[Congressman Billybob]

This was just published in California. May be on UPI as well. This is the straight skinny on how the process of the recall will drive the results. And the lamestream media don't have a clue on what is in this article.

Enjoy.

[firewalk]

bttt

[.cnI redruM]

I'm thinking the electronic touchscreen ballots will become and endless font of electoral fraud and dishonesty. Bob MulHolland probably has people on staff who already know how to hack these things.

[Uncle Miltie]

Simply put, Arnold Schwartzenegger is easy to pick out from a list of 197.

[sd-joe]

"The day before the election, all candidates with any budget at all will run advertisements emphasizing their ballot positions – ''Vote for John Smith on line 72.'' "

Another weird thing in this election is that the positions of the candidates on the ballots will be different in each of the counties, so state wide ads won't work either.

[eureka!]

Continuing thanks for your contributions here to matters legal...

[codercpc]

Wonderful article once again!!!

What is your prediction for the number of lawsuits filed for "disenchfranchised" voters who were confused by the ballots?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks very much!

calgov2002:

Gray Must Pay
Cruz Must Lose

calgov2002: for new calgov2002 articles. 

Other Bump Lists at: Free Republic Bump List Register

[Grampa Dave]

Total Recall Clouds are building up all over Kalifornia.

It is not a good time to be Gray Davis, who is Bill Clinton without the conscience, Al Gore without the charm.

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

This paragraph made me lose interest, its patently untrue;

The longer a ballot is, the more that voters become frustrated. ... And the California ballot in this election will be one of the worst ''laundry-list ballots'' in the history of American elections. So not only will the turnout for the recall of Davis be low, the total vote for all replacement candidates will be even lower.

This is an exceptionally short campaign, with an exceptionally high level of interest. The Gallup/USA Today poll came out yesterday showed that of all registered voters in my state, 71% listed themselves as "Extremely" and "Very" interested in the recall. (of what they called probable it added up to 100%) To say the "the turnout for the recall of Davis will be low" is so contradictory to what I see and hear that I don't what theoretical campaign this guy is talking about.

[tallhappy]

Great to see this.

Gray Must Pay
Cruz Must Lose

[daviddennis]

People's Rep and I have had our differences, but I have to swing my support solidly behind him in terms of recall turnout. There is an immense amount of interest in this election, and - more to the point - it has compelling candidates people are enthusiastic about going out and supporting. Whether you're for McClintock or Schwarzenegger or even Ariana Huffington, you know that there is at least one person on the ballot who expresses your views in a way that could make you proud.

It's possible that I'm too much of a geek about this, but the ballot is also going to be less confusing than Congressman BillyBob thinks.

The order is going to look like this: (I'm using a random order of letters here, so don't hold me to that being correct):

Edwards
Evans
Santos
Schwarzenegger
Smith
Stevens
McAfee
McClintock
Munoz
(etc)

In other words, only the first letter is scrambled; the ballot is alphabetical past the first letter. So all you need to do is find your favourite letter and slip down the alphabet to your candidate of choice.

If that's reasonably well explained, I don't think it will be all that difficult.

Schwarzennegger does have a huge advantage in the length of his name, which will stand out like a sore thumb no matter what the order is. (I forget who pointed this out, but it's a perfectly valid observation).

D

[caveat emptor]

With all due respect, Sir, both to the time you have spent researching the arcana of the mechanics of the nuts and bolts of the process of the upcoming California gubernatorial recall election as well as similar and dissimilar elections in other jurisdictions and to the extreme frustration likely to be experienced by all those average, and less than, and more than, Janes and Joes (facing the smorgasbord of 195 (or whatever) candidates) not having cards "with easy to-follow instruction(s) ...printed in large black letters (for the vision impaired) that state a simple message: ''VOTE FOR JOHN SMITH ON LINE 72.'', just how difficult do you think it's going to be for even the most somnolent of those who manage to find their way to a polling place to find as well the name "Arnold Schwartzenneger", even if the ballot were to be as poorly formatted as this sentence?

[lepton]

Cruz Bustamante, Bill Simon, and Arnold Schwarzenegger

"Sc" normally comes before "Si"

[lepton]

The day before the election, all candidates with any budget at all will run advertisements emphasizing their ballot positions – ''Vote for John Smith on line 72.''

Won't that number change in each of the 80 districts? Advertising each would be tough.

[Gothmog]

Excellent analysis. Much appreciated. I was going to post the same on ChronWatch in the "Reader Comments" section, but after searching the links for the opportunity to do so, none of the links allowed me to. A VLWC?

[dorothy]

Excellent article, but how do you factor in California's notoriously high percentage of absentee voters? I've never voted absentee in my life, but I'm thinking of doing so this time just so I don't spend hours in line at the precinct, waiting for those who read with their lips moving to find their candidate's name. An ad saying "vote for so-and-so at line 34" would have some impact on the person filling out the ballot at home.

BTW, anyone have any idea where I could find info re the actual percentage of ballots voted absentee? My line of google inquiry led nowhere.