When I voted at 7:30 am on election morning, it was blue sky beautiful in Leucadia. I wasn't looking for trouble. I was looking for change, and I was looking to send a message. The touchscreen polling technology seemed simple enough. Kind of like an ATM, but not. Why worry, right?REPLACE -- yank and put the following

Oh sure, the machine next to mine was making a weird whirly noise, and the touch pad interface I used was awkward and sluggish. I didn't care. I was voting, and it felt good. I always vote. My parents raised me right.

A member of the Green party I measure success by different standards. This year it was a mixed bag, for me. Most disappointing was the re-election of Brian Bilbray and voter rejection of Proposition 87. Those coupled with the passage of growth inducing Props 1A and 1B, mean wider roads and more traffic. Big oil won the day in California.

Most encouraging was Republicans losing control of both houses of Congress, and Team Bush being put on notice. The dumping of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary and replacing him with a polite and a pragmatic warmonger, from the first Bush Administration no less, was a step backwards in the right direction.

Having Jerry Brown back in Sacramento is a very good thing. Jerry Brown as Attorney General will mean corporate polluters will have to clean up their act. Only in California can a politician known as Governor Moonbeam, re event himself as populist mayor and then as California's top cop.

I'm also proud Californians for allowing young women to retain the right to choose not including their parents in family planning decisions. The defeat of Prop 85 is victory for teenagers, and those who value personal freedom.

I'm very glad California voters rejected the extortive Proposition 90, recognizing it as the Trojan horse it was. Had it passed, Prop. 90 would have altered the California constitution to enable landowners and corporations to demand huge payouts from state and local taxpayers just by claiming a law has harmed the perceived value of their property or business.

On the local level, the election of Teresa Barth to the Encinitas City Council, is a major coup for those eager for environmental leadership in San Diego County. Encinitas City Councilwoman Maggie Houlihan has long needed help in her efforts to preserve what little remains of open space and viable habitat within the cities sphere of influence.

Another result of the Democrats winning majority is that California California senator Barbra Boxer will chair the Environment and Public works committee, replacing the very anti-environmental James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Inhofe was a leading global warming skeptic. Now he leads squat.

Matching that good news, wind energy executive Jerry McNerney, another California Democrat will replace the pro-extinction, anti-environment Republican Richard W. Pombo as Chairman of the House Resources Committee. Finally, California will be setting the Federal Environmental agenda.

Hope wore blue in 2006, now it wears green. How cool is that?