Guess what? Electronic signatures aren’t new to California politics. In most counties of this state, records of voter registration are kept in electronic form. So when the clerk’s office checks to see if your pen-and-paper signature on an initiative petition matches the signature they have on file, the signature they’re comparing it with is an electronic one.

I learned more about this through reading the fascinating court filings in the case of Ni v. Slocum, a new lawsuit that asks a superior court judge in San Mateo County to find that an electronic signature on the marijuana initiative – Michael Ni signed it electronically with the touch screen of his iPhone – is valid and should be counted. The county’s chief elections officer, Warren Slocum, ruled the signature invalid.

Californians, meet your next governor.

Let’s call him Jerry Schwarzenegger.

As former California Gov. Jerry Brown officially rolled out his 2010 campaign for governor this week, he was confronted by questions about how a new Brown term in the stateh ouse might be different than his first, an entertaining if unfocused eight-year stretch from 1975 to 1983.

But in trying to reassure voters that he’s learned lessons, Brown looked and sounded like an older, Zen version of the unpopular incumbent, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who can’t run for re-election because of term limits.

We’re past deadline at Fox & Hounds Daily, so these are hastily assembled first impressions of today’s U.S. Senate radio debate. And I’m scoring these folks on presentation—their views on foreign policy and national security, the subject of the debate, are so similar that there is simply no reason to get into that here.

- Carly Fiorina, calling in while her rivals were at the debate in person, sounded scratchy and tired (at least over my Internet connection). Her campaign team, for all its operational successes, needs to do more work on the candidate herself. She managed the terrible trick of managing to sound defensive even when she was attacking.

Advice: next time, try more courtesy. First-time candidates, particularly those who happen to be infrequent voters and who are running against people with long records of public service, should not call their rivals by their first names. Stop saying “Tom” and “Chuck,” and try “Congressman Campbell” and “Assemblyman DeVore.”

There are few better ways to make your point than with a well-conceived protest. As a journalist, they are fun to cover. I’ve seen clashes between cops and anarchists, watched hotel workers shut down Century Boulevard, and listened as New Yorkers, defending rent control against their then-governor, chanted, “George Pataki! Landlord Lackey!” (Try chanting it yourself—you won’t be able to stop).

So I’m delighted to see California’s college students out protesting program cuts and fee increases this week. Their cause is righteous. Unfortunately, their aim stinks.

They’re protesting in two places—college campuses and outside the Capitol in Sacramento – where they are unlikely to make much impact. College campuses are a waste of time because the protestors can’t make any converts there. Everyone on campus already agrees with them.

The Capitol is a tempting target, but it’s also a waste of time. California’s governing system, combined with partisan polarization, has tied the legislature (and the governor, for that matter) in knots. The main role of legislators, in putting together a budget, is to clean up the mess left them by the broken system. Protesting at the Capitol these days is like protesting outside your janitor’s office.

Right now, Meg Whitman is spending millions to convince Republican primary voters that she’s the most authentic, conservative, anti-tax candidate for governor. Steve Poizner is doing the same (though he’s spending fewer millions).

They’re both full of it. Everything we know about both of these two people is that they are mainstream, hyper-ambitious, business-oriented, socially moderate folks who weren’t particularly conservative or anti-tax before they got into Republican politics. So let’s cut through the nonsense. (I know, I know, without the nonsense there’d be no campaign, but let’s just try it here, as an intellectual exercise).

Does Whitman really believe what she’s saying about herself – and about Poizner? Does Poizner really believe what he’s saying about himself and about Whitman?

Doubtful.

If you think California governing system is badly broken, how should you vote in the governor’s race?

The likely nominees of each party, Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman, haven’t even bothered to offer an answer. (And for the record, Steve Poizner, despite being more specific about his policies than his rivals, has dodged this big question too).

Neither has spoken at any length about the state’s deep structural and constitutional problems, much less committed to addressing them.

At best, a vote for either Brown or Whitman is a wild guess. At worst, a vote for either is a waste of time. Without a mandate for broader change, the next governor, whether it’s Brown or Whitman, will be lucky to muddle through four years with more of the budget gimmicks and debt we’ve used for too long in California.

Is there a better option?

Well, leaving the ballot blank might be the better option.

The world has been watching California’s political and fiscal troubles, and the world is blaming our direct democracy.

So wherever there’s talk of expanding the rights of people to decide on laws or constitutional amendments, a new criticism ring: Let’s not let our country/province/city become another California.

I’ve been traveling around the country for the past week with Bruno Kaufmann, a Swiss-Swede journalist who is president of the Initiative & Referendum Institute Europe, a think tank on direct democracy based at the University of Marburg in Germany. He’s shared with me how California’s name is taken in vain in direct democracy debates around the world, particularly in Europe, where a new citizen’s initiative process is beginning to take shape. Bruno, political strategist Gale Kaufman, and I will talk more about this at a public event today in Sacramento.

Recently, the Peterson Institute for International Economics opined of the European initiative: “ Anyone who thinks this is a good idea should look across the globe to California, which has nearly a century’s experience with direct democracy and citizens’ initiatives, and which is lurching from one fiscal crisis to another and is probably the most ungovernable state in America.

Given all the uncertainties of California politics, here’s one thing you can bet on:

We haven’t heard the last of a constitutional convention.

There are two reasons to believe the idea isn’t going away, despite the failure of convention backers to raise enough money to qualify two initiatives for the November 2010 ballot.

1. This was a successful failure.

The history of big changes in California is a history of successful failures, similar to con con’s. In the 30 years between statehood and the state’s last constitutional convention, in 1878 and 1879, there were three major efforts to call a convention, each of which failed.

Howard Jarvis, co-author of Prop 13, had a decade’s worth of failures with similar measures before he got his initiative on the ballot and changed California’s tax and governance systems forever.

Once in a great while, the California legislature does something so brilliant, so wonderful, so exquisite that the only proper thing to do is stand back and applaud the majesty of their handiwork.

We saw one of these perfect legislative moments in the Assembly vote on Abel Maldonado’s confirmation as lieutenant governor.

What, you say? Didn’t the Assembly, by failing to provide 41 votes for or against Maldonado, fail to render a verdict, creating confusion over whether Maldonado was lieutenant governor? Well, as a technical yes, they failed to render a verdict, but in so doing, they rendered a verdict. And it was the right verdict.

Confirming or rejecting Maldonado would have been easy. But to appear to confirm and reject him at the same time was itself a choice. It was a reminder that heaven and hell aren’t the only choices. Purgatory is a possibility too, and it was the right home for this nomination.

This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

A few weeks ago, a statewide ballot initiative petition signed by a California voter named Michael Ni was delivered -- quietly and without fanfare -- to the clerk's office in San Mateo County.

Strange as it may sound, this is no exaggeration: Ni's John Hancock may reshape American politics forever.

Ni did not sign his name on a piece of paper. His signature was electronic. He wrote his name on the petition (a measure to legalize and tax cannabis in California) using the touch screen of his iPhone. The signature was then delivered to the county clerk on a flash drive, one of those small memory storage devices you use to back up files on your computer.

In doing this, Ni -- the co-founder of a Silicon Valley start-up that has developed a technology for electronic signature-gathering -- was seeking to challenge the rules that have governed the American political economy since the Progressive era.