The word for the day is “charade”

It’s “election season” in Kern County California

November 5, 2026, 5:45 am Pacific

Bakersfield California

Ridgecrest California is tucked away in the far northeastern corner of Kern County California about 125 miles from Bakersfield. Kern County is ranked the 20th largest county in the United States which helps to explain why the Kern County Elections Department will get around to counting the city’s votes when they feel like it.

At 1:00 am Pacific Time, on Thursday November 5th, 2026, nearly 36 hours from the polls having been closed, we estimate that only 50% to 60% of the votes have been counted. We don’t know how many votes remain to be counted, and we don’t know when the next update will be posted to the county’s election webpage. Does anyone really care? Where’s Ridgecrest?

This is getting ridiculous:

UPDATE November 5, 2026, 12:13 am Unofficial FINAL RESULTS: NO UPDATES, Kern County Elections Department is DARK?

This is par for the course in Ridgecrest.

When you think about it, voting for the city council doesn’t matter because the city manager and the city attorney run the city. The members of the city council merely provide 5-0 votes as a form of “council approval” for everything the city does, including installing license plate readers because the chief of police wants them.

In the last 40 years of the city’s history, it’s been the police department that eats up over 50% of the budget and the city manager and city attorney that run the show, which we call the “Ridgecrest City Clown Show”. It’s a game of charades, and you, the residents, are merely the suckers and fools living on a ship of fools*, while putting up with all of it, and that’s why only half of the 16,200 registered voters in the city bother to vote in a midterm election.

*Ship of Fools: California voters reject Prop 39, stricter voter ID measure

California voters rejected an effort to introduce tougher voter ID requirements in Tuesday’s election, following a bitter campaign fought against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s battle with the state over alleged noncitizen voting. Proposition 39, which would have required California voters to show ID at the polls and introduce additional verification requirements for mail-in ballots, was rejected by 60% of voters with roughly half of votes counted, according to Associated Press.

charade /shə-rād′/ noun

1. A game in which words or phrases are represented in pantomime, sometimes syllable by syllable, until they are guessed by the other players.
2. An episode in this game or a word or phrase so represented.
3. A readily perceived pretense; a travesty.”went through the charade of a public apology.”
4. A Clown Show on Facebook. “went through the charade of an election for a city council.”

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

Fake Government, Fake Voting, and it’s ALL produced on Facebook

If you don’t know who the fools are in Ridgecrest California, here’s looking at you.

Publisher’s Note: It occurs to me that you’ve all been bamboozled into accepting a municipal governance production on Facebook. This is not the way local government is supposed to work, and it’s not the way elections are supposed to work either. You might as well get rid of the city council and elect the city manager (and city attorney) for a two-year or four-year term and livestream meetings on members-only Facebook.

The city council is only there to provide “fluff” for the City Manager.

Now that the long-time police chief and city manager Ron Strand has retired, you are permitted to decide who the newest three members on the Council will be, and perhaps they’ll ultimately accept your demands for accountability, transparency and openness, but they’ll ultimately bow down to the hand-selected (by Ron Strand) city manager Travis Reed and the hand-selected (by Ron Strand) police chief Mario Ysit, and of course, the hand-selected city attorney too (Keith Lemieux).

You, dear residents of Ridgecrest aka voters, mistakenly believe that your vote for the city council matters, and that’s why there’s no urgency to count your vote. The votes will ultimately be counted at the convenience of the Kern County Elections Department.

Unfortunately, this is how things work in Ridgecrest California.

It’s hoped that the election of three new members will change the way Ridgecrest has operated for forty or more years, and maybe they’ll be able to convince the Kern County Board of Supervisors that the way things work at the Kern County Election Department is unacceptable. And what good are those vote tabulation machines anyway?

Postscript – Mayor Endicott says Leadership is “Hard”

A few years ago, when Eric Bruen was the mayor, city manager Ron Strand referred to the mayor as a “lightening rod” for the city. That was a true statement. Wednesday night’s meeting was a performance by Strand’s successor, Travis Reed. The likeable Reed handed out well deserved tokens of appreciation to many city employees who have worked their entire lives in service to the community. Previously, the appreciation came in the form of a certificate on piece of paper signed by members of the council.

Other than that, no mention was made of the election, and Mayor Endicott ended the meeting with meaningless jawboning about the uncivil political discourse in nation. He complained about how hard it is to be a politician, and how attacks on his credibility and integrity are “hard” to take, especially when the complaints come from people who believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

Perhaps it would be better if we just cancelled democracy Mr. Mayor*, and while we’re at it, let’s do a better job teaching the children to think for themselves instead of being indoctrinated to think that money grows on trees and that boys can become women? Come to think of it, let’s teach them what it means to live in a constitutional Republic with a democratic form of elections. And let’s get back to the good old days when the people counted the votes and the results were tallied by midnight.

* The soon-to-be former, but likeable, one two-year term mayor, is also a federal government employee who’s now a former disgruntled mayor but still a federal government employee. This explains a lot about Mayor Endicott’s disgruntlement, and all he got was a gavel.

Politics 101: All politics is local!

Politics requires both strong leadership and “moral integrity” in the words of candidate Lawrence Gaceta and soon to be Councilman Lawrence Gaceta. This is not to say that Mayor Endicott has no moral integrity. Quite the opposite, and that’s why Mayor Endicott is disgruntled and didn’t run for re-election, because as we’ve witnessed, there’s not much moral integrity on the current city council as it was run by the former city manager and soon to be former city attorneys.

And if you’re wondering why there’s so much apathy in the community, and why only 50-60% of the eligible voters will actually take the time to become informed by something other than Facebook and vote, perhaps this is one reason why they don’t care. We used to have “Election Day” in America, now we have an “election season“.