Well, hallelujah! And thank you, Francine. On behalf of every voter in CA-50, San Diego, California and America (if we may be so bold.)
The Voice of San Diego continues…
Part of the delay in tallying the votes stems from the countywide deployment of new electronic voting machines for the first time this election. That prompted local Democrats and election watchdog groups to urge voters to request paper ballots.
Busby said that her own ballot was mistakenly counted as provisional after she requested a paper version. Her vote won’t be added to the official total until the Registrar of Voters verifies that she’s an eligible voter.
The Registrar of Voters in San Diego is Mikel Haas, one of the country’s worst, as BRAD BLOG readers likely know well by now.
In the days leading up to the election, the Registrar of Voters also ran out of absentee ballots and was forced to send out photo copies, which will take days to manually transfer to official ballots by hand.
More interesting details in the article by Daniel Strumpf and Kelly Bennet, both of whom are to be congratulated for their use of the word “appeared” to qualify their reporting of a possible Bilbray win, and letting CNN and New York Times face the ignominy of reporting the results of a race — marred with so many security, integrity and verification issues — that neither outlet, nor any human being on the face of the earth, could actually prove to be accurate in any way at this time.
06-06 governor primary turnout
dem 464, 166
rep 583,431
decl 290,056
voter registration san diego county
results posted so far
Is there any update??
HAVE THE PROVISIONAL/ABSENTEE BALLOTS BEEN COUNTED?
I’VE NOT FOUND ANY NEWS ON Busby/Bilbray . . .
Pran
Pran #2 — word is (via earlier BRAD BLOG reports) that votes on paper will not be counted until Thursday, per Haas’ own statements. He has created a separate class of ballots, “separate but equal”, that don’t go into the initial count. It was challenged in court, but the judge ruled that it is okay to treat some of The People’s votes differently.
Thank you, Busby!
Screw you, Haas!
Mr. Hooten,.. Direct and to the point.
Thank you to the democracy firm of Lehto, Friedman, Winter and Levy.
That’s excellent. I’ve been so burried having worked a precinct from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. yesterday that I am just gathering the full impact of this election. This relatively uncovered story and the press response is highly significant. This is different from the special election where on bad advise, Busby conceded.
Haas will now face the test. Can he count the ballots? Can he get away with his insolent attitude towards the people and the election process? Who is behind this man anyway; a public servant to disrespectful of his bosses, the people.
I hope she wins and that she becomes the peoples champion for free, fair and inclusive elections.
Zogby exit poll: This race is TOO CLOSE TO CALL.
Francine Busby has a decided advantage in all paper ballot voters, both absentee and emergency paper ballots, and those ballots are the only ones remaining to be counted, but there are a lot of them. In a nutshell, early results posted are predominantly touch screens and are not representative of the population of ballots as a whole….
Overall, this means the race will definitely continually tighten and Busby will gain on Bilbray as votes continue to post.
Presently there are at least 200,000 uncounted votes in San Diego County according to the Registrar’s website. We need that number for the 50th CD, too.
Francine Busby is wise not to concede not just because of respect for each and every voter, but because she may have won this race, which is much much closer than presently reported. We shall see.
As almost all the other races are done with there will be two sides to this story: one is that the intense interest has died down; second is there could be some special interest in these exceptional close election results and this one in particular has the ‘paper ballots’ aspect to give it more newsworthiness.
It’s great that Bowen won for CA SoS.
Now, if we can make some more progress on the election process itself.
I was struck by how the media played up the ‘electronic voting machines’ issue, only to say at the end of the day that things seemed to be going swimmingly well. I only hope that swimmer doesn’t drown while the media are looking elsewhere.
Maybe Brad should do a summary story of all the kinds of ‘glitches’ there were and which states they occurred in. I’d like to see some kind of overview of what went wrong and maybe what was going wrong, but was caught and fixed during the election.
San Diego has the Diebold Central Optical Scanner system for processing (scanning) the absentee ballots. That was supposed to be used starting Eleciton Night. Hundreds of other counties processed most if not all of their absentee ballots through a scanning system by the next morning. Here it is Thursday morning and the Registar has not updated the figures on the county’s website, or to the Secretary of State since 5:50 AM Wednesday morning. Those figures are based upon the upload of the TSx memory cards.
At the least he could be uploading every couple of hours as the votes are processed, the same as he did while processing the memory cards. With the central count it would be even easier because the central count scanners are connected directly to the GEMS server.
It is arbitary and secretive vote counting like this that causes the public to have suspicions regarding the accuracy of the vote coming out of San Diego.
Mike Haas displays an attitude that is disdainful of the voters of San Diego and their right to complete transparency of the electoral process. The Board of Supervisors are poorly serving their constituencies in allowing this arrogance to continue.
I am very angry right now. I am tired of Democrats making speeches that are as empty as air. Virtually all of the e-voting machines were part of sleepovers at someone’s house or car trunk. It shouldn’t even matter if every vote is counted. If these machines supplied a paper trail to use, Francine Busby should demand that a complete recount be implemented of all ballots to assure the accuracy and honesty of these machines which could have easily been tampered with during these sleepovers. Then, and only then, will I cheer for her, and only if she does not back down from this demand. If paper validations were not supplied by these machines, then I would take action to invalidate the results of this election.
OK. Now that Busby has said she won’t concede until all the votes are counted, she had better stick to that and FIGHT FOR THAT.
Personally, I see her quietly giving up after a few days and slinking away, at least if her previous (and never really apologized for) behavior is any indication. I would bet $10 with 10-1 odds (that’s $100 you can make if you want to take the bet) that she will concede before all the provisional and absentee ballots are counted and that she won’t fight against even ONE determination that a provisional ballot was not valid or try to determine the exact nature of a single “spoiled” ballot.
I wonder how many progressives and election reform voters in the CA-50 couldn’t quite hold their noses and vote for Francine when it came down to it. How many remembered her “going on vacation” while the votes were not being counted last time so she could “save her powder” for November.
How dry was that powder Francine? Did that strategy work for you?
Sometimes in life there is one moment when you must do the right thing, and if you do not, there is never another chance to undue your inaction. Like Kerry, Cleland, Hacket and so many others before her, Ms. Busby missed that moment some months ago.
CharlieL
Portland, OR
CLL2001@gmail.com
P.S. Please understand, this is not meant to disparage Paul Lehto and others who took on her cause and tried to get “justice” out of the U.S. Court system. Theirs was a worthwhile (albeit unsuccessful) fight.
Curious.
Kathryn Harris got trounced in Florida yet she wants a recount.
Burns in Montana had an incredibly close race, as did Allen in Virgina, yet they will both concede.
I think Clint Curtis is one who deserves a recount, and if Busby had done it earlier during the primary, she would not have had to now. Nevertheless, with Haas running things they should all get a FIRST legitimate count.
The only thing I will say for sure is that our elections are primarily faith-based.
I worked my home precinct which has 287 registered voters (turnout was heavy). I was (pleasantly) surprised to discover we were given 75 paper ballots. I was the check-in person and offered each voter the choice of electronic or paper; the three teenagers (that’s another story I’ll get to another time) I worked with were vehemently pushing electronic voter cards (as per the ROV training class instruction). I insisted they offer the choice which they did until the roving troubleshooter showed up and stated they were emergency only. I argued with him and he finally went away but I was back to square one with my co-workers. Just how hard is it to ask, “Paper or plastic!”
I kept an eye on the ballot stash all day and called the hotline around 5 to order more. I received the same lecture about shoving a VAC (voter access card) into the voters’ hands (which I ignored). In the end, we had a pretty even split between paper and electronic ballots cast.
What I found disturbing (among the many things to be disturbed about)was the blind faith these kids had in the electronic voting machines and the hard-sell they gave voters in their safety and validity. They were clueless about the hackability of these machines, especially since there is a paper trail. I think we need to target this emerging audience of unquestioning techno-friendly kids and educate them somehow.
After all is posted in the end of the month (State Requirement)”¦.She will still lose “¦albeit almost all the weak minded people who fell for the e-vote rubbish you guys have been touting will choose her on the write in ballots”¦it wont be enough”¦.in the end she will still lose.
Two groups won this election”¦.Democrats and Diebold.
{Ed Note: One “group” lost. “OMSMedia” and his brother Mikel Haas! Turns out “OMSMedia” is San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas’ brother Don! See this article for the embarrassing details! It appears that he gamed the onilne poll about his brother, btw!}
Pajama Party Patty #13: Good for you!!! There are some excellent hacking sites for teenagers. Some of those sites can show teens how easy it is to hack into ANY machine.
Tell the kids to start looking for WAREZ sites, and they will learn how easy it can be. (But they gotta be careful at these sites. Teenage hackers are responsible for over 90% of the computer viruses out there… They do this just for fun, especially to “newbies.”)
JodY #9, Charlie #11, and OMSmedia (are you really Wally O’Diebold?) #14: I just spoke with the SD Registrar’s Office. The woman who answered the phone was a crack-up. I asked her for an update because the Registrar’s website has not been updated since 5:50 a.m. yesterday.
At first, she was really defensive. “Well, yaknow; there are well over 200,000 ballots that have to be hand-counted . . .” (I have a feeling that the S.D. office may harbor a little hostility toward Debra Bowen right now . . .)
I told her that I recognize how difficult it is – and that I totally respect and acknowledge that it is a HUGE and extremely important (and thankless) job that they must do. She softened up. And we chatted as if we were old friends. (I have a strong feeling that people are jumping on the office staff a bit too heavily today. . .) I off-handedly asked her how many ballots ‘over 200,000’were there to count. She simply stated again; “Well over 200,000.”
HERE’S THE so-called UPDATE:
For the next four (4) business days, expect an update to appear on the Registrar’s Website between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
The staff is working really hard and they hope to have it all done no later than next Wednesday. But, she reminded me that, if the S.D. Office has not completed all the paper ballot counting by then, the law gives them until December 4 to complete the count.
So, someone should start checking the Registrar’s website after 6:00 p.m. every night (excluding the weekend) – and then post the UPDATED results here on Bradblog.com!
Regards,
Pran
The individual staff at the Elections Office may be nice and perhaps at times even reasonable people, but in the end they take their orders from (and may even have been hired by) an evil, corrupt, anti-democracy, craphead who doesn’t give a damn about the honesty of elections or anything but himself.
There were probably good guards at the concentration camps, but when you work with and take orders from criminals, it’s going to rub off.
The San Diego office of ELections is simply corrupt and criminal. They will do nothing to make honest elections any easier and anything and everything they possibly can to make them impossible.
No Prantha, not a Diebold…but my family did work the polls down there….and one of them runs the show…whoops i gave away too much.
Hey Charlie…just out of curiosity, “evil, corrupt, anti-democracy, craphead” is that from research? What paper or website? Cause I met the RoV….he has the most integrity of anyone I have ever met in the entire county.
Not trolling….just controlling….
{Ed Note: “Controlling” indeed! OMSMedia is San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas’ brother Don! See this article for the embarrassing details! It appears that he gamed the onilne poll about his brother, btw!}
Want to check out a race in a REALLY corrupt (OK, EQUALLY CORRUPT) state, check out this demand for a full count of the provisionals in the land of “discarded provisonals and spoiled democrat ballots” — Ken Blackwell’s Ohio.
Link to Mary Jo Kilroy
This one could reveal more corruption and lead to more great election reform than the CA-50. And the candidate is a lot more inclined to FIGHT for what she believes is right than Francine has ever shown.
(Note to Brad, you should start a thread for her — you’ve probably got a lot of readers at Ohio State!)
Keep an eye on the OH-15 — this could be big! And IMPORTANT! And might just help with putting Ken Blackwell and a bunch of his minions where they belong — behind bars tossing Bubba’s salad.
The “UPDATE” from San Diego, with “approximatety” 180,0000 uncounted ballots to go:
Bilbray: 95,459 (increased by 3,469)
Busby: 77,695 (increased by 3,687)
King: 3,319 (increased by 144)
Clark: 2,699 (increased by 113)
BUMMER! (HOW COULD THIS BE POSSIBLE???)
With 60,000 left to count, AS OF TODAY:
BRIAN P. BILBRAY – 109861 – 53.42%
FRANCINE BUSBY – 88948 – 43.25%
PAUL KING – 3790 – 1.84%
MIRIAM E. CLARK – 3057 – 1.49%