With the fatigue of the budget saga slowly starting to fade (especially for those of us who took a few days off, which explains for the missing podcast last week), the annual process of bill signings and vetoes is also about to draw to a close.

Governor Schwarzenegger has a little more than 24 hours left to weigh in on bills sent to his desk by the Legislature. The weekend saw a flurry of signings and vetoes, too many to really keep track. In fact, one of the less talked about truths of this week is whether anyone truly can watch all of these bills. Certainly the shrinking Capitol press corps struggles more and more every year to do so.

Nonetheless, the intriguing side story to all of this is all of the vetoes that are being blamed on the budget impasse.

"Given the [budget] delay, I am only signing bills that are the highest priority for California," says Schwarzenegger in the boilerplate veto being attached to dozens and dozens of proposals.

Of course, determining "priority" is a subjective exercise and the supporters of some of these bills have questioned the governor's own standard. One poignant questioning of the standard came this morning from California's top elections official, Secretary of State Debra Bowen.

Bowen was critical of the governor's blanket veto of several elections-related proposals, including new ways for vote-by-mail to learn if their ballots have been rejected, and why; a bill making it easier for voters to change their mind after signing an initiative petition; and two measures helping indepedent voters understand their rights in choosing party ballots in primary elections.

"I'm dismayed the governor doesn’t believe it is a high priority to let voters know about their polling-place rights or if their votes were counted," said Bowen in a written statement. "I understand the governor is not fond of the Legislature these days, but it's California voters who are being punished."

With a stroke of the pen, Governor Schwarzenegger has added a twelfth proposal to the November statewide ballot... a big ballot that may still grow bigger.

The governor placed a $900 million bond measure on the ballot to provide low-interest home loans to returning veterans of current and recent wars. And in swift order, Secretary of State Debra Bowen then designated the vets bond as Proposition 12.

The backers of Prop 12 say the bonds will be repaid, over time, through loan payments made by veterans. The measure sailed through the Legislature with not a single vote in opposition, and quickly made its way to Schwarzenegger's signing desk in a ceremony in Sacramento this morning.

So that's 12 measures in all, and more are in the hopper. Remember there's a possible water bond (which was the subject of new discussions last week), a budget reform proposal pitched by the governor (with a separate idea on the issue floated by GOP legislators), and a possible reform of the 24-year-old lottery initiative to raise cash for state budget needs.

That would be 15. And even more new voter decisions were mentioned this afternoon by Senate GOP Leader Dave Cogdill in his appearance before the Sacramento Press Club. Cogdill said Republicans may push for balancing the current state budget by borrowing or using money currently earmarked for other voter-approved initiatives.

Such a plan would, you guessed it, require a vote of the people. If all of those "tweaks" could be placed in one proposal, that would be 16. If not, it could mean as many as 18 ballot measures. Wow.

Direct democracy is alive and well in California.

A long November ballot for California voters just got longer, as Secretary of State Debra Bowen has certified a proposal to strip legislators of the power to draw their own political districts.

The redistricting proposal was penned by representatives of California Common Cause, AARP, and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce; but it was undoubtedly carried across the goal line by the fundraising prowess of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign operation.

If voters approve the measure, a bipartisan citizens commission would draw legislative districts after the 2010 census, while the Legislature would retain the power to draw congressional districts.

Redistricting reform is a cause celebre among government reform advocates, but has been summarily rejected by California voters several times -- most recently in 2005 as Schwarzenegger's doomed Proposition 77.

As noted here before, this may not be the end of the November 4 ballot. Although it's doubtful any more initiatives will be certified in time, the governor and legislators are toying with the idea of two budget-related measures (budget reform and lottery revenue borrowing) and a measure to sell bonds to help stabilize California's ailing water supply.

The year was 1940, a year when war was on the horizon and the big political chatter centered on whether Franklin D. Roosevelt would run for an unprecedented third term in the White House.

That was the last time California held two separate primary elections in the same year.

Wait a minute. There's an election tomorrow?

Tuesday's primary still seems overshadowed by the presidential contest; on February 5, it was how California and the rest of the Super Tuesday states would vote. Tomorrow, the national media will be oblivious to the state's issues... likely focused only on whether the Democratic presidential race will come to a close.

Meantime, dozens of local, legislative, and congressional races will lock in candidates from all political parties. And while some think voter turnout will be dismally small, that might not be the case everywhere considering the intensity of some of these intra-party races.

"There are some hot contests," says Secretary of State Debra Bowen. "I think we'll see some pretty big variations from region to region."

Bowen dismisses any notion that moving the presidential primary from June to February was a bad idea, saying that it may be the reason behind a recent surge in voter registration -- particularly among young voters.

Unlike her predecessors, Bowen has not made an official prediction of statewide voter turnout. And if she's right about differences in voter participation by community, then one wonders whether some of these heated races for elective office could impact the only statewide contest -- the battle over changes to the government power of eminent domain.

Dueling initiatives Proposition 98 and Proposition 99 both aim to change eminent domain rules, albeit in different ways. Prop 98 is a far broader attempt to rein in the possibility of seizing property for redevelopment purposes; Prop 99 chooses instead to focus on limiting the taking of someone's home. If both initiatives should pass, only the one with the highest vote total will take effect.

The folks at the non-partisan California Voter Foundation have an online guide on what you need to know before you head to the polls.

We'll be doing live updates of The California Report through the night on public radio stations across the state. And we've got election resources on our site at KQED.

Hang around the folks who conduct elections long enough and you'll start to see that some voting snafus are hard to prevent.

That's not to say that elections officials are perfect, nor is it to imply that there aren't other serious issues facing voting systems and accuracy. There are. But a quick glance at the county-by-county documents being released by Secretary of State Debra Bowen shows that... in many cases... it's all about voter error.

Bowen is posting the reports filed by county elections officials as part of California's long-standing law requiring a manual recount of a percentage of the ballots cast. Those totals are then matched to the totals tabluated by machines on election day.

When you browse through the reports for the February 5 primary election, you find only slight problems.

Take the 210 votes counted on election day in a precinct in San Bernardino County's Yucca Valley. Turns out, thanks to the manual recount, that there were actually 211 votes cast. The missing vote was cast for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and local elections officials describe the problem as a "light pencil mark"-- one not dark enough to be read by the machines. Democrat Hillary Clinton lost a vote for the same reason in Sonoma County.

In another San Berdoo precinct, the machine counted an extra vote for Proposition 93 (term limits) because of a "stray mark" the voter made on the ballot. Sonoma had a few votes miscounted because the citizen marked two choices, but didn't erase one of them well enough. Similar and rare reports were filed from Kern and Marin counties. And in some pf the counties that have filed their manual recount reports so far, no errors were found.

There's obviously no major news here. It just seems worth noting than in the midst all of the furor over the integrity of voting, there may be no system to safeguard against the most primal of errors: those made by voters themselves.