Reminder: this is the last meeting of the cycle at our house.

Naomi gave a book report on The Tyranny of the Minority. The American system has always been skewed, but the situation is unusually difficult with the Senate and Electoral College. As an action item, there’s support for the Popular Vote Compact, which would break the EC stranglehold as states pass laws to award their electors to the popular vote winner. Unlike abolishing the EC, this is does require a Constitutional amendment to the founding document most difficult to amend in the developed world.

Bill: Organizing in the Central Valley is moving along. Central Valley Matters is hard at work. Rudy Salas seems to have the primary edge in CA–22 over the other Democrat. In CA–13, Adam Grey retains a name-recognition advantage. Phil Arballo is the more energetic Democrat.

I talked about the preliminary returns in Virginia. The local expert appears to be Tom Bonier. The Democratic early-vote advantage is much less than in 2021, but this is in part that the Republicans have changed their minds about encouraging voting by mail. He predicts a close election. Virginia still has a large number of voters who go to the polls on Election Day. Michael Feggans took a break from door-knocking to give us a special shout-out.

Aaron Frank of Focus for Democracy announced their latest fundraising is on behalf of Courier Newsroom. F4D’s analysis shows an 8-point swing towards Democrats when people are connected to local news, the function Courier is trying to perform with the disappearance of newspapers. F4D has both a tax-deductible 501(c)3 arm and a 501(c)4. They earlier pitched for a number of grassroots organizations they feel gave bang-for-buck.