Posted on 11/05/2010 9:43:04 AM PDT by Arec Barrwin
Waiting game in 11th District by Jon Mendelson / Tracy Press Tracy Press
Nov 05, 2010
David Harmer (left) and Rep. Jerry McNerney are still unsure as to who will sit in the next Congress.
Will Tracy next be represented in Congress by Jerry McNerney or David Harmer? It’s a question that might not be answered for weeks.
That’s because even though the incumbent Democrat congressman led Republican challenger Harmer by 134 votes as of Thursday, according to the California Secretary of State, thousands of ballots remain uncounted.
The 11th Congressional District spans four counties — Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Joaquin. Each county has both mail-in and provisional ballots yet to be counted before final vote tallies can be reported.
It’s a process, according to Secretary of State spokeswoman Shannon Velayas, that could take until the end of November.
“Not all ballots are counted on Election Day in California,” Velayas said. “State law provides counties with 28 days to count every last ballot, and using that calendar that puts us at Nov. 30.”
The San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters could take a good chunk of that time to get its results squared away. According to Alexia Smith-Payne, office elections technician supervisor of the registration and vote-by-mail department, there are as many as 35,000 ballots still to be counted countywide.
“Vote-by-mail ballots received at the polls have to be counted, as well as mail from Monday and Tuesday,” Smith-Payne said.
Plus, there are as many as 8,000 provisional ballots to deal with, she said.
Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties also have ballots to tally.
While not all of those ballots are from voters who live in the 11th District — the district, while taking up most of San Joaquin County, only embraces small slices of the other three counties — the upshot is that McNerney’s lead is tenuous.
“The numbers are probably going to change a couple of times,” Smith-Payne said.
Despite the uncertainty, the Harmer and McNerney campaigns are both optimistic.
McNerney campaign manager Sarah Hersh was feeling “positive” about the congressman’s chances, citing what she said was a trend of late voters casting ballots for the incumbent Democrat.
“The momentum is clearly on our side, as late results have continued to break strongly in McNerney’s favor,” she said in a Wednesday morning press release. “Given this trend, we’re confident that we will prevail as the few remaining votes are counted.”
She said that the campaign has contacted the registrar of voters in each 11th District county and will “monitor the situation” as the rest of the ballots are tallied.
Harmer’s campaign, however, touted the cache of ballots left to be counted in San Joaquin County as a big advantage for the Republican. Harmer had more walk-in support in the county (45,958 votes) than McNerney (41,612 votes), according to the registrar of voters on Wednesday.
Either way, a race that had long been forecast as extremely tight will live up to its billing.
Right until the moment in-person voting began at 7 a.m. Tuesday, the 11th District race had been tagged by many political observers as a pure toss-up, given the district’s even split between registered Democratic and Republican voters.
But Republican candidates across the country swept out Democratic incumbents, gaining at least 60 seats in the House of Representatives even before the results of the Harmer-McNerney race were finalized.
Democrats took control of the House from Republicans in the 2006 midterm election and gained more seats in the 2008 presidential election cycle.
Read more: Tracy Press - Waiting game in 11th District
*** Emergency Need for Registered Republicans: Help in the Recount Effort and make sure that the Harmer Election is not stolen. ***
Your help is needed to monitor the Election Ballot Recount effort by Election Department workers, for the Harmer-McNerney CD11 Congressional Race. This effort is going on currently and continues every day for as long as it takes to recount some 50,000 Absentee Ballots; at the Registrar of Voters offices in in all counties. You will watch the workers to insure that fraud does not take place.
Schedule which, days, and times that you can work. Contact Chris Del Beccaro at Harmer HQ by calling 925-415-1178, and leave a message if need be. Harmer staff will monitor this phone number between 9 am and 9 pm every day. You may also email to chris@harmerforcongress.com.
The Democrats will be finding bags of ballots in trunks, closets and where ever else to win this seat.
/s
I’m not being fooled this time.
1. It’s California.
2. The dems win the close races.
Note: The dems win ALL close races.
Not with enough scrutiny. They did lose one in 2000...but they probably because of the weight of attention didn’t allow enough B.S. like when they tried to throw away military absentee ballots because the post office didn’t post mark them correctly.
I live in Tracy...I am sick and tired of being represented by McNerny.
<I live in Tracy...I am sick and tired of being represented by McNerny.
Have you considered moving to another district? Harmer has done this, many times....
...been off FR for a while, just saw your comment now...
Uhm, I grew up an army brat moving from place to place...length of time in a particular town has little impact on my vote for a congress critter at the federal level. If he were running for mayor of Tracy, then it might make a difference in regard to how familiar he was with Tracy et al. As for being "in touch" with the 11th district became a highly gerrymandered entity as part of the Democrat party's plan to get McNerny in here (that and some blatantly false corruption accusations against Pombo). The district is not a community, its just some political strategy lines, so what if your point is that he isn't local, heck neither are the McNerny supporters over the Altamant pass in Livermore...but lo and behold they are now district 11 too.
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