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Unfortunately Meagher County has only 1,400 adults - and based on 2000 and 2004, the best we can hope for is a +500, which may not be close enough to get a state paid recount.

Unless there are uncounted absentees and an unually large number of provisionals from Burns precincts, I am afraid this one is done.

See post 122 CBS and CNN likely have a typo giving Webb 4,000 extra votes

I think there is an error in both the CBS and CNN county by county tallies (and if the statewide totals are the sum of the counties, the error flows through to the bottom line)

Isle of Wight is showing 12 of 13 precincts with 5050 votes for Webb and 6984 for Allen at the Virginia interactive website.

CBS and CNN are both showing 9,050 votes for Webb. Checking the vote totals for the other county races, the correct number is almost certainly 5,050 - unless 4,000 voters went into the booth and voted for Webb and failed to vote for congress and the statewide ballot question

Bottom line - the Allen margin may be 4,000 votes higher than CNN and CBS are showing

Various media are reporting that behind closed doors, Corzine and democrat leaders have agred to a an over $1 billion sales tax increase "with half to go towards property tax relief" - and extending the sales tax to currently untaxed items.

Reportedly, as part of the deal Corzine and the Democrats will have a consitutional amendment added to the ballot in November to dedicate the increased sales tax to "property tax relief", allowing each of the dems a chance to "save face".

Either way, the budget will be increased over 10% - $3 Billion - and a wide array of taxes increased.

Corzine's budget message already said that:

Impact of the Federal Budget on NJ

The President’s Fiscal 2007 Budget contains major reductions in federal funding for states. If the President’s proposed budget is enacted, New Jersey will see cuts in many discretionary and mandatory health, education, transportation, homeland security, labor, and justice programs. Also, several critical programs, including the Community Services Block Grant, would be eliminated. In addition to these proposed cuts, the recently enacted Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) includes new TANF mandates that will impose substantial financial burdens on the State. Finally, the State has incurred significant costs due to the serious complications that have arisen during the transition to the new Medicare Part D prescription drug program.

These critical losses of federal funding pose serious challenges for New Jersey’s citizens and for the State’s budget.

What is missing from the major media discussion is that Corzine is trying to push through a $3 billion - or 10% - increase in spending, and the assembly democrats are happy to spent that much, but want a "less noticeable" tax. Assembly Democrats want to increase a payroll tax by applying it to the first $90,000 of a wage earner’s salary rather than the first $25,000 as is current law. Assembly republicans have proposed $2.2 billion in spending cuts - but they aren't invited to the table.

The sales tax increase raises "only" $1 billion. Speaker Roberts wants to raise this through the increased payroll tax, postponing pension contributions, making more optimistic revenue projections and shifting unemployment insurance money to the budget.

IMHO, it is an interesting gambit in brinksmanship to put pressure on Atlantic County Republican Senator Bill Gormley - and also payback to the South Jersey Democrats who are opposing the sales tax increase.

Gormley cuts deals all the time with Democrat and Republican governors at budget time, but since he is now in the minority, he has seen his influence decline (although you can still smoke in a casino)

Roberts (Speaker) is no dummy, and also can't be happy with the rumors that Corzine will attempt to have him removed as speaker.

A court already ruled yesterday that the inspectors are "non-essential" and, in addition, the racing cards at Monmouth Park wil be cancelled at one of the busiest weekends of the year - and with nice weather in the forecast.

The NJ governor, arguably, already the most powerful executive office in the nation (appointing all the other state office holders) assumes even greater authority under a World War II era statute and the constitutional requirement that the state cannot spend money without a balanced budget.

In the nearly 60 years since enactment, this is the first time the emergency has been declared.

Here is the executive order:
http://www.nj.gov/governor/news/news/approved/20060701a.html

The following is an except from nj.com (Star Ledger)
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-7/115173139046780.xml&coll=1

"Al Porroni, executive director of the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services ... explained that delegates to New Jersey's 1947 constitutional convention were "very concerned about 'sound fiscal policy.' They must have used that term a thousand times."

Those delegates took a spending restriction from the constitution of 1844 and made it even tougher. The resulting provision established "the important policy requirements of a single annual appropriations bill and a balanced budget," according to a guide to the New Jersey Constitution written by Robert Williams, a professor at Rutgers School of Law in Camden.

The governor's powers under the act are "extraordinary," Porroni said. It authorizes the governor to use all resources of state and local governments and to "commandeer" private property "subject to the future payment of the reasonable value." It makes the governor the "emergency commander" with power that, on its face, cannot be challenged.

Lost in all of this is that the proposed budget is seeking a $3 BILLION spending increase - or 10.6% - on top of staggering increases during the previous four years.

($30.875 billion vs $27.920 billion in FY 06 which was overspent and over $300 million in supplementals added)

So for now, all "non-essential" government employees are furloughed. My question is ... if they are "non-essential" why are they on the payroll to begin with?

UPDATE: Duke denies ESPN report

Statement By John F. Burness on Media Reports about the Future of Duke Lacrosse

Friday, June 2, 2006
Note to Editors: John F. Burness is senior vice president for public affairs and government relations at Duke University.

Durham, N.C. -- “Media reports to the contrary, President Brodhead has not yet made a decision on the future of men’s lacrosse at Duke.”

http://dukenews.duke.edu/2006/06/burness_lax.html

There are two possibilities:

1. Nomination by petition.

The petition containing the signatures of approximately 6,500 registered voters. The candidate would not be a "Republican" or "Democrat". It actually looks like it is not a huge impediment as the name would appear in a grouping with Nifong as the Dem nominee. The diadvantage is that "straight line" voters would have to be educated to actually vote for an individual candidate AND that by voting straight line they do NOT preclude their individual vote for a Nifong opponent.

The statute does explicitly provide that even a voter marking a "straight party line" on a ballot will have their individual candidate choice counted from off the party line.

I think a legitimate candidate (not a "protest" candidate with minimal qualifications) would stand a very good chance of winning, in that 50,000 of the voters expected to vote in Novmber either voted in the democratic primary and voted against Nifong or didn't vote in the primary and likely would skew against Nifong in a general election, especially with all of the post-primary disclosures.

2. Write in

A candidate must register as a write-in candidate in advance of the election by filing a petition with 100 registered voters signatures. In all practical terms, it would be more difficult to win since not only would a candidate need to persuade a majority of voters, those voters would need to successfully cast write-in ballots, something most voters have never done before. There would be no "prompting" and the voter would have to write in such that "The voter's choice can be clearly determined." using the language in the statute. There would be a space marked "write-in" directly underneath Nifong's ballot position.

In neither case could the vote be for either of the two losing candidates in the May Democrat primary (including Freda Black)since North Carolina has a "sore loser" law.

The Pierce County recount results are likely to be disappointing this afternoon.

According to the Auditor's website, http://www.co.pierce.wa.us/pc/abtus/ourorg/aud/elections/archives/gen2004/recount1.htm, there are 390 fewer "undervotes" in the manual recount compared to the machine recount (and two fewer overvotes) - with 200 added for Gregoire and 182 for Rossi (compared to the machine recount) and the net result is a net pickup of 18 for Gregoire.

Rossi had gained 19 votes in the first, machine recount.

As of yesterday, there were 67 fewer ballots counted in the manual recount than in the machine recount - which BTW, counted 9 more ballots than recorded in the original report on the general election.

General ballots - 317,002
Machine recount 317,011
Manual recount to date - 316,944

The canvassing board is meeting this morning, perhaps to made decisions on the remaining uncounted ballots. Can anyone add insight?

The ballots arriving in King County are coming from heavily Democratic districts. Using the King County Election site data, which posts by day the arrival of ballots, since 11/10/04, the 3,743 ballots have come from districts which elected democrat state representatives by an average margin of 40%.

IF these are the remaining "4,000" ballots to be counted, instead of a additional deficit for Rossi of 700-800, we are looking at 1,400-1,500. There are still enough uncounted in other counties to offset that possibility, but the margin will be less than 1,000.

If anyone wants to see the data on a legislative level to help give me a better sense of these numbers (especially if you have local knowledge) email me privately, rather than take up the bandwith in the forum.

I updated my view at a new thread.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1280777/posts?q=1&&page=51

I agree that most of the absentees/provisionals are tracking according to the vote in the county as a whole. King County still has 4,000 votes to be counted (but more can arrive before the 17th) and if they are evenly distributed through the county, Rossi would be down another 700 votes. There are substantial uncounted votes in Republican counties, so I think Rossi will pick up 1,500 to 2,000 added votes there to lead when the counting is done, assuming that ALL the votes to be counted are in hand today.

I worked a spread sheet that has tracked the changes since Election Day and the model using the absentee ballots favors Rossi slightly more than the overall vote model. If, for logisitical reasons, the remaining 4,000 King County votes are skewed to the districts with 85% D votes, the model will not work. Two of these districts (as of last Friday) returned fewer than expected absentees with a statistical significance (outside one std deviation)

For what it is worth, here is, in order of votes I project should be gained for Rossi by county: (null votes and voided ballots are assumed to be spread evenly, not impacting one candidate disproportionately) I also show in a memo column the absentee vote margin to date to show that it is comparable to the overall margins.:

Christine Gregoire(D) 1,345,945

Dino Rossi(R) 1,347,865

Some 14,000 plus votes were added to the total today, with a -27% spread for Rossi, a loss of 3,674 votes. Gains elsewhere offset a portion of the loss - now Rossi + 1,920. (as of 6:28pm PST)

As of now (see below for caveat) only 11,000 King County ballots left to count - even breaking 2 to 1 for the D, that's a loss of 3,000 votes IF every provisional and absentee is valid and votes in proportion to the latest counts. Offsetting these votes will be Rossi margins in Benton, Clark, Pierce Walla Walla and Yakima - a total of 12,200 uncounted ballots among them and 2,500 additional Rossi margin (taking a conservative yield).

Still close enough to "steal" with late-found ballots or an undetected counting error, but the other side is running out of ballots to count. It is difficult to make truly accurate projections not knowing the proportion of provisional to absentee ballots among the uncounted and whether they produce dissimilar results in each county. (e.g absentees may be 60-40 D and provisionals 65-35 D in King County.)

I took a quick look at the absentee returns by legislative districts in King County and 2 districts have returns outside the mean + 1 standard deviation - in english - of the 17 districts, 15 have statistically "normal" returns - two have lower than expected returns - one (#11) is about 600 ballots short and the other (#37) is 1,200 ballots short.

The 600 ballot "short" (number 11) votes 65-35 Democrat based on lower level races. The 1,200 "short" votes 85-15 Democrat. If the "ballot return rate" increases to the statistical norm, the D's should pick up about 1,000 net votes.

The point is to watch not only the ballots being counted, but also the inflow of additional ballots "in the mail" up to and including November 17.

There may be valid reasons based on demographics for the lower return rate - someone with local knowledge would have to help on that. (e.g. college students may have a lower rate of returns)

Christine Gregoire 1,325,017

Dino Rossi 1,328,611

(Rossi + 3,594)as of 11/12/04 8am

About 2700 votes from Pierce County posted this morning (11/12/04) and the vote was 50/50 - 1344 for Rossi, 1336 for Gregoire.

Projecting trends, assuming the untallied ballots vote in proportion to the already opened ballots (by county) Rossi will actually pick up votes - however, this is a moving target as ballots are stil being received via mail - In King County, another 1,984 ballots were received yesterday (11/11). See http://www.metrokc.gov/elections/2004nov/ballotsreceived.htm for daily updates on ballot receipt in King County.

Clermont has now fully reported - 191/191 and adds another 12,000 votes to Bush lead -

Hamilton Co now reporting 911 / 1013 - add another 4,000 to the Bush margin - reported by CBS at 125,000 - in reality closer to 140,000.

Lucas County update - 491/496 reporting (vs 470/491 in CBS tally)

Bush/Cheney 84,326

Kerry/Edwards 125,877

Net loss for Bush compared to CBS: (5,000)

Combined with 92 precincts in Ashland and Hamilton, this identifies 113/375 with no net change

Another 53 precincts have reported in Hamilton County not showing on MSM tallies with a net add to Bush of 2,000.

Now identified 92/375 missing precincts (including Ashland Co) with +5,400

375 precincts to go - +125,000 votes

Ashland has 39 of these not shown on the CBS tally - the full county report shows these precincts will ADD 3,400 votes

per CBS:

Ashland (26 of 65 Precincts Reporting)

Party Candidate Votes V%

R George BUSH 8,821 64%

D John KERRY 4,738 35%

Full county report: 65 of 65

BUSH/CHENEY -R 15,826 64.98 %

KERRY/EDWARDS -D 8,345 34.24 %

GEORGE W. BUSH/DICK CHENEY 215118

JOHN F. KERRY/JOHN EDWARDS 432816

(With 1457 of 1458 precincts counted)

According to the Cuyahoga County website only one precinct outstanding and the statewide lead is still 100,000 votes