There hasn't been much of a post-mortem among politicos about the May 19 election -- partially because the state's fiscal crisis hasn't allowed time for pondering, but also because it's seemed pretty darn clear: the voters thought the budget deficit measures stunk.

Nonetheless, a couple of interesting points have come up in the past 24 hours... today from the state's preeminent pollsters and yesterday in my interview with Governor Schwarzenegger.
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An election night that everyone got to turn in early, and one of the worst (if not the record) lowest voter turnout in California history. Quite the special election, eh?

In this week's Capital Notes Podcast, we examine the results and the messages of the voters rejecting all of the budget-balancing proposals on Tuesday. As Capitol Weekly's Anthony York and I discuss, finding any single message seems... well... impossible.

We also examine this week's dire budget news, including new projections of the deficit and the governor's call for more spending cuts.

Party over, oops, out of time! So tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999. -- Prince

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested dusting off the script of a movie he wasn't in today, Back To The Future, in telling reporters that the state budget should match its anemic revenues -- now about where they were a decade ago.
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Well, you had to know it was coming.

In the wake of yesterday's all-budget special election, a former candidate for the Legislature has formally filed an initiative to knock the California Legislature back to part-time status, more than four decades after it became a year-round affair.
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And now, the least surprising news of the political year: the special election called by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature to help solve the state's budget dilemma was a bust.

The voters have spoken. And their very loud answer on the five budget-related ballot measures with real impact: no.

There's a risk in playing crime scene investigator before the smoke has fully cleared. Still, it's hard to deny some of the more obvious reasons for Tuesday's train wreck, things that most everyone in California politics has been talking about for weeks...
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On this day before the big special election, there's a pretty noticeable quiet around the state Capitol, as California's budget needs will soon (and somewhat) be in the hands of the voters.

Until then, a few odds and ends related to the six proposition extravaganza are worth a mention...
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Batten down those hatches, the wind's picking up and it's looking ominous. Yes, special election day is almost upon us.

On this week's Capital Notes Podcast, we talk about new deficit projections, what those numbers might mean in terms of budget solutions, and the big budget related election now only four days away.

(And yes, Capitol Weekly's Anthony York and I recorded this podcast just before the governor released his two revised budget plans... blame it on the tight schedule of a late afternoon news conference.)

The revised budget, two of them actually, from Governor Schwarzenegger suggests a grim pathway out of another multi-billion dollar budget hole.

The question now: will the hole be almost another 50% deeper come Wednesday, after the voters weigh in? For that answer, we'll have to wait.
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An unsurprising, but still sobering, bit of late afternoon news on the state of California's finances: Treasurer Bill Lockyer has formally asked the feds to back up the state's massive borrowing needs over the next few months -- essentially a guarantee that the United States Treasury will step in should the state or any local governments default.
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You're angry. You want to punish the politicians. And so... if you're like your fellow Californian who's been polled in recent weeks... you're going to cast a vote for Proposition 1F with glee. Off with their heads, er, pay raises!

Prop 1F was the focus of this morning's final look at the May 19 special election on The California Report.

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