It was the end of a political era in Ceres on Monday: City Councilman Ken Lane being honored as he completes 13 years of service.

Before that, Lane served on the Ceres Planning Commission from 1999 to 2005. Lane affectionately singled out a number of people and accolades were paid to him by others. The man who will replace him in the District 1 seat, Channce Condit, was noticeably absent.

Lane took a moment to mention me and thank me, saying he had hoped that I would have presented him with “the cartoon.” For those of you who don’t remember, in March 2015 I editorialized against the City Council being treated to pizza on the taxpayers’ dime between study sessions and council meetings at 7 p.m. Lane angrily defended the policy after my column ran with him going on a rant that included use of the word “picking” for a popular profane one, and concluded: “This council does not eat at every Study Session but staff does and they deserve to do so. Our stipend does not carry on a whole lot of money.” In response and in jest I – for the first time in recent history – created my own editorial cartoon showing Lane pounding the dais and holding a box labeled “Ceres Taxpayer Pizza.”

I thought Lane would be upset about the cartoon but he loved it. He is still talking about it more than three years later.

I like politics when it can end up with no hard feelings and being humorous.

Thanks, Ken. You will be missed.

By the way, after that whole flap, the council combined council meeting and study sessions in the same meeting and changed the council meetings from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m. on the second and fourth Mondays.

Who said politics was boring?

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You have to wonder if people are thinking when they vote.

All of those people in Californians who thought recreational pot use should be legal should see what has happened as a result.

A pair of new studies of police reports and insurance claims say there has been an increase by up to 6 percent in the number of highway crashes in four of the states where the recreational use of marijuana has been legalized. 

And while those who have been caught driving while drunk tend to be alone or with other adults, about 14 percent of those confirmed to be using pot had a child in their vehicle.

Keep in mind that DUIs tend to be confined to the evenings or early mornings. Pot use isn’t.

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Does it seem odd that all of the incumbent Republican representatives in Congress were winning on Election night but lost when the provisional ballots were cast and counted?

Seems really fishy to me.

Congressman Jeff Denham thinks the DMV processed voters are part of the reason he lost.

California launched the so-called Motor Voter program on April 23, which automatically registers and pre-registers eligible voters when they go into a DMV office to complete a driver’s license, state ID or address change transaction. It was a law the Democrats foisted upon the state. That’s because most people who sign up to get a license are young people and young people – since they have so much experience in life and are on their own and pay their own taxes (ha ha ha) – tend to vote for Democrats. It’s pure and simple chicanery.

It was also a reason why Democrats wanted to offer drivers licenses to illegal aliens who should be deported rather than rewarded to stay. I believe the intent is to get them to vote since they tend to support Democrats who protect them.

The DMV reported in September that it made screw-ups resulting from technicians. In May, the Los Angeles Times reported that a software error affected 77,000 voter records generated at the DMV.

On Monday, the DMV said about 1,500 people were improperly registered to vote, some of whom may not be citizens. Padilla said his office immediately removed all 1,500 people from the voter rolls. In a letter to the DMV, he called for the agency to hire an independent third-party to conduct an audit.

There were reports of a flood of people wanting to cast last-minute provisional ballots. Provisional voting is a process by which a voter’s ballot is enclosed in an envelope that contains the voter’s name, address, and other pertinent information so that it may be checked later and determined whether or not it is a valid vote. The voter provides this information, but because it’s not checked against an ID, the information that they give is completely on the honor system.

Seems to me a way to prevent voter fraud would be to show an ID at the polls like you do when you hand over your credit card for a purchase. Indiana in 2006 became the first state to enact a strict photo ID law, a law that was upheld two years later by the U.S. Supreme Court. As of September 2016, 33 states have enacted some form of voter ID requirement. But rest assured the Democrats in California have fought the concept of IDs for voting from Day One. Ask yourself why. If the excuse is that poor minorities don’t have IDs, think again.

How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com