With outdated equipment slowing down vote tallies, Santa Clara County is talking about switching to all-mail elections to quicken the process.

If you're going to get fired, do it the John Vartanian way. The former Santa Clara County department head continues to enjoy the travel rewards he stole. Now he's also getting another five-figure paycheck.

Public safety and the recruitment and retention of San Jose police officers dominated discussions during the campaign season. So, what's the right salary for a job in which men and women could very well have risk their life every day they put on a uniform? It's not supposed to be an easy question.

San Jose’s monthly free-for-all, Bike Party, faces an identity crisis, as a faction of the merry cyclists attempts to go corporate (and eventually nonprofit).

Sylvia Perez-MacDonald has been promoted to director of the Independent Defense Counsel Office. That's the Santa Clara County agency that foots legal bills for defendants who can't afford attorneys and have conflicts of interest with other available offices—such as "allegedly indigent" ex-Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr.

Taking the lead from nearby Bay Area cities, San Jose is poised to enact a developer fee to help pay for affordable housing.

County Executive Jeff Smith announced Friday that the Registrar of Voters will conduct a post-election manual tally of 1 percent of precincts to ensure the accuracy of electronic vote scanners. The recount is not related to any particular local race, he noted in a statement, but it offers a last-gasp hope to candidates who trail by close margins.

A proposal to regulate surveillance technology on the county level comes up for consideration at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

The San Jose Police Department faces another internal investigation after it was found that Chief Larry Esquivel accepted a prohibited gift from the San Francisco 49ers. That investigation could be complicated.

Women, and girls under 18, are increasingly getting caught up on gang charges and violent crimes—and a lack of gender-specific intervention means local authorities have only recently started catching up to the trend.

Sacramento’s most notorious lobbyist and San Jose’s shadiest council member each got slapped with fines by the state political watchdog.

Silicon Valley may be home base to many of the world’s most celebrated technical disruptors, but it also holds the dubious distinction of using a voting system that, to be kind, is, well, not exactly state of the art. And to the chagrin of many, it's not going to get better any time soon.

Just how many races would have commenced had Dave Cortese defeated Sam Liccardo?

War Ink, an online multimedia exhibit launched today—Veterans Day—features tattoos as an expression of memories difficult for ex-military men and women to talk about.

Dave Cortese told supporters in an email Monday evening that it's "time to move on," acknowledging that he finished second to Sam Liccardo in the San Jose mayor's race. Liccardo confirmed in a text message to San Jose Inside that Cortese called him to concede.

Five days after the polls closed, the county Registrar of Voters finished tallying absentee ballots in the San Jose mayor's race. But since Election Day, questions and conspiracy theories have been raised about the accuracy of the vote totals.