Posted on 11/20/2010 8:26:06 AM PST by SmithL
It's looking more likely that Democrat Kamala Harris will be the state's next attorney general, as the San Francisco prosecutor continues to hold on to her lead in the still-undecided race.
In the days after the Nov. 2 election, the results had see-sawed between Harris, a Democrat, and her Republican opponent, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley. For the last week, however, Harris has maintained a comfortable lead - as of Friday afternoon she was up by about 43,000 votes, according to the secretary of state. There are still an estimated 500,000 ballots left to be counted in a race where more than 8.4 million votes have already been tallied.
Political observers on both sides of the aisle said Friday that it is likely Harris will keep a solid lead and ultimately win the contest.
That outcome would leave San Francisco without a district attorney and a mayor, as Gavin Newsom will become lieutenant governor in January. If she wins, Harris' replacement could be appointed by Newsom, if he waits to resign after she vacates the district attorney's office. Otherwise, an acting or interim mayor would choose the city's next prosecutor, until voters weigh in next November.
"In my estimation, it would be very hard for Cooley to pull it out at this point," said former Republican strategist Tony Quinn, who co-edits the nonpartisan California Target Book, which analyzes state elections.
"Cooley is running nowhere near as well in Republican counties in late absentee (ballots) as he did in early absentees, and it looks like most of the absentee ballots still out are in counties where Harris did well," Quinn said.
Eric Jaye, a Democratic consultant based in San Francisco, agreed.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
We are told that Jerry Brown won but there are 500,000 ballots left to count.
Hmm maybe he didnt win after all.
A possible Cooley win was about my only remaining bright spot and it looks like that too is about to go down the drain. Harris as AG may have worse consequences to the state than Brown as guv. Harris is kinda like Pelosi and Holder rolled into one.
Why are there so many ballots left to count? And why does it take so long to count them?
It is my understanding that absentee ballots must be mailed and postmarked by election day. So all should arrive in the mail within a few days after election day. So naturally they will be counted after election day, however, at least here in San Diego County, ballots to be counted using optical scanners are used for absentees. So the absentee ballots are to be fed into a scanning machine to be counted, just as the ballots for voters who vote in person are counted. Which in turn is supposed to give us fairly quick results.
Good point about Jerry Brown. He was declared the winner on election night before huge numbers of votes were actually counted. How can this be; how did the powers that be declare that and other elections on election night with so many ballots left to be counted? And why does it take so long, and how are so many still left to go through? Something doesn’t sound right about all of this.
Hmm. My eyebrows quirked over that one too. According to the SOS "semi-official" (?) results, state attorney general is the only contest where the margin of votes is less than ballots remaining to count.
Of course, this problem is entirely due to the preponderance of mail-in voting, early voting, no-excuse-necessary-permanent-absentee voting, turn-in-your-mail-in-ballot-at-the-poll voting etc, all of which provide for plenty of opportunity for shenanigans btw. Not to mention the disturbing reports that ALL electronic voting systems turned out to be easily hackable, almost as if that were a feature.
Where are all the electronic voting machines that was mandated by US Government? I don’t think these are all mail in ballots. Did California resort to paper ballots ensuring the Democrats would be able to guarantee a Democratic win?
What are CA voters thinking? This gal is an SF Radical. They reelected that Dimwit Boxer and elected Moonbeam as Gov. and nutcase Newsom as Lt Gov. They also reelected all the State Dem. Legislators including one dead guy. They also rejected a referendum to delay implementation of strict environmental standards that will put people out of work and drive businesses out of the State. For a State that has huge budget problems and one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, you would think the voters would wake up. Kind of blows your mind.
Because the rule in Democrat occupied areas is that you count, and recount, and recount, until you get the democrat takes a lead, and then you can declare the winner. Since the Democrat has a slight lead, you can declare her the winner, and ignore the remaining votes.
We've been doing observations at our county's ROV. The ones that arrive at the ROV on Tuesday, whether via mail or having people drop off their mail ballots at a polling place, will get scanned after the regular ballots are processed.
The first thing the mail ballots have to go through are signature verification (comparing the signature on the envelope vs. the original registration card). Anything odd-looking can be challenged, whether it's by the clerk, or by one of the citizen/campaign observers. They'll go through a secondary and tertiary review by senior ROV workers to determine whether or not they'll be processed. Once verified, then the envelopes will be opened and processed.
Then there are the instances where the machine will kick out ballots for overvotes, write-ins, and other quirks, such as crossing outs, using white-out, etc.
Some of those will be reviewed for the infamous "intent of the voter" situation.
Write-ins will have to be hand tabulated.
Once all of the verified mail ballots have been processed, THEN the provisionals will go through the same process. The first thing is to check whether or not the voter has voted twice, e.g., sending in a mail ballot and trying to vote provisional at a polling place, which is why they need to have the mail ballot processing completed before tackling the provisionals.
For Kalifornia this is turning out to be the perfect election from Hell!
Cooley was exepcted to win, but made a couple of gaffes during the campaign and was caught by coastal a coastal liberal backlash fearful of Republican gains. Too bad.
Further maddening was lower turnout in Republican areas. Why did they stay home?
Further maddening was lower turnout in Republican areas. Why did they stay home?
In California, we had nothing to vote FOR. The best that can be said for Whitman and Fiorina is that they aren’t as bad as Brown & Boxer.
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