called.

At a Thanksgiving gathering with voters, another candidate in the same race fielded questions about affordability but also about moral leadership when it came to Israel's war in Gaza. A third candidate vying for the same seat devoted much of his campaign's launch video to lambasting the current member of Congress representing the district over the funding he's received from the pro-Israel lobby.

Though official results have yet to be released, the NDP's likely victory is slated to end the Unity Labour Party's 24 years in power. The party addressed its constituents in St Vincent and the Grenadines, sometimes known by the acronym SVG, in a social media post after Thursday's election. We love you, SVG, and we will keep working and advocating for you, the Unity Labour Party said. This is not the end, it is the beginning.

In a message on Truth Social, Trump endorsed the conservative candidate Nasry Tito Asfura of the National Party, claiming they could work together to combat drug trafficking. Trump also attacked the other candidates, accusing them of being communists. Torres, however, welcomed the Republican's comments, saying it affects the conservative candidates seeking the presidency of Honduras, which goes to the polls on Sunday.

"Everybody has been trying to say to her, 'Why today?' We have really focused, important work to do today,' one House Democrat who was on the floor at the time told Axios. Clark, the lawmaker explained, 'was trying to ... say [to Gluesenkamp Perez], 'You don't need to do this right now.'"

It's a wake-up call to Democrats and Republicans. And it's not the economy. It's not even inflation because that's something that's used by professors and politicians. It is affordability.

As I started writing this, folks were heading to the polls for the first time in a long, terrible year. Hyperbole somehow failed us when the White House was (is still being) destroyed. Plus, everyone's Social Security numbers were stolen, the world's biggest anti-vaxxer wants to ban Tylenol, and SNAP benefits were frozen for the first time. Yeah, it's been that kinda year. Pandora's box has been opened and all the maladies therein have been unleashed.

Ifirst heard the expression "strategic incompetence" in El Salvador in December 1993. Along with my partner and two friends, I'd been recruited to do some electoral training there. We were working with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, or FMLN, a coalition of leftist parties that had led a long-running guerrilla war against a series of US-backed autocratic governments. I'd visited El Salvador once before, during the 1989 elections, when armed troops were overseeing the voting.

Argentina's bonds, stocks and currency are surging after President Javier Milei's party won an overwhelming victory in a Sunday midterm election, a key requisite to keep economic reforms on track and a United States financial backstop in place. On Monday, international bonds rallied between 9 and 13 cents each, local stocks jumped over 20 percent and the peso strengthened some 6 percent to the dollar, halving its initial rally. Official results in Argentina's Sunday legislative elections show voters strongly backed Milei's free-market reforms and deep austerity measures, with inflation falling sharply since he took office nearly two years ago.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban led what he called a "peace march," stressing his opposition to military support for Ukraine, while his main challenger, Peter Magyar of the Tisza Party, led a competing protest. In an address to the crowd in front of parliament, Orban reiterated his opposition to EU military aid for Ukraine as well as potential EU and NATO membership for the country.

In other words, the date on a machine-applied postmark may reflect the date on which the mailpiece was first accepted by the Postal Service, but that is not definitively the case,

They had managed to have three leaders in a little over a year: Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf and then John Swinney. It was a rate of attrition that would make even the Conservative Party of recent years blush. There had also been a high-profile and long-running police investigation into the SNP's finances, involving Sturgeon, who was told earlier this year she would face no action.

CNN's Dana Bash played video of Trump saying Friday, When somebody is given, 97% of the stories are bad about a person that's no longer free speech, that's no longer anything, that's just cheating. Senator, he really seems to be redefining free speech as speech that is only favorable to him, Bash said. I can't imagine that you're comfortable with that.