We’re still waiting to get through to the Elections Office, but several campaigns are reporting that there are 10,000 late absentee and provisional ballots left to be counted. This roughly jibes with what we’ve seen in the past. In the June primary, when turnout was much lower, there were 6,556 votes counted after the polls closed.
(UPDATE: Actually 12,960 ballots left, according to Carolyn Crnich. Adjust the figures below accordingly.)
So with a big pot of votes out there waiting to be counted, do any of last night’s second-place finishers still have a chance?
My initial read of the numbers says that if anyone does, it’s Patrick Cleary. Let’s suppose, using rough division, that around 20 percent of the remaining ballots are from the Fifth District. (Such was the case in the primary.) That’s 2,000 ballots. Cleary ended election night 93 votes behind Ryan Sundberg. To take over the lead, Cleary would need 1,047 of those hypothetical 2,000 ballots to go his way — a little over 52.2 percent.
Is this out of the realm of possibility? No. As has been previously noted and reconfirmed again and again in Humboldt County election history, these late absentee ballots don’t behave like your regular absentee ballots, which tend to skew conservative. If anything, the late absentees tend to skew left — good news for Cleary. On the other hand, last night Sundberg barely led Cleary both in the absentee/vote-by-mail and the precinct counts. Cleary started the night looking for a boost from precinct voters; that didn’t materialize.
Supporters of Allison Jackson, who led incumbent District Attorney Paul Gallegos throughout the night until the very last moment, are holding out hope. Jackson ended 1,054 votes behind, and so would need over 55.3 percent of the uncounted votes to win. Possible? Sure. Likely? I don’t think so. Jackson supporters are counting on those ballots to break like the first absentee results, in which Jackson crushed Gallegos convincingly. But such is not usually the case — the late absentees usually look a lot more like precinct votes, which Gallegos dominated all night long.
In Eureka, supporters of Ron Kuhnel might be thinking that their candidate has a shot, being only 171 votes behind Mike Newman. Unlikely. Let’s say that there are about 1,600 city of Eureka votes out there. (The city accounted for about 16 percent of the vote last night.) The three-way race here makes the math head-splittingly hard, but Kuhnel would have to rack up about 10 percentage points over Newman in these final ballots to make up the difference — i.e., Kuhnel, 48; Newman, 38; Manns, 14. Tough sell.
This article appears in The Creepy Carson.
And in addition to the late absentees, there were a pile of provisionals — it seemed like every 4th person who walked in to vote — at least where I was voting in Arcata. Of course, I think HSU campus dwellers vote at the same place, so maybe those provisional numbers were not so high in other precincts.
Obviously these won’t affect Cleary/Sundberg, but maybe D.A.?
Any idea when those will be counted, do they provide a timeline? days, week, month…?
I think it’s the Secretary of State website that says County Elections offices have 31 days to finalize absentees and provisionals. So December 3rd?
Dave Meserve still has a shot too.
As Monica points out, tons of provisional ballots to be counted too and I bet that a disproportionate number of those are Arcata voters. I spent about 30 mins at the Vet’s Hall in Arcata last night and I’d say it was nearly every other voter casting a provisional ballot. And about 99% of those were students who turned out big for Dave.
Even though he lost big on the absentees, he actually won the election night turnout and provisional ballots will tend that same way.
Otherwise I agree with you – the only race that is likely to flip is Cleary/Sundberg. Jackson should have done a GOTV effort, she’d probably be ahead if she had.
Kaitlin S-B
Hank,
Just curious if you can report on the reasons for late absentee ballots to historically go left as opposed to early balloting skewing conservative. While writing this I’m thinking one side’s motivation is ideologically based, while the other is less so. Probably untrue. What does research show?
No idea whatsoever. Stoned hippies forgetting to mail their stuff in until the last minute? Your guess is as good or probably better than mine.
How silly of me not to have considered that foremost. Thanks.
I like to wait till election day to vote. I just use the mail in ballot for polling place independence.
I get the mail ballot, then fill it out and drop it off at a polling place by work, instead of the polling place by home. (you can drop a mail in ballot at any polling place in Humboldt County, not just your one neighborhood polling place.)
Why would anybody use the old “one polling place only” system?
I can tell you that my ballot may not have been counted yet. I accidentally marked in a “no” box on a prop in which I voted “yes” and the machine rejected it as an “over vote.” My choices were to fill out a whole new ballot, or draw an arrow towards “yes” and put it into the side compartment of the machine to be hand-counted later.
I think the DA’s race was on that same page on my ballot. So factor in my not-yet-counted vote!
My guess as to why so many people walked-in absentee ballots is that there were so many issues–I believe it is the first time we’ve had a 2-page ballot.
Hank’s stoned hippies explanation doesn’t really hold water when it comes to people who had the forethought to request an absentee ballot.
My guess is undecided until the last minute.
Greg Gehr, the “convenience” of dropping off your ballot at any polling place requires the Elections Dept. to double-check your voting status, and that prolongs the final vote count. I know people are moving away from precinct-voting & toward mail-in ballots, but we all pay, in the end, by waiting for the final count.
The elections office has 31 days. Last I heard results should be done in three weeks. I don’t know of any political office that is supposed to change hands within those 31 days. So how are we paying?
I wonder how people would deal with the time delay, if all the ballots had to be delivered by horses.
FYI I normally do the same thing.Except my wife dropped it off at the designated spot, the last two times.
Stoned hippie? Fuck you, Hank Simms. I’d rather be a stoned hippie than a bigoted, brain-dead editor. Find another job, asshole.
Tough crowd!
Gee Hank I didn’t know that you’re a “editor’.
So when’s Terrence’s next article? certainly Sims and Hoover wouldn’t let one of their drinking buddies go without work! As for why he got canned that remains a mystery but certainly it wasn’t Hoover’s decision. Maybe it had to do with Terrence’s harassment of Salzman? Gotta wonder if Salzman will pursue the issue legally?
Hey !! Go easy on Mr, Simms . He can identify you by providing your first & last name if you post as anonymous or at least he thinks he
can .
Drunks like , Mr. Simms are the ones who seem to be forgetting things .
That was Joel, Jerry.
Greatings,
Me compadezco de usted.
Nicolas