Updated 11/03/04 12:32 PM
OAKLAND –Oakland voters easily approved Proposition Z, an attempt to legalize marijuana use in the city.

Updated 11/03/04 12:25 PM
OAKLAND – Designed as a blueprint for legalizing marijuana throughout the state, a city ballot measure requiring Oakland law enforcement agencies to treat illegal possession of the drug as the “lowest priority” won a decisive victory on Tuesday.

Updated 11/2/04 11:43 PM
OAKLAND – A ballot measure that would raise nearly $20 million for more police, fire fighters, and social programs in Oakland was narrowly passing, early returns showed Tuesday night.

Updated 11/2/04 10:25 PM
OAKLAND -- The photos of her son -- from childhood until the time of his murder in June of 2003 -- decorate the cover of her Measure Y voter pamphlet.

OAKLAND -- Ramona Garcia has spent months canvassing and calling her East Oakland neighbors to encourage them to vote yes on Measure Y, which will fund additional police officers and crime-prevention programs. Yet come Tuesday, Garcia will be unable to cast her own vote.

OAKLAND -- Christina Cummings, 15, said she started working with New Voters are Rising, a nonpartisan voter registration project, because her mom signed her up. All summer she strolled the Bay Area malls, canvassed at events like the UniverSoul Circus and walked Oakland's precincts registering citizens to vote.

OAKLAND -- Ramona Garcia has spent months canvassing and calling her East Oakland neighbors to encourage them to vote yes on Measure Y, which will fund additional police officers and crime-prevention programs. Yet come Tuesday, Garcia will be unable to cast her own vote.

OAKLAND--It was 10:15 pm on a mid-October Friday in East Oakland’s Patrol District Three, and for Officer William Bacon, “Dogwatch” had already gotten off to a bad start. Barely an hour into the night patrol, Bacon arrived at the corner of Foothill and Cole, where 57 year-old James Lancaster was sprawled out in a liquor store parking lot. Crimson rivulets of blood trickled out of the back of Lancaster’s head, braiding down the pavement and pooling in the cracks.

OAKLAND -- On the last Friday evening before the election in Oakland's Chinatown, the streets looked deserted. Shopkeepers had already brought in the produce that lined the sidewalks earlier in the day.

OAKLAND -- When Arthur O'Neal first came to Oakland from rural Arkansas in 1959, California was full of surprises. The Spanish names were new to him — he pronounced Vallejo as "Valley-Joe." He went from making $6 a week on a farm back home to $1.75 an hour on a garbage truck here. And in 1960, at the age of 31, he voted for the first time.