I have a better understanding of California politics thanks to a column by Dan Weintraub in the Sacramento Bee. He is one of my favorite bloggers.
California has an Assembly of 32 Republicans and 48 Democrats. The Democrats are a 1970s radical bunch passing Lefty Fundamentalist legislation like the bill last year forcing all California businesses over a certain low threshold to pay 100% of employee health insurance.
This group is far from representative of California but I only understood half the reason. I understood the way new computer designed districts create extremist incumbents.
What Weintraub shows is that each California district is, by law, the same size as the rest based on population. But not based on number of voters. Low voter turnout districts are poorer and much more likely to be Democratic. Consequently, the overall state is not represented in the districts the way it is in a general election.
The State almost never votes the way the Legislature votes.
With this strange district population bias, the 19 smallest voting districts out of 80, were all Democratic. The Democrats got 53% of the voters in Assembly district elections but they hold 60% of the Assembly seats. A Democratic district has an average of 80,000 voters while an average Republican district has 100,000 voters.
Now I understand the source of our Legislative weirdness.