Elections

Arnold Schwarzenegger unleashed Armageddon last week. No, not the sequel to the movie where the giant asteroid threatens Earth, but rather his proposed budget, which seemed to menace California. There were two budgets, actually. One, which assumed voters would pass state ballot measures on Tuesday, would cut deeply into state services to address a $15.4-billion deficit. The other assumed the measures' defeat.

The battle over six state budget propositions on today's ballot sputtered to a close Monday with a burst of low-profile campaigning that belied the gravity of California's fiscal crisis. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose legacy will be shaped in part by the election's results, made a final pitch to voters before leaving the state ahead of the results. The governor is scheduled to join President Obama at the White House today for an announcement on auto emission rules.

California voters sent Sacramento a mixed and somewhat contradictory message Tuesday. But the politicians' response should be unequivocal. They should fix the budget themselves, right now, and not dither over any pain it inflicts. All those steamy summers of squabbling over unconstitutionally late spending plans without honestly making ends meet finally caught up with the policymakers when the electorate emphatically trashed their convoluted offering.

Putting their political rivalries aside, hundreds of Iranian television executives and government officials gathered recently to think up strategies to draw as many voters as possible to their country's June 12 presidential election. "All four major candidates are in line with the system," Askar Owladi, a high-ranking member of the conservative Islamic Coalition Party, told attendees. "So we do not feel concerned about who will be our next president," Owladi said.

The winner of Iran's June 12 presidential election will enjoy only limited power in the nation's complex system. How does the Islamic Republic's political system work? It combines elements of democracy with unelected religious leadership. The elected president is technically subordinate to the appointed supreme leader.

A beautiful woman glances seductively over her shoulder from a billboard on a busy Beirut thoroughfare. But it isn't perfume or shampoo she's selling: It's politics. The ad, which urges women to "be beautiful and vote," was one of the more controversial campaign advertisements rolled out by parliamentary candidate Gen. Michel Aoun, whose party is allied with the Islamist group Hezbollah and is expected to make gains in national elections Sunday.

Huge swaths of the Iranian capital erupted in fiery riots that stretched into the early hours today as hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory in his quest for a second term amid allegations of widespread fraud and reports that his main challenger had been placed under house arrest.

As they watch the bedlam unfold after Iran's disputed presidential election, U.S. officials are uncertain whether it might lead to reform and an easing of tensions with Tehran or to a crackdown by an insecure leadership. Either way, they say, their course is clear: Say little, and do even less. Obama administration officials recognize an Iranian sensitivity that dates to 1953, when the CIA helped topple popular nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.

It starts with two young female voices, quietly at first, almost gently piercing the quiet of the night. "Allahu akbar!" they cry out a few minutes after 10 p.m. "God is great!" Then another voice joins in from the other side of the block. This one belongs to an older woman. "God is great!" she responds in a rasp that suggests decades of hardship and swallowed rage. "Allahu akbar!" After a minute or two, a male voice joins in.

As many of their friends and relatives clashed with security forces in Iran, hundreds of demonstrators gathered Saturday in front of the Federal Building in Westwood to join the protests over allegations of voter fraud in the June 12 Iranian presidential election.