Church of What's Happening Now! -- CowHen.Net

Janice Hahn Wins Special Congressional Election in CD 36 (CA)

2011-07-12T23:08:00.000-07:00

With most Vote By Mail ballots counted and nearly half the precincts reporting, Democrat Janice Hahn has pulled away from Republican Craig Huey, and will be elected to Congress to fill the term of former Congresswoman Jane Harman.

Here is the latest tally from the LA County Registrar-Recorder, as of 11 p.m. PDT:

   JANICE HAHN  DEM   30,545    56.83
CRAIG HUEY   REP   23,207    43.17
                                                                       
TOTAL PRECINCTS   261   PRECINCTS REPORTING  127    48.66

Even were the precincts reporting overwhelming from Hahn strongholds (we don't know which precincts have or have not reported), barring an extremely unlikely vote distribution in the outstanding precincts, there are not enough outstanding votes for Huey to overcome Hahn's 13.66% lead.

Hahn's campaign, which focused on green job growth and on painting her opponent as a Tea-Party extremist who used his direct-mail marketing business to defraud seniors, and who would vote to dismantle Medicare should he be elected, appears to have been effective in the coastal district (stretching from San Pedro in the south to Venice and Marina del Rey to the north) which is strongly Democratic, but fairly moderate overall.

Huey's campaign, which seemed to focus on painting Hahn, a Los Angeles City Councilwoman (and member of a family which has given Los Angeles several prominent elected officials) as someone who went easy on, or did special favors for, gang members. That line of attack, which may have worked against someone less well known, apparently fell flat for Huey.

UPDATE, 11:45 p.m. PDT:

With 100% of the vote counted, Janice Hahn has been elected to the U.S. Congress, representing the 36th CD (California).

Final, unofficial vote count from the Registrar-Recorder:

   JANICE HAHN   DEM   41,585    54.56
 CRAIG HUEY    REP   34,636    45.44
                                                                         
TOTAL PRECINCTS  261   PRECINCTS REPORTING  261   100.00

Janice Hahn Leads in Early Voting in 36th CD (CA)

2011-07-12T20:30:00.000-07:00

With vote totals in for Vote By Mail (VBM) ballots, as well as 7 of 261 precincts, Democrat Janice Hahn has taken an 8.5% lead over her opponent, Republican Craig Huey. Here are the initial numbers, released by the Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder at 8:04 p.m.:

                                                                           
 JANICE HAHN  DEM  21,365    54.24
 CRAIG HUEY   REP  18,025    45.76
                                                                         
TOTAL PRECINCTS 261   PRECINCTS REPORTING 7  2.68

While these totals don't guarantee a victory for Hahn, they will be helpful against a possible surge by Huey amongst Republican voters in the Torrance / South Bay area, where Huey is expected to run strong.

We'll try to post updates as they become available.

Ted Lieu Elected State Senator (CA28) In Open Primary

2011-02-15T23:40:00.000-08:00

With essentially all vote-by-mail ballots counted, together with the ballots from 86 percent of precincts, Ted Lieu holds a 32-percent lead over his closest challenger for election to the California State Senate, 28th District, 57% to 25%.

Based upon the vote count and relatively few precincts left to report, it is clear that former Assemblyman Lieu will be elected State Senator in the 28th Senate District without the need for a runoff election.

Lieu will replace the late Jenny Oropeza in representing the coastal L.A. County district.

Semi-official returns from the Los Angeles County Registrar Recorder, as of 11:30 p.m. on 2/15/11, are as follows:

As of Date: 02/15/2011 Time: 23:30                            Votes  Percent
                                                                         
STATE SENATE 28TH DIST       TERM ENDS 11/30/14                            
                                                                         
 TED W LIEU           DEM  26,021    57.19
 BOB VALENTINE        REP  11,269    24.77
 MARTHA F GIBSON      REP   3,057     6.72
 MARK LIPMAN          NP    1,602     3.52
 KEVIN T MCGURK       DEM   1,192     2.62
 JAMES P THOMPSON     REP   1,066     2.34
 JEFFREY E FORTINI    REP   1,048     2.30
 MICHAEL CHAMNESS     NP      245     0.54
                                                                         
TOTAL PRECINCTS    308  PCTS RPTING 266: 86.36%
REGISTRATION   467,493

Lieu will be sworn in after the Secretary of State certifies the election results, which may take several weeks.

Harris' Lead Up To 53,500 Votes

2010-11-23T10:46:00.000-08:00

Kamala Harris has once again expanded her lead in the race for California Attorney General, based upon returns filed with the Secretary of State on Monday, November 23. Harris now leads L.A. D.A. Steve Cooley by 53,581 votes. The S.O.S. reports just under 400,000 ballots left to be processed by counties statewide, though an L.A. Times analysis puts that number at under 300,000.

(The S.O.S. reports of ballots remaining to be processed has seemed to lag data from the count of ballots throughout this process. It would be helpful if that office could coordinate that report with the county-by-county reports, or set out a clear statement of what that count truly represents.)

The counties reporting on Monday, according to the S.O.S., included pro-Cooley counties Butte, Orange (which had earlier reported that they had completed their vote count), Riverside (where Harris actually picked up 279 votes over Cooley for the day), San Diego and Ventura. Pro-Harris counties reporting were Imperial, Los Angeles (where Harris' margin was 8,922 votes), Marin, Monterey, Napa and Santa Clara. Sacramento County, which favored Cooley in initial tallies, but whose later tallies favored Harris, also reported.

While there may be some bumps along the road based upon which counties are reporting, we expect Harris to hold at least a 40,000 vote lead from here on out, with a likely final margin of at least 50,000, and likely in excess of 60,000 votes.

(Photo courtesy KamalaHarris.org)

Field Clears for Ted Lieu in 28th Senate District (CA)

2010-11-21T11:46:00.000-08:00

The field has largely cleared for California State Assemblyman Ted Lieu (D-53rd AD) in the soon-to-be-announced special election to fill the 28th Senate District seat of the late Jenny Oropeza, who passed away this October 20 at 53 years of age, of complications from an abdominal blood clot. Oropeza was re-elected posthumously on November 2, beating her Republican opponent by a 22 percent margin.

Initial indications were that numerous local past and present office-holders were considering entering the special election race, likely to be held in March or April, 2011. Among the names mentioned, in addition to Lieu, who failed in his bid to be the Democratic nominee for State Attorney General and is being termed out of his Assembly seat, were Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn (who had run for the Democratic nomination for Lt. Governor this past June), Assemblyman Warren Furutani (whose seat overlaps much of the southern portion of the 28th S.D.), and former Assemblyman George Nakano, who lost the Democratic primary for the 28th S.D. to Oropeza in 2006.

Hahn and Furutani have now announced that they will not be running Jenny Oropeza's seat, and each has endorsed Ted Lieu for the seat. There has been no recent word on Nakano's intentions.

John Stammreich, the Republican candidate in the November election, has stated that he will not run for the seat at this time, but has left open the possibility of running in 2012, after the Redistricting Commission has redrawn district lines.

Kamla Harris Will Be The Next Attorney General of California

2010-11-19T17:43:00.000-08:00

Based upon ballot tabulation updates from the last two days, and particularly upon today's update incorporating approximately 50,000 votes from Los Angeles County and additional votes from Monterey County, it now appears that Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley has no feasible path to victory in the California A.G.'s race, and that San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, will be the next Attorney General of California.

As of 4:14 p.m. today, Harris held a lead of 4,291,854 votes to Cooley's 4,248,804, a margin of 43,050 votes, or .5%. This constitutes Harris' largest lead since results were first announced on election night.

Harris, who had a 30,730 vote lead as of the 17th, saw that margin shrink slightly on the 18th, as many counties in which Cooley had run well reported additional results. Cooley apparently picked up an advantage of over 10,000 votes in Placer County, offset somewhat by additional ballots from San Francisco and Sacramento, where Harris' provisional ballot votes substantially outperformed her overall percentages, as expected. Despite this slight Cooley pick-up on the 18th, Harris held a lead of 29,399 votes before gaining an additional advantage of nearly 14,000 votes today.

According to a source in a high position within the Cooley campaign, Steve Cooley will be meeting with his staff over this weekend to determine his next steps. While that source advised us that a recount or legal action would likely result should the margin between the candidates end up below the 10,000 vote range, we were also advised that Cooley would not drag the matter on should Harris be ahead by a range of about 20 to 30,000 votes or more after all ballots had been tabulated.

As the Cooley campaign pours over the numbers tonight and this weekend, we expect them to conclude that Kamala Harris will emerge the winner by such a margin so as to make the cost, effort and inconvenience of any challenge to the result counterproductive. (California law does not provide for any sort of automatic recount.) While they may wish to wait for another round of updates, including the next L.A. County update next Tuesday, we expect Steve Cooley to concede the race sometime next week, returning his full focus to running the largest local prosecutors office in the nation.

***

Update: November 20, 2010, 12:25 p.m.:

The L.A. Times has again provided a county-by-county analysis of the statewide vote count as it applies to the Harris-Cooley race. That count has found that there are 305,004 ballots remaining to be counted statewide, with 185,937 (60.9%) in counties Democrat Harris won on November 2, and only 119,067 (39.1%) in counties in which Republican Cooley lead.

56,000 of the remaining uncounted ballots, the Times reports, are in L.A. County. While Harris leads Cooley in L.A. County overall by about 14%, she has been leading Cooley by about 22% among the later mix of ballots, which contain larger percentages of provisional ballots cast on election day.

The above figures cannot be the basis of simple calculations to determine the final tally. Each candidates percentage of advantage varies from county to county; for example, while Harris leads Cooley in L.A. County by 14% overall, Cooley trounced Harris in Orange County by 29%. (However, Orange County has now completed its vote count, and Cooley's advantage there will be of no further benefit to him as the last 300,000 ballots are tabulated. San Diego County, in which Cooley leads Harris by about 13%, has only 12,000 ballots left to count.)

Further, a higher percentage of the provisional ballots remaining throughout the state, and certainly in L.A. County, will be found to be "no count" ballots --those which are found to have been cast by voters who were not eligible to cast a vote. (The invalidity will likely be due to the voter having cast a vote out of their registered county, or having been validly registered to vote in the county in which the vote was provisionally cast.) Those "no count" ballots, which are generally screened multiple times before a final determination of invalidity is made (thus accounting for their appearance later in the tabulation process), now make up a greater percentage of the uncounted ballots than they have up until now. We expect that fewer than 50,000 of the remaining 56,000 L.A. County will actually make it into the final vote total. (The same situation should apply to counties statewide.)

Based upon the above figures and reasonable extrapolations therefrom, we now expect Kamala Harris to defeat Steve Cooley by more than 50,000 votes statewide.

Kamala Harris Solidifies Lead in State A.G. Race - Cooley Attacks L.A. Registrar

2010-11-17T11:10:00.001-08:00

Kamala Harris has solidified her lead in the California State Attorney General's race, and appears to have a fairly direct path to victory.

The current tally from the Secretary of State's office shows Harris with a 30,904 vote (.4%) lead over Republican Steve Cooley. This lead appears to be fairly solid based upon several facts:

Orange County, which went 2 to 1 for Cooley, has counted and reported all but 1,598 ballots. San Diego County, which favored Cooley by about 13.5%, is down to 35,000 ballots left to process. Other pro-Cooley counties appear to be more than offset by untallied votes from counties which favored Harris on election day.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles County still has approximately 100,000 ballots remaining to process and report. In the last two ballot reports from L.A. (incorporating a greater percentage of provisional ballots, which, as we've discussed in prior posts, tend to favor Harris to a greater extent than the overall vote count), Harris has held at least a 22% advantage over Cooley, collecting over 61% of the vote, compared to Cooley's under 39%.

The Cooley camp has responded to the unfavorable vote totals in L.A. County by sending a swarm of workers, reportedly including retired law enforcement officers, to the County Registrar's office in Norwalk, where, according to the Harris campaign, they are acting aggressively and are crowding county workers who are attempting to validate (or invalidate) provisional ballots based upon a review of the provisional ballot envelopes containing the provisional ballots. (Workers cannot determine how the voter cast his or her vote when reviewing the ballot envelope to make a determination of validity; the ballot is sealed within the provisional envelope.) Harris volunteers, reportedly including members of the SEIU and the West LA Democratic Club, are keeping an eye on the provisional ballot processing, proceeding at approximately 90 stations in a secured room on the 4th floor. Workers from both campaigns are also keeping an eye on each other during this process.

The Cooley campaign also appears to be putting together a PR campaign to discredit the Los Angeles Registrar, and to question the validity of the Los Angeles vote count. Much like the argument of Joe Miller in Alaska, where the tea-party-supported candidate is attempting to beat write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski, Cooley seems to be arguing that voter intent should be ignored, unless that voter has complied with all technical rules in casting his or her ballot. Meanwhile, tension is increasing as Steve Cooley sees his victory, which he appeared to have once taken for granted, now appears to be slipping away.

Kamala Harris Takes Lead in California State Attorney General's Race

2010-11-12T19:08:00.000-08:00

With a spate of counties reporting additional results from the counting of late absentee, provisional and damaged ballots from the November 2 general election, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has pulled into a thin lead over Los Angeles D.A. Steve Cooley, the Republican.

Reporting results from November 11, on which no updated reports were issued by the Secretary of State due to the Veteran's Day holiday, as well as morning reporting on November 12, updates from Kings, Sacramento, Ventura and Yolo counties dropped Cooley's lead over Harris to 14,174.

It was in afternoon reporting from Amador, Contra Costa, Fresno, Kings, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Cruz counties that Harris pulled into a 5,576 vote (.1%) lead over Cooley.

In the Los Angeles County report, 44,813 votes were added to the tallies of the two leading candidates, with Harris receiving 27,531 (61.44%) of those votes, to Cooley's 17,280 (38.56%), as provisional ballots cast on election day worked their way into the results for the first time. While the S.O.S.'s Estimated Unprocessed Ballots report issued at 5 p.m. on November 12 does not seem to have deducted for (at least) the L.A. County votes reported this afternoon, we would estimate that approximately 150,000 L.A. County votes remain to be counted. Should Harris continue to carry those voters in a similar proportion as during this latest reporting period, she should pick up an additional 25 - 30,000 vote advantage over Cooley in L.A. County. (As the percentage of those votes which are provisional ballots increases, Harris well could increase her percentage of advantage over Cooley in L.A. County late ballot counts. Not all provisional ballots will be approved for counting -- expect a 5 to 10% drop-off rate, at least for L.A. County.)

When the S.O.S. updates the Unprocessed Ballots report, we should get a better picture of where the remaining votes will be coming from, and in what volume. Again, we expect Harris' percentages in the later ballot counts to increase even in counties in which she trailed badly as those counties' percentage of provisional ballots increase over absentee (and damaged / remade) ballots increases. (As of 5 p.m. this evening, the not-fully-updated S.O.S.report indicated about 470,000 unprocessed / reported provisional ballots, surpassing the 375,000 absentee ballots at left to be accounted for, along with an additional 53,000 damaged / to-be-remade ballots. (To-be-remade ballots include damaged ballots, ballots which cannot feed into the ballot counting machines in their current condition, overseas faxed ballots and ballots which were cast by vote-by-mail voters directly onto the their sample ballots, rather than onto the computer bubble card used for counting.))

Los Angeles County will issue its' next vote count update on Tuesday, November 16.

***

In the 11th Congressional District, incumbent Democrat McNerney holds a 1,690 vote (.9%) lead over Republican Harmer. In the 20th C.D., incumbent Democrat Costa holds a 1,107 vote (1.4%) lead over Republican challenger Vidak in the latest reporting period.

***

Update - 11:00 p.m.:

Jack Leonard at the Los Angeles Times has reported on further updates on the A.G.'s race, based upon the gathering of data from individual counties statewide. At 7:51 p.m., the Times reported that Kamala Harris had taken a 303 vote lead, 4,117,728 to 4,117,425, incorporating just over 150,000 votes more than were in the vote totals reported by us above, due to a lag in reporting by the Secretary of State's office.

The Times article also states that the Cooley campaign has expressed concerns that "Los Angeles County workers have not been following proper procedures for counting ballots", alleging that "[s]ome vote counters have responded to complaints about individual ballots by placing them back in a pile of votes to be counted later"....

From the L.A. Times article:

Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan said Cooley’s campaign had expressed broad concerns but had not issued any specific complaints about the vote-counting process. He said he believed his workers had followed the law.

"I don’t believe there’s been anything raised at this point that is a significant concern," Logan said.

The Times quotes Dean Logan as reporting that approximately "80% to 85% of provisional ballots are usually deemed to be valid"; we had earlier suggested a likely 90% to 95% validity rate for those ballots. While we stand by our earlier suggestion, we recognize that the percentage of valid provisional ballots may fall in a wider range than we had earlier reported.

(Provisional ballots will be disallowed if the voter casts a vote outside of his or her county of residence, if the signature does not match that from the voter registration form, if the voter was not registered to vote prior to the deadline for the election (October 18 for the November 2 election), if the voter is a felon who has not completed his / her parole and thereafter re-registered to vote, or if the ballot is otherwise improper.)

Most county registrars throughout the nation will count an otherwise valid vote if the voter's intent can be determined from the ballot; the Los Angeles Registrar's office appears to be no exception to that rule.

We appreciate the work done by Jack Leonard at the L.A. Times in obtaining the county-by-county vote count in this race, and in bringing the status of the A.G.'s race to a broader audience.

***

For further background and information on these races, see our prior posts, linked near the top of the column on the far right portion of this page.

Costa Takes Lead in 20th C.D.; McNerney Lead Narrows, Cooley's Lead Over Harris Grows

2010-11-11T11:16:00.001-08:00

Democratic incumbent Jim Costa has taken a 1,318 vote (1.8%) lead over Republican challenger Andy Vidak in the 20th Congressional District (CA) as of 5:28 p.m. November 10, the Secretary of State reports. The votes that put Costa into the lead appear to come from the most recent reporting from Fresno County. SOS reports do not update the total votes remaining from Fresno (or Kern) counties which may still impact the final vote totals in this contest.

In the 11th C.D., Democratic incumbent Jerry McNerney has seen his lead shrink somewhat, to .9% (1,685 votes) over Republican David Harmer, with updated vote counts from Alameda, Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties during the day on November 10. The American Independent candidate, David Christensen, the only third-party candidate in the race, has seen his percentage of the vote increase to 5.1%.

And in the race to determine the next Attorney General of California, Republican Steve Cooley has expanded his lead over Democrat Kamala Harris to 19,357 votes, giving him a .2% lead with approximately 1,000,000 votes left to count statewide. While an exact count is impossible, a review suggests that there are perhaps 30 - 40,000 more votes remaining to be counted in pro-Harris counties than in pro-Cooley counties. (Of course, the percentage of gap between the candidates vote counts vary greatly from county to county; an exact analysis of the outstanding votes is beyond the scope of this blog.) Finally, as ballot processing continues in the county registrar offices, expect to see the number of late absentee ballots included in the counts to diminish, likely dropping off significantly next week. The provisional ballots which will show up in vote counts in greater numbers later this week and into next week will reflect votes from election day, at which point Harris' late surge should be fully reflected. Those later votes are expected to trend Democratic to a much greater extent than the votes tallied after election night to date.

Votes counts after the Friday reports are tallied should provide a better picture of the trend for provisional ballots, but expect a much clearer picture when vote tallies are provided next week. (Los Angeles County, with over 200,000 ballots left to process / report, will be reporting this Friday, then again next Tuesday and Friday.) Until then, the A.G.'s race remains much too close to call.

Update on Harris / Cooley, McNerney / Harmer (11th C.D. CA), Costa / Vidak (20th CD CA)

2010-11-09T16:47:00.000-08:00

An update on the above races:

With about 1.28 million of the 2.3 million previously uncounted ballots remaining to be counted and reported, Republican Steve Cooley's lead in the race for California Attonrey General, which had expanded to over 51,000 votes as of 9:12 a.m. November 9, has dropped to just under 36,200 as of 5 p.m. this evening. The new votes appear to have come from Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties. (The vast number of the ballots counted from the 2.3 which had been uncounted on election night appear to be late absentee ballots (either received by mail on or after the weekend before the election, or brought to polling places on election day). At least some counties are processing those in the order received.)

Los Angeles County has reported just over 100,000 of their 400,000 plus initially-uncounted ballots, all of which appear to have been absentee ballots. Over 322,000 L.A. County ballots remain to be counted and/or reported. Los Angeles is planning to report on an additional ballot report, totaling approximately 100,000 votes, today, and those totals should appear later tonight or tomorrow morning. Those again appear to be all late absentee ballots, which can be processed more quickly than provisionals, which need to be hand-checked for eligibility.

While Kamala Harris should win the plurality of these L.A. County absentee ballots, we don't expect a major improvement in her numbers until Los Angeles (and other Democratic-leaning counties) move into reporting the provisional ballots. Expect a not-insignificant number of these 133,000 provisional votes to work their way into the Friday, November 12 report from Los Angeles, giving us a better idea of how the vote is likely to break over the week ahead. Expect significant narrowing of the Cooley lead as those votes work their way into the ballot count. Provisionals will tend to include significantly more Democratic voters than the overall electorate.

Meanwhile, in the 11th Congressional District, Democratic incumbent Jerry McNerny has built a 628 vote (.5 percent) lead over Republican challenger David Harmer. Absentee and/or provisional ballots from Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin and Santa Clara counties remain to be processed; McNerny leads substantially in voting in the Alameda (14% lead) and Santa Clara (8% lead) county portions of his district, while trailing narrowly in Contra Costa, and more broadly in San Juaquin counties. We expect McNerny to hold and build his lead as provisional ballots are added to the vote count totals. (An American Independent candidate in that race is pulling 4.9% of the vote, which percentage will be far more than the margin of McNerny's likely victory.)

And in the 20th Congressional District, Democratic incumbent Jim Costa, after trailing by more than two percent on election night, appears to be poised to take the lead from late absentee and provisional ballots. As of the 4:44 p.m. count this evening, Costa trailed Republican Andy Vidak by 27 votes (.2%).

Vidak's area of strength was Kings County, where he thrashed Costa, nearly 70% to 30%. Kings County completed their reporting of all ballots on November 8, so all remaining votes will be coming from Costa strongholds of Fresno County (where he leads by more than 60 to 40 percent) and Kerns County (where Costa leads 61 to 39 percent). We do not know what portions of the unreported votes from those counties are within Costa's district.

Barring unexpected developments, expect Costa to be re-elected to represent the 20th District, though a recount could well be forthcoming.

***
6:55 p.m. update:

Without updating the number of unprocessed votes, the Secretary of State's office has released new figures impacting the A.G.'s and 20th C.D. races. With approximately an additional 234,000 votes added between Harris and Cooley, Cooley has increased his lead to nearly 41,000 votes.

In the 20th C.D., Vidak has re-opened a 1% lead, leading by 648 votes. It is thus too early to suggest a likely winner in that contest.

***
10:50 p.m. update:

Additional votes have been added from Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Mateo counties.

Cooley is currently leading Harris by 43,212 votes (.5%).

When the unprocessed ballot report is updated (likely Wednesday morning), we'll have a good idea of the number of ballots left to count in Cooley strongholds (particularly Orange and San Diego counties, but also places such as Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura), versus Harris strongholds (most of the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles). (It appears that approximately 157,000 of the more than 400,000 initially-unprocessed Los Angeles counties ballots are included in this count, leaving some 250,000 ballots from Los Angeles to be added to the totals. Harris is currently leading in L.A. County 53% to 40%.)

Again, we'll also have a better idea of how things are breaking after the Friday report from Los Angeles, which should incorporate the first batch of provisional ballots from that county, which are expected to break strongly for Harris.

In the 20th C.D., the numbers reported at 6:55 p.m. were apparently as the result in a glitch in the SOS computers and/or input. The SOS is again reporting that Costa is trailing by 27 votes, or .2%.

***
November 10, 2010: 6:55 p.m. update:

Harris has erased much of Cooley's lead, and now trails him by 11,400 votes, or .1% of the vote counted to date.

In the 11th C.D., Democratic incumbent McNerney has increased his lead over Republican Harmer to 2,498 votes (1.3%).

And in the 20th C.D., after trailing since early returns on election night, Democratic incumbent Costa has taken a 1,318 vote lead over Republican challenger Vidak, and now holds a lead by 1.8% of the vote.

Harris / Cooley A.G. Race Comes Down to Count of Provisional / Absentee Ballots

2010-11-07T10:54:00.000-08:00

Kamala Harris and Steve Cooley, the major party candidates seeking election as the next Attorney General of the State of California, await the count of more than 2.3 million unprocessed ballots, including over 1.7 million absentee / vote-by-mail ballots, more than 500,000 provisional ballots, as well as damaged and other ballots to determine the outcome of the November 2, 2010 election.

Democrat Harris, the District Attorney of San Francisco, surprised many political insiders by holding a lead of 14,838 votes after 100% of precincts had reported the day after the election. Polls which had shown a significant lead for Cooley in September had tightened as the election drew near. The L.A. Times / U.S.C. poll, taken in mid-October, showed Republican Cooley with a five-point lead statewide, and a nine-point lead in traditionally-Democratic L.A. County, where Cooley is in his third term as District Attorney. A Field Poll taken later in October showed a dead heat -- with Cooley ahead among "likely voters" by one percent. By election day, Democrat Harris had made up her deficit in Los Angeles County, and currently holds a nearly 14 percentage-point lead over the local D.A.

Los Angeles County had reported over 400,000 unprocessed votes after the initial count from precincts had been completed; just over 100,000 of those ballots have been processed; between Harris and Cooley, Harris received 44,623 of those votes (51.48%), while Cooley received 42,053 (48.52%). Harris is likely disappointed in this breakdown; with close to 240,000 votes initially uncounted ballots in conservative Orange and San Diego Counties, where Cooley did extremely well on election night, Harris needs a boast from the L.A. County's uncounted votes to have a good chance of prevailing in the final vote count. (While there are significant numbers of uncounted ballots in Harris strongholds in the San Francisco Bay area where she ran extremely well, their numbers could be dwarfed by the larger Southern California counties.)

Over 500,000 of the 2.3 million previously uncounted votes have now been counted, and Steve Cooley has a 24,276 vote lead over Kamala Harris (46% to 45.7%). From watching county reporting status updates, it appears that a disproportionate percentage of the ballots counted have come from conservative counties -- Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, where Cooley is expected to do very well.

The Kamala Harris campaign has put out a call for volunteers (and particularly lawyers and law students) to observe the counting of the outstanding ballots. The Cooley campaign also states that they are monitoring the vote count, and have legal counsel on standby to respond to developments.

This race looks likely to take weeks or longer to reach resolution. We'll try to keep you updated here.

Betsy Butler Poised to Win California's 53rd AD Democratic Nomination

2010-06-09T00:21:00.000-07:00

In a race marked by hundreds of thousands of dollars of "independent expenditures" by anti-consumer attorney forces (big corps, big insurance) aimed at stopping non-profit development director Betsy Butler from gaining the Democratic nomination (and, later, for securing the nomination for James Lau), Butler is poised to burst through that opposition and claim the Democratic nomination in California's 53rd Assembly District.

With nearly 55 percent of the vote counted in this eight-way race, Butler has steadily expanded her lead over Lau and the others as ballots cast on election day are added to the earlier tabulated vote-by-mail ballots. Butler has collected 26.2 percent of the votes cast, while Lau stands at 18.5 percent. Manhattan Beach Mayor Mitch Ward holds 14.8 of the vote, while Deputy City Attorney Nick Karno has moved up to 13.9% of ballots cast. Attorney Kate Anderson, a Mar Vista Community Council member trails the pack of double-digit contenders with 12.1 percent of the vote.

Peter Thottam. Edgar Saenz and Diane Wallace all hover around five percent of the vote.

Harman Defeats Winograd in 36th CD (CA); Butler, Lau Lead Pack in 53rd AD (CA) in Early Returns

2010-06-08T22:08:00.000-07:00

Congresswoman Jane Harman (D - Venice) took an early 30% lead over her opponent, Marcy Winograd, in initial returns. With just over 8,500 votes counted, Harman had 65% of the vote to Winograd's 35%.

In the heavily contested 53rd Assembly District Democratic primary, with absentee plus 4.7 percent of precincts reporting, Betsy Butler had 24.3% of the vote (1,522 votes), followed by James Lau, with 21.5% (1,347 votes), and Mitch Ward at 18.2% (1,137 votes). Following behind in early returns were Nick Karno (12.2%), Kate Anderson (10.3%), with three others below 5 percent.

It is unknown which precincts were reporting; early returns are subject to major change.

Who Is the "Asian American Small Business PAC" & Why Are They Supporting James Lau for Assembly?

2010-05-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

It sounds like a no-brainer. Why wouldn't the "Asian American Small Business PAC" be supporting James Lau, the sole Asian candidate* to replace Ted Lieu as State Assemblyman in California's 53rd Assembly District?

But I wondered, which Asian small businesses make up the "Asian American Small Business PAC" (AASB PAC)? My research led to some surprises.

The largest contributors to AASB PAC over the last year or so have been AT&T and their affiliates ($25,000), the California Medical Association (CMA) small contributors committee ($15,000) and tobacco giant Phillip Morris USA, Inc. ($15,000). Energy powerhouse PG&E (sponsors of Proposition 16) earlier gave $15,000 to AASB PAC.

The most recent contributors to the "Asian American Small Business PAC" have been the following companies / related PACs: Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lily & Company, Time Warner Cable, Union Pacific Railroad Company, PriceWaterhousCoopers, LLP, State Building & Construction Trades Council, Comcast, Fed Ex, the CMA (again, this time for $5,000), Chicago big-firm attorney Gail Morse, & Verizon. Evidently no Asian American small business among the bunch in the last year or two, or among the larger contributors.

Records show that that group is now spending $14,885 (in three separate payments of about $4962 over the course of less than a week) in support of James Lau's candidacy, in what may be the first independent expenditure in favor of a candidate in the Democratic primary in the 53rd.

While the contributions to AASB PAC may come from some of America's biggest companies, the contributions seem to be directed to the election of Asian Americans to public office. So perhaps the contribution to Lau was a no-brainer after all.

*Note: It has been brought to our attention that Peter Thottam, a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 53rd AD, is also of (East) Asian (Indian) ancestry. We apologize for the oversight.

Why Do Three Major Republican-Oriented Business Groups Want to Defeat Betsy Butler in the 53rd AD Democratic Primary?

2010-05-09T21:53:00.000-07:00

Residents of the 53rd Assembly District (covering the South Bay, Marina del Rey, Mar Vista, Venice) have been bombarded by an anti-Betsy Butler campaign being waged primarily by three anti-consumer / pro-business / corporate groups. Those groups have a history of working to defeat progressive Democrats in Democratic primaries and in general elections.

Many of those following the Democratic primary race in the 53rd (currently represented by Ted Lieu (D), who is "termed out" of office, and seeking the Democratic nomination for California Attorney General) are asking why Butler is being targeted, and who the "independent" committees would prefer as the Democratic nominee in the 53rd AD.

(The Democratic nominee is certain to be heavily favored for election in November in a district in which the Democrats hold a 12% registration advantage.)

The three "independent" corporate / business groups which have already spent more than $450,000 to defeat Betsy Butler are: 1) "Californians for Balance and Fairness in the Civil Justice System, Sponsored by the Civil Justice Association of California" ("CJAC"); 2) "Californians Allied For Patient Protection Independent Expenditure Account" ("CAPP" - also known as "Coalition to Protect MICRA" - MICRA being the $250,000 cap on non-economic damages in cases of medical malpractice), and 3) "Cooperative Of American Physicians Independent Expenditure Committee" ("COAP" - which provides insurance, financial & risk management services to physicians).

Members of the board of directors of and recent major contributors to CJAC include some of the largest oil, insurance, medical, pharmaceutical, computer and real estate development firms in the world. What are the goals of CJAC and its member corporations in so vigorously opposing Butler? CJAC states that they seek to limit the risks to their members posed by litigation (including, presumably, litigation in which their products and services injured, maimed or killed members of the public.) They seek to defeat legislation supported by proponents of consumers rights. As Betsy Butler has worked as development director for the Consumer Attorneys of California, she would seem to be a natural target for CJAC.

How has CJAC used their funds to influence elections in the past? Here are two examples:

CJAC fought to try to keep Martin (Marty) Block from winning the 78th AD seat, (San Diego County) spending nearly $189,000 to support a Dem opponent who appeared not very electable (Maxine Sherard, who ran and lost in 2002, 2004 and 2006.) In addition to supporting his Democratic opponent in the primary, CJAC spent nearly $108,000 to oppose Marty Block. After Block won the Democratic nomination, CJAC spent over $81,000 to support his Republican opponent (John McCann). So, rather than supporting Ms. Sherard, CJAC was clearly focused on stopping Marty Block's political career. Block won.

CJAC also worked to put Joe Nation, a Democrat who is now a consultant for PG&E, into office, providing over $250,000 in spending in support of Nation, evidently in his race against Mark Leno for the State Senate in 2008. (Nation also ran against Lynn Woolsey, co-chair of the Progressive Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.)

Presumably CJAC's constituent corporations want to keep Betsy Butler out of the Statehouse to prevent her from championing legislation which will go against their corporate interests. But why are the other two committees, "CAPP" and "COAP" spending over $300,000 to defeat Butler?

And, one might wonder, who among the Democrats in the race would these pro-business / anti-consumer committees prefer? Which candidate is likely to have a approach more to their liking?

More on CAPP and COAP and their instructive history of campaign expenditures - including against Hannah-Beth Jackson and in favor of Tony Strickland - in a forthcoming column.

Elena Kagan to Be Nominated to Supreme Court - AP

2010-05-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

AP reports that Solicitor General Elena Kagan will be nominated by President Barack Obama to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ms. Kagan, who was the first female dean of Harvard Law School, was also the first woman to serve as Solicitor General -- the lawyer who represents the United States before the Supreme Court.

From Wikipedia:

Kagan earned a A.B. from Princeton University, summa cum laude, in 1981,... an M.Phil degree from Oxford University, ... (and) a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School ... (where she was) Supervisory Editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Kagan was a law clerk for Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. She later entered private practice as an associate at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Williams & Connolly.^[1]

Kagan was a professor of law at the University of Chicago, and served as Associate White House Counsel under President Bill Clinton.

Kagan, 50, has never served as a judge on any court. AP points out that she would be "the first justice without judicial experience in almost 40 years."

If confirmed, she would be the fourth woman on the Court in history, with three of them serving together on the current Court. She would be the third Jewish member on the current Court, and the eighth Jewish member in the Court's history.

Tsunami Headed For Hawaii -- Coastal Evacuations Ordered

2010-02-27T07:55:00.000-08:00

The State of Hawaii has ordered the evacuation of all coastal areas in advance of the tsunami expected to hit the islands starting at 11:19 a.m. (local time) this morning.

All ships are being ordered out of port, and Waikiki hotels are being evacuated along with all low-lying areas. Tsunami warning sirens are being sounded starting at 6 a.m. this morning.

The island of Hawaii, and particularly the Hilo Bay area, is the "worst-case scenario" area.

The tsunami was formed in the aftermath of the 8.8 magnitude quake which hit the Chilean coast earlier this morning.

For a local perspective, see: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage .

House Passes Health Care Bill

2009-11-07T20:08:00.000-08:00

On a vote of 220 to 215, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a sweeping health care bill. Thirty nine Democrats voted against the bill, which includes controversial new restrictions on funding for abortions. Unexpectedly, one Republican, Anh Cao of Louisiana, (the Republican who defeated disgraced Congressman William Jefferson in a heavily Democratic district), voted in favor of the bill.

The debate over national health care reform now shifts to the U.S. Senate; after the Senate cobbles together its final bill, that bill, if passed by the Senate, will be sent to a Conference Committee, where the differences between the bills will be worked out (or not.)

Sprayed or Spilled Accelerant May Have Contributed to Fire Along Hollywood Freeway

2009-09-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

A brush fire broke out at about 7:30 p.m. this evening alongside the northbound 101 / Hollywood Freeway near Vineland in the Universal City area of Los Angeles, shutting down all northbound lanes for some time. At least some lanes now appear to have been reopened.

According to dispatcher communications, several callers reported a tanker or other truck spilling or spraying fuel or other unknown liquid onto the area where the fire started.
Those dispatcher communications are as follows:

Structure or Grass Fire - 101 North Before Vineland Av	7:28 PM
* Brush Fire	7:28 PM
* Message/Item Delivered LA Fire Department	7:29 PM
* Per Dupe Caller Advisd He Had Visual Flames About 20 Ft from the Freeway, Multi Trees on Fire About 25 Feet High	7:30 PM
* .k/2743d0927.d/rp Advised Ambers Are Coming Across the Lanes of the Freeway	7:31 PM
* Per Dupe Call Gas Tanker on Freeway-Possible Spilling Fuel Causing the Brush Fire-No Further Information	7:31 PM
* Per Dupe Caller Advised a Brush Fire, Advised Unknown Truck Spraying Unknown Liquid into Fire Area	7:32 PM

More information posted as available.

Krekorian Leads in L.A. Council Race, To Face December 8 Runoff

2009-09-23T10:17:00.000-07:00

Despite having been outspent nearly two-to-one by his closest opponent, California State Assemblyman Paul Krekorian won a plurality of the votes cast in the open primary for Los Angeles' 2nd Council District seat.

Krekorian was the choice of 34% of voters. Christine Essel, a former executive at Parmount Pictures, came in second, with 28% of the vote. Tamar Galatzan, a Deputy City Attorney and a member of the Los Angeles Board of Education, was third with 13%.

The Second Council District Seat became vacant when City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel was elected as L.A. City Controller. The District, in the East San Fernando Valley covers all or parts of North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Sunland-Tujunga, Valley Glen and Valley Village. (A map of the district is available here.)

Followng is the final unofficial results of the September 22, 2009 primary election. The run-off will be held December 8:

VOTES	PERCENT

COUNCIL DISTRICT 2
	TAMAR GALATZAN	1,871	12.94
	JOZEF "JOE" THOMAS ESSAVI	306	2.12
	CHRISTINE ESSEL	4,104	28.39
	MICHAEL MC CUE	339	2.35
	PETE SANCHEZ	699	4.84
	DAVID "ZUMA DOGG" SALTSBURG	410	2.84
	FRANK SHEFTEL	441	3.05
	PAUL KREKORIAN	4,929	34.10
	MARY BENSON	1,198	8.29
	AUGUSTO BISANI	158	1.09

Obama's Prepared Remarks to American School Children

2009-09-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

Here are the prepared remarks of President Obama "indoctrinating" our school children, to be given Tuesday, September 8, at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia:

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Sessions Opposes Sotomayor Because She Is "Pro Government."

2009-07-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

Does Senator Sessions (and other Senate Republicans) truly want judges and justices who are anti-government? From the New York Times:

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the committee’s leading Republican, said just before the vote that he was compelled to oppose the nomination because of the judge’s “liberal, pro-government ideology.”

Captain Freed, Three Pirates Killed in U.S. Navy Rescue off Somalia

2009-04-12T12:05:00.000-07:00

Richard Phillips, captain of the U.S. flagged Maersk Alabama who had been kidnapped by Somali pirates and held for ransom in a lifeboat off the coast of Somalia, has been freed unharmed during an operation by the U.S. Navy, including Navy SEALS.

The three pirates who were on the lifeboat were killed in a brief firefight; a fourth pirate was on the USS Bainbridge for negotiations with the captain of that ship, and was taken into custody.

Captain Phillips has been transported, in good condition, to the USS Bainbridge, and then to the USS Boxer for a medical evaluation.

Earlier negotiations for Phillips release, conducted through the captain of the Bainbridge under the guidance of FBI hostage negotiators, had evidently broken down, evidently due U.S. insistence that the pirates involved in the kidnapping of Captain Phillips be arrested and subjected to the criminal justice process.

Further coverage:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/04/12/somalia.pirates/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/12/world/AP-Piracy.html?hp

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7996087.stm

U.S. Supreme Court Lets Stand Punitive Damage Award 97 Times Compensatory Award

2009-03-31T08:26:00.000-07:00

U.S. Supreme Court dismisses appeal of $79.5 million punitives award in tobacco case; compensatory award was $800,000, later reduced to $521,000.

From the ABA Journal:

The U.S. Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal of a $79.5 million punitive award in a tobacco case, saying it had erred in granting certiorari.

The appeal by tobacco maker Phillip Morris was “dismissed as improvidently granted” in a one-sentence order, according to SCOTUSblog and the Associated Press. The dismissal leaves undisturbed an Oregon Supreme Court decision upholding the award.

The case had been “something of a judicial minuet between the Supreme Court and the Oregon Supreme Court,” according to SCOTUSblog. The Supreme Court has twice overturned the punitive verdict, and the Oregon Supreme Court has twice reinstated it.

In its most recent decision, the Oregon high court avoided a constitutional issue that had troubled the Supreme Court—whether jurors were unconstitutionally punishing Phillip Morris for damages done to people who weren’t parties to the lawsuit. Instead the Oregon court upheld the verdict based on an independent state ground--that jury instructions proposed by the company had misstated state law.
***

So we have an exception to the previous "suggestion" by the high court that punitive damages are "generally" to be no more than nine times the compensatory damages in the case. The award will stand despite the Court's 5-to-4 ruling in the same case back in 2007 that the defendant could be punished only for harm to the plaintiff, not other smokers who were also arguably harmed by the conduct of defendant.

Further factual background on the case, Philip Morris USA v. Williams, 07-1216, in the New York Times.

(Image courtesy U.S. Supreme Court.)

G.M., Chrysler Restructuring Plans "Inadequate"; G.M. Chair Out; Chrysler "Not Viable" as Stand-Alone Company

2009-03-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

CEO / Chairman Wagoner out at GM, which will get 60-days financing as they work to further cut costs. Chrysler given 30 days to come to arrangement with Fiat - found not viable as stand-alone company.

The Detroit Free Press reports:

The do-or-die ultimatums delivered today to two of Detroit’s pillar companies come with promises of additional aid, including up to $6 billion for a Chrysler-Fiat partnership. But senior administration officials also say even successful plans could require a so-called quick rinse in bankruptcy, and warn that without Fiat, Chrysler will get no aid in or out of court.
Obama told Michigan lawmakers Sunday night that both companies had failed to meet the terms of their loans and weren’t viable today.

Details of the Obama administration plans, evaluations of GM and Chrysler (pdf;)

Findings on G.M.'s viability (pdf;)

Findings on Chrysler's viability (pdf;)

New Warranty Government Commitment Program (pdf.)

(Without a government guarantee of new car warranties of G.M. and Chrysler, few would risk purchase of their vehicles due to risk of the warranties becoming worthless after bankruptcy.)

Further detailed coverage at the Detroit Free Press.

Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport

2009-03-25T13:39:00.000-07:00

Former CNN anchor Bobbi Battista reports for ONN that Franz Kafka International Airport is the world's most alienating airport.

Mistrial by iPhone - NY Times Article on Juror Research During Trial

2009-03-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

Mistrial by iPhone: Juries’ Web Research Upends Trials

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge’s instructions and centuries of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, he got an even bigger shock.

Eight other jurors had been doing the same thing. The federal judge, William J. Zloch, had no choice but to declare a mistrial, wasting eight weeks of work by federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.

“We were stunned,” said the defense lawyer, Peter Raben, who was told by the jury that he was on the verge of winning the case. “It’s the first time modern technology struck us in that fashion, and it hit us right over the head.”

It might be called a Google mistrial. The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors gathering and sending out information about cases is wreaking havoc on trials around the country, upending deliberations and infuriating judges. ***

Continued at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/us/18juries.html?hp

Trial lawyers and courts will need to come up with new ways to drive home the inappropriateness of jurors doing (internet or any) research into the issues, the parties or their attorneys during a trial. Perhaps there's a need for courts to set a few "examples" through use of contempt of court citations.

Video of Oral Argument Before California Supreme Court on Proposition 8

2009-03-05T23:14:00.001-08:00

Oral argument in the Prop 8 case starts at about 15:00 of the video, after a profile of the Court and Justices.

Live Streaming Video - Proposition 8 Arguments Before California Supreme Court

2009-03-05T08:33:00.000-08:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

If above doesn't work, here's a link - to MSNBC live video stream coverage.

The following link may also work, though it appeared to be overloaded for much of the morning:

Live coverage of oral arguments before the California Supreme Court, from 9 a.m. to noon, PST.

L. A. Municipal Election Results - Full Update - Plus, Measure "B" - Solar - Loses Narrowly

2009-03-04T01:53:00.000-08:00

Here are the final unofficial results of the Los Angeles Municipal Election, from the Los Angeles City Clerk, reported at 1:46 a.m. on March 4, 2009. Note that in School Board and Community College Board races, votes from outside of the City of Los Angeles must be added to these totals.

Runoffs will be held in any race in which no candidate received 50% + 1 vote.

		VOTES	PERCENT

MAYOR
	CARLOS ALVAREZ	2,483	1.08
	GORDON TURNER	14,843	6.44
	WALTER MOORE	60,508	26.27
	PHIL JENNERJAHN	2,020	0.88
	JAMES HARRIS	2,057	0.89
	DAVID R HERNANDEZ	4,392	1.91
	BRUCE DARIAN	4,874	2.12
	ANTONIO R. VILLARAIGOSA	127,955	55.56
	DAVID "ZUMA DOGG" SALTSBURG	7,687	3.34
	CRAIG X RUBIN	3,484	1.51
CITY ATTORNEY
	MICHAEL RICHARD AMERIAN	38,358	17.28
	DAVID BERGER	31,556	14.21
	CARMEN "NUCH" TRUTANICH	59,804	26.93
	NOEL WEISS	11,337	5.11
	JACK WEISS	80,985	36.47
CITY CONTROLLER
	KATHLEEN "SUZY" EVANS	40,112	18.55
	WENDY GREUEL	141,034	65.21
	NICK PATSAOURAS	35,136	16.25
COUNCIL DISTRICT 1
	ED P. REYES	6,565	76.20
	JESSE ROSAS	2,051	23.80
COUNCIL DISTRICT 3
	DENNIS P. ZINE	14,782	70.96
	JEFF BORNSTEIN	6,048	29.04
COUNCIL DISTRICT 5
	ADEENA N. BLEICH	4,173	15.76
	PAUL KORETZ	5,685	21.47
	RON GALPERIN	3,943	14.89
	DAVID T. VAHEDI	5,745	21.70
	ROBERT SCHWARTZ	3,185	12.03
	ROBYN RITTER SIMON	3,745	14.14
COUNCIL DISTRICT 7
	RICHARD ALARCÓN	7,380	100.00
COUNCIL DISTRICT 9
	JAN C. PERRY	5,801	100.00
COUNCIL DISTRICT 11
	HARRY "CRAIG" WILSON	5,781	25.68
	BILL ROSENDAHL	16,728	74.32
COUNCIL DISTRICT 13
	ERIC GARCETTI	7,210	71.91
	GARY SLOSSBERG	2,816	28.09
COUNCIL DISTRICT 15
	JANICE HAHN	9,250	75.71
	CHRIS SALABAJ	2,967	24.29
* L A U N I F I E D S C H O O L D I S T R I C T *
BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 2
	MÓNICA GARCÍA	18,566	100.00
BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 4
	STEVE ZIMMER	26,023	56.13
	MIKE STRYER	20,339	43.87
BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 6
	NURY MARTINEZ	12,591	50.98
	LOUIS PUGLIESE	12,109	49.02
* L A C O M M U N I T Y C O L L E G E D I S T R I C T *
COMMUNITY COLLEGE SEAT 2
	STEVE FINLEY	22,195	10.60
	LADY CAGE-BARILE	23,252	11.11
	ART SIMS	22,779	10.88
	TINA PARK	40,863	19.52
	ANGELA J. REDDOCK	100,211	47.88
COMMUNITY COLLEGE SEAT 4
	ROY BURNS	74,598	37.01
	KELLY CANDAELE	126,989	62.99
COMMUNITY COLLEGE SEAT 6
	GREG AKILI	15,158	7.39
	ROBERT NAKAHIRO	27,336	13.33
	LIVI BAKOZVICH	11,128	5.43
	JOZEF THOMAS ESSAVI	27,138	13.23
	JANE ARDIGO SCOTT	24,452	11.92
	NANCY PEARLMAN	99,865	48.70
COMMUNITY COLLEGE SEAT 7
	KURT S. LOWRY	91,063	44.86
	MIGUEL SANTIAGO	111,921	55.14
************* B A L L O T M E A S U R E S **************
CHARTER AMENDMENT A - FIRE DEPARTMENT INDEPENDENT ASSESSOR
	YES	109,587	52.70
	NO	98,359	47.30
CHARTER AMENDMENT AND ORDINANCE PROPOSITION B - SOLAR ENERGY AND JOB CREATION PROGRAM
	YES	109,183	49.70
	NO	110,505	50.30
CHARTER AMENDMENT C - DISABLED CHILDREN SURVIVOR BENEFIT OF THE FIRE AND POLICE PENSION PLAN
	YES	140,680	66.57
	NO	70,650	33.43
CHARTER AMENDMENT D - SURVIVOR BENEFIT PURCHASE PROGRAM FOR RETIREES OF THE FIRE AND POLICE PENSION PLAN
	YES	147,545	70.36
	NO	62,154	29.64
CHARTER AMENDMENT E - ECONOMIC INCENTIVES FOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
	YES	100,747	47.83
	NO	109,906	52.17

1) Certified Write-In Candidates exist for the Office of Mayor. Valid Write-In votes will be counted and included as part of the official canvass and Certified vote results. They are not included on this bulletin.
2) Portions of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and Community College District (LACCD) elections are being consolidated with and conducted by other Cities. Those results will be reported on a separate bulletin and must be added to the results on this bulletin to determine the total votes cast.

L. A. Municipal Election Results - Villaraigosa Wins Narrow Victory, Run-Offs for Other Key Races, Solar Too Close to Call

2009-03-04T01:13:00.000-08:00

Results as of 1 a.m. 3/4/09, with 90% of polling place votes reported, presumably 100% of vote-by-mail votes counted - so about 5% of the vote out. (A majority of the vote cast was cast by mail. Turnout appears to have been about 9%.)

* Villaraigosa wins with just over 55% of the vote against a field of largely unknown opponents.

* Gruel easily elected City Controller.

* Weiss, with 37%, faces runoff in City Attorney race against Trutonich, who has 27%.

*Zimmer beats Stryer for Board of Education; Pugliese / Martinez race too close to call. Note that votes from outside L.A. City need to be added to these totals, could change results, although Zimmer's margin of about 13% (6,000 votes) should be enough to assure him the election.

* 5th District City Council race a run-off between Koretz & Vahedi.

* Solar power initiative too close to call - "No" on B leads by 102 votes.

*Economic incentives to bring business to Los Angeles (Measure "E") is failing narrowly.

* Reddock, Pearlman each held just under 50% of vote, headed for runoffs in their respective Community College Board of Trustees races. However, votes from outside L.A. City need to be added to these totals, could change results.

Complete charted partial results from the City Clerk below, as of 1 a.m.:

MAYOR
	CARLOS ALVAREZ	2,314	1.09
	GORDON TURNER	13,956	6.56
	WALTER MOORE	55,103	25.89
	PHIL JENNERJAHN	1,872	0.88
	JAMES HARRIS	1,903	0.89
	DAVID R HERNANDEZ	4,091	1.92
	BRUCE DARIAN	4,592	2.16
	ANTONIO R. VILLARAIGOSA	118,602	55.73
	DAVID "ZUMA DOGG" SALTSBURG	7,152	3.36
	CRAIG X RUBIN	3,225	1.52
CITY ATTORNEY
	MICHAEL RICHARD AMERIAN	35,244	17.18
	DAVID BERGER	29,188	14.22
	CARMEN "NUCH" TRUTANICH	55,012	26.81
	NOEL WEISS	10,547	5.14
	JACK WEISS	75,202	36.65
CITY CONTROLLER
	KATHLEEN "SUZY" EVANS	36,982	18.51
	WENDY GREUEL	130,199	65.18
	NICK PATSAOURAS	32,569	16.30
COUNCIL DISTRICT 1
	ED P. REYES	6,237	76.14
	JESSE ROSAS	1,955	23.86
COUNCIL DISTRICT 3
	DENNIS P. ZINE	13,178	70.96
	JEFF BORNSTEIN	5,393	29.04
COUNCIL DISTRICT 5
	ADEENA N. BLEICH	3,927	15.67
	PAUL KORETZ	5,384	21.49
	RON GALPERIN	3,745	14.94
	DAVID T. VAHEDI	5,418	21.62
	ROBERT SCHWARTZ	3,041	12.14
	ROBYN RITTER SIMON	3,544	14.14
COUNCIL DISTRICT 7
	RICHARD ALARCÓN	6,257	100.00
COUNCIL DISTRICT 9
	JAN C. PERRY	5,312	100.00
COUNCIL DISTRICT 11
	HARRY "CRAIG" WILSON	5,221	25.38
	BILL ROSENDAHL	15,347	74.62
COUNCIL DISTRICT 13
	ERIC GARCETTI	6,834	72.08
	GARY SLOSSBERG	2,647	27.92
COUNCIL DISTRICT 15
	JANICE HAHN	8,897	75.73
	CHRIS SALABAJ	2,851	24.27
* L A U N I F I E D S C H O O L D I S T R I C T *
BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 2
	MÓNICA GARCÍA	17,761	100.00
BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 4
	STEVE ZIMMER	24,260	56.59
	MIKE STRYER	18,610	43.41
BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 6
	NURY MARTINEZ	11,148	50.40
	LOUIS PUGLIESE	10,973	49.60
* L A C O M M U N I T Y C O L L E G E D I S T R I C T *
COMMUNITY COLLEGE SEAT 2
	STEVE FINLEY	20,583	10.59
	LADY CAGE-BARILE	21,659	11.14
	ART SIMS	21,189	10.90
	TINA PARK	38,141	19.62
	ANGELA J. REDDOCK	92,799	47.74
COMMUNITY COLLEGE SEAT 4
	ROY BURNS	69,341	37.03
	KELLY CANDAELE	117,919	62.97
COMMUNITY COLLEGE SEAT 6
	GREG AKILI	14,055	7.38
	ROBERT NAKAHIRO	25,603	13.44
	LIVI BAKOZVICH	10,322	5.42
	JOZEF THOMAS ESSAVI	25,023	13.14
	JANE ARDIGO SCOTT	22,752	11.94
	NANCY PEARLMAN	92,750	48.69
COMMUNITY COLLEGE SEAT 7
	KURT S. LOWRY	84,427	44.79
	MIGUEL SANTIAGO	104,076	55.21
************* B A L L O T M E A S U R E S **************
CHARTER AMENDMENT A - FIRE DEPARTMENT INDEPENDENT ASSESSOR
	YES	101,192	52.77
	NO	90,559	47.23
CHARTER AMENDMENT AND ORDINANCE PROPOSITION B - SOLAR ENERGY AND JOB CREATION PROGRAM
	YES	101,247	49.97
	NO	101,349	50.03
CHARTER AMENDMENT C - DISABLED CHILDREN SURVIVOR BENEFIT OF THE FIRE AND POLICE PENSION PLAN
	YES	129,779	66.62
	NO	65,033	33.38
CHARTER AMENDMENT D - SURVIVOR BENEFIT PURCHASE PROGRAM FOR RETIREES OF THE FIRE AND POLICE PENSION PLAN
	YES	136,404	70.55
	NO	56,934	29.45
CHARTER AMENDMENT E - ECONOMIC INCENTIVES FOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
	YES	93,415	48.09
	NO	100,825	51.91

Live Coverage of the Coleman - Franken Election Trial

2009-01-27T10:59:00.000-08:00

Live coverage of the Coleman - Franken election trial available here, at the Uptake.

Pope Benedict Lifts Excommunication of Holocaust Denying Bishop

2009-01-25T13:55:00.000-08:00

Pope Benedict continues the rightward-lurching of the Catholic Church.

From AP:

Pope Benedict XVI has lifted the excommunications of four bishops consecrated without papal consent 20 years ago by the late French ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Vatican announced Saturday.
One of the four bishops was shown this week in an interview saying that the Nazi gas chambers probably didn't exist. The report prompted Rome's chief rabbi to ask the Vatican to halt plans to rehabilitate him.
***
Richard Williamson said in a Swedish state TV interview that historical evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed." The Vatican had no comment on the report.

Ruth Gledhill, the Religion correspondent for the Times of London notes the disaster of bringing Williamson back in as a representative of the church:

If he brings them back in with Williamson on board, then truly it will be a disaster. Vatican II might as well never have happened and it won't just be the Jewish community that would be justifiably disgusted.

The Times of London reports on the sense of dismay as the Pope acts to reinstate Williamson and his Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) bretheren, who opposed the reforms of the Second Vatican Council:

Some Vatican officials are also saying privately that although the Pope’s stated aim was to unite the Church by bringing the rebels back into the fold, his move would have the opposite effect. “The Church will pay a price for this” one Vatican prelate said. “The Pope is undermining the legacy of John Paul II.”

The denial of the existence of Nazi gas chambers, and of the holocaust itself are not Williamson's only anti-Semitic acts. According to Gledhill of the Times:

In an earlier story in the Catholic Herald, Bishop Williamson was exposed as endorsing the forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Pope Benedict has taken other steps to move the church to the right, and to move away from the raprochment achieved through Vatican II.

This month Elia Enrico Richetti, the chief rabbi of Venice, said Jews had been deeply offended by the reintroduction by the Pope in March of a Good Friday Latin prayer for the conversion of the Jews as part of the revived Tridentine Mass. “We are moving toward the cancellation of 50 years of Church history” the rabbi said

The Catholic Herald story on Williamson is well worth the read for anyone who wishes an understanding of the broad anti-Semitism preached by now-Bishop Williamson.

h/t: Andrew Sullivan at "The Dish", whose article contains a video of Williamson speaking on the Holocaust.

Kennedy Released From Hospital

2009-01-21T11:04:00.000-08:00

Senator Edward Kennedy was released this morning from Washington Hospital Center, where he had been taken after collapsing in convulsions during an inaugural luncheon yesterday. Kennedy, who was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor last May, had undergone brain surgery last year.

According to the New York Times:

Dr. Edward F. Aulisi, the hospital’s chairman of neurosurgery, said Tuesday that the seizure had probably been brought on by “simple fatigue” after a long morning in the cold at the inaugural ceremony. Medical experts said a seizure in a brain cancer patient was not unusual and ordinarily had no serious consequences.

(Photo credit.)

Kennedy, Byrd Stricken, Taken From Capitol By Ambulance

2009-01-20T12:21:00.000-08:00

Senator Edward T. Kennedy was stricken during the post-inaugural luncheon in Statuary Hall, and, after immediate medical attention by Congressional medical staff, was taken by ambulance to Washington Hospital Center.

Senator Kennedy, who had surgery for brain cancer last year, apparently suffered convulsions or a seizure. Earlier reports that Senator Robert Byrd was also stricken were turned aside by some in attendance at the event, according to the Washington Post:

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who was sitting at the same table with Kennedy, was taken from the room by staff moments before medical personnel arrived to assist Kennedy. Byrd's exit from the room was related to Kennedy's condition and not any medical problems of his own, said [Sen. John] Kerry. "He was concerned about what was happening with Senator Kennedy," Kerry told reporters.

Early indications are that Senator Kennedy was alert and in no substantial distress after his attack.

Further coverage by the Washington Post, New York Times, MSNBC.

Editorial changes made at 1:55 p.m., particularly to clarify the involvement of Sen. Byrd.

Live Streaming Video - Inauguration

2009-01-20T08:32:00.001-08:00

Live stream from MSNBC:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22887506#22887506

Moderate Earthquake Hits San Bernardino, California

2009-01-08T19:56:00.001-08:00

Update: Magnitude downgraded to 4.5 on the Richter Scale.
--

A moderate earthquake, preliminarily rated 5.0 on the Richter Scale, has hit one mile south of San Bernardino, California at 7:50 p.m. this evening, January 8. The epicenter is some 55 miles east of the Los Angeles Civic Center.

Light ground swaying was felt where we sit, just east of Santa Monica, some 65 miles west of the epicenter, and was also reported in the southwest San Fernando Valley.

Further info available at California Integrated Seismic Net . A map of the area, including graphic representation of the quake, is available here.

Additional reporting at the local paper, the San Bernardino Sun, under "breaking news." (Click on headline for story, comments by locals.)

(Slight editing for readability and to add information, at 8:45 p.m.)

Franken Leads by 48 Votes After Most Challenges Resolved

2008-12-22T14:35:00.000-08:00

Democrat Al Franken now holds a 48-vote lead over incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race, according to an analysis by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune of a draft report from the Minnesota's Secretary of State's office. That report dealt with the 5,000 or so ballots which had been challenged by one or both candidates, which challenges have since been withdrawn.

Franken had, by some counts, been leading by 251 votes before incorporating the withdrawn challenges.

Two days ago, Franken's lead lawyer, Mark Elias, set forth the Franken campaign's evaluation of where the results would stand after incorporation of the previously-challenged ballots. As quoted at MinnPost.Com, Elias predicted that:

Al Franken will have more votes than Norm Coleman … We believe firmly that margin will be between 35 and 50 … At some point not long after that, Al Franken will stand before you as the senator-elect from Minnesota.

The current vote total does not include some ballot challenges which remain unresolved, but which should be resolved tomorrow; nor does it include an estimated 1,500 to 1,600 absentee ballots which had apparently been improperly rejected. The Minnesota Supreme Court has instructed the candidates to cooperate in coming up with a plan by December 31 to allow for the counting of the improperly rejected absentee ballots. (Video of the oral arguments before the Minnesota Supreme Court on that issue, in Coleman v. Ritchie, is available here.)

The Coleman campaign has also argued that some 130 ballots may have been double-counted, and they are seeking court intervention to require recounting of all precincts in which they contend such double counting may have occurred. The Minnesota Supreme Court is expected to take up that issue tomorrow, December 23.

The Minnesota State Canvassing Board, when it meets tomorrow, is expected to act to officially allocate the previously-challenged votes. The Secretary of State chairs that Board, whose rulings thus far have been largely across party lines, by unanimous agreement. The Canvassing Board meetings are live-streamed both by the Star Tribune and TheUpTake.

At this point, based upon prior court rulings and the state of the vote tally, Al Franken has to be favored to become the next U.S. Senator from Minnesota.

Photo: Al Franken campaigning, from Wikimedia Commons.

Attorney General Brown Urges Supreme Court to Invalidate Prop 8

2008-12-19T17:54:00.000-08:00

Proponents of Prop 8 Urge Court to Invalidate 18,000 Gay Marriages

California Attorney General Jerry Brown today urged the California Supreme Court to invalidate Proposition 8 "because it deprives people of the right to marry—an aspect of liberty that the Supreme Court has concluded is guaranteed by the California Constitution."

“Proposition 8 must be invalidated because the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights without compelling justification", Brown said.

"Brown concludes that existing case-law precedents of the Court do not invalidate Proposition 8 either as a revision or as a violation of the separation-of-powers doctrine", but that "in order to invalidate (the) fundamental right (to marry), the Court must determine that there is a compelling justification to do so. But in the In re Marriage Cases, the court found that no such compelling justification exists. Accordingly, Proposition 8 must be stricken. "

Meanwhile, the Sacramento Bee reports that supporters of Proposition 8 filed a brief arguing that California cannot recognize same-sex marriages in California, based upon the language of Prop 8 - that only marriages between a man and a woman are recognized or valid in California.

"Proposition 8's brevity is matched by its clarity. There are no conditional clauses, exceptions, exemptions or exclusions," reads the brief co-written by Pepperdine University law school dean Kenneth Starr, the former independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton.

It was also announced that Ken Starr would serve as lead counsel for the Yes on 8 team, and would argue before the California Supreme Court. Evidently, he will argue that the Court is without authority to overturn Prop 8's ban on same-sex marriage:

For this court to rule otherwise would be to tear asunder a lavish body of jurisprudence. That body of decisional law commands judges - as servants of the people - to bow to the will of those whom they serve - even if the substantive result of what people have wrought in constitution-amending is deemed unenlightened.

(Interesting use of "asunder", "lavish" "bow" and "wrought" in one paragraph.)

Attorney General Brown has taken the position that "same-sex marriages entered into between June 16 and November 4, 2008 are valid and recognized in California regardless of whether Proposition 8 is upheld."

The 111-page brief filed by the California Attorney General is available online as a pdf.

The brief filed by the Yes on 8 team was not immediately available.

Photograph: Jerry Brown as Mayor of Oakland

Ten Simultaneous Terror Attacks Across Mumbai (Bombay), India Leave Over 100 Dead, Hundreds Injured or Missing

2008-11-26T20:32:00.000-08:00

Rather than attempt to keep you up to date on the events unfolding in Mumbai, India, India's financial and population capital, I will use this space to direct readers to the frequently updated Wikipedia page on this event. That page appears to contain the most up-to-date reporting on the ongoing events related to the terror attacks in India, which have killed top police officials as well as scores of innocent citizens and foreign nationals.

The photo at the top of this post, linked through the above Wikipedia link, shows an allegedly terrorist involved in the attack on a Mumbai rail station, and was taken by a surveillance camera outside the railway station which was attacked by gunfire and hand grenades, leaving ten dead.

While the terrorists reportedly were searching for those bearing U.S. or British passports, the U.S. State Department reports that there were no immediate reports of U.S. casualties in the attacks.

Additional updates on the Lede blog at the New York Times, and at the English-language website of the Times of India.

Waxman Wins Vote to Become Chair of House Energy and Commerce Committee

2008-11-20T09:38:00.000-08:00

Will oversee all legislation on energy, healthcare and telecommunications, in addition to other key measures moving through the 111th Congress.

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) has defeated long-time senior Democrat John Dingell (D-Dearborn, MI), to become chair of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. The final vote, 137 - 122, came one day after Waxman won the endorsement of the House Democratic steering committee for the post on a 25 - 22 vote.

Many senior Democrats were stunned by Waxman's victory. Charlie Rangel, chair of the powerful House Ways and Means committee suggested that the seniority system "just got buried."

In fact, the seniority system's demise is likely overstated. The Energy and Commerce Committee will move much of the key legislation sought by the Obama Administration on healthcare and energy policy reform. Dingel was often seen as a "dinosaur", working to protect the interests of the big-three Detroit automakers (and, by extension, oil companies) by, among other things, fighting against increased fuel-economy (CAFE) standards, reductions in auto emissions and other auto-industry regulation.

Many will say that removing Dingel (whose wife is an executive at General Motors) from his post will allow President-Elect Obama to move truly reformative energy legislation through the House, where committee chairs exert great influence on the makeup of the bills making their way through their committees. Moving such reform forward was the reason Waxman gave for raising his challenge to Dingel for the post.

According to the Washington Post, Congressman Rangel (D-NY), accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who remained neutral in the contest, of playing a role in Dingel's overthrow: ""I assume that not playing a role is playing a role," Rangel said."

Waxman, a serious and focused Congressman whose 30th Congressional District covers a broad swath of western / north-coastal Los Angeles County, has long supported tougher standards on the auto industry, and is generally seen as an ally of those seeking to protect and strengthen the interests of individuals and consumers.

California Supreme Court Grants Expedited Hearing On Prop 8 Challenge

2008-11-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

Court Orders Respondents to Show Cause Why Challenge to Prop 8 Should Not Be Granted.

The California Supreme Court today decided, in closed-door session, that the Court would take up the Constitutional challenge to Proposition 8, which passed November 4, banning marriage except between a man and a woman. The Proposition passed 52 to 48 percent.

The Court set an expedited briefing schedule, asking the parties (the State of California, and individuals representative of those whose rights have been diminished by the terms of Proposition 8), along with the official proponents of the proposition, to file papers addressing three key issues:

1) Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the California Constitution? (See Cal. Const. art. XVIII, sec. 1-4.)

2) Does Proposition 8 violate the separation of powers doctrine under the California Constitution?

3) If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional, what is its effect, if any, on the marriages of same-sex couples performed before the adoption of Proposition 8?

The argument under the first question presented is essentially that a fundamental right (marriage) granted under the California Constitution (as interpreted by those who interpret such things - the State Supreme Court) cannot be removed from a "suspect class" (in this case, based upon gender and/or sexual orientation, but generally any "class" of people against whom discrimination would be suspect - e.g.: based upon gender, race, national origin...) by a mere "Amendment" to the Constitution by a majority of voters. Rather, before such rights, which have been determined to be Constitutional rights in California can be taken away, the Constitution must be "revised" -- which requires a 2/3 vote of the legislature (or a Constitutional Convention) in addition to a majority vote of the people of the State.

Note that the questions presented are questions of California law, under the California Constitution; therefore, any determination which grants greater rights to individuals than might be available under the U.S. Constitution would not be appealable to the U.S. Supreme Court.

While the Prop 8 ban remains in effect pending the Supreme Court ruling in the matter, the Court has set an expedited hearing schedule. Deadlines for the various briefs to be filed by the interested parties are between December 19, 2008 and January 21, 2009. The Los Angeles Times reports that hearing on the Constitutionality of Proposition 8 is expected in March, 2009. The Court currently is scheduled to hearing oral arguments during the first week of March, 2009.

Proposition 8 supporters have promised to launch a drive to recall any Supreme Court Justice who finds Proposition 8 unconstitutional. They have previously promised such a campaign against those who voted in May of this year the the Constitution forbade discrimination against gays and lesbians in marriage. (A copy of the May 15, 2008 decision in "In re Marriage Cases" is available here. Copies of the legal documentation in support and in opposition to that decision is online here.)

A copy of the Court's press release on today's decision is here.

Copies of all legal papers supporting the request for hearing can be found on the Court's website here, as may letters submitted in support of those petitions.

Six of the seven Supreme Court justices voted to grant the expedited hearing; one voted for an immediate stay on Proposition 8, to keep it from being an enorceable provision pending the Court hearing, and one voted against the hearing, but would hear a separate petition to determine the status of those of the same gender who married while such marriages were legal.

Six of the seven California Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican governors.

(Photo: Justices of the California Supreme Court.)

Begich Poised to Defeat Stevens After Latest Alaska U.S. Senate Vote Count

2008-11-18T15:46:00.000-08:00

Update (5:30 p.m. PST): Mayor Begich further expands lead in late Tuesday vote counting. Now up 3,724 votes over Sen. Stevens, for a nearly 1.2% lead. Mark Begich will be the first Democratic Senator from Alaska in thirty years.

Latest from the Alaska Division of Elections, as of 4:18 p.m. local time, Tuesday, November 18:

US SENATOR
		Total
Number of Precincts		438
Precincts Reporting		438	100.0 %
Times Counted		320166/495731	64.6 %
Total Votes		315573

Begich, Mark	DEM	150728	47.76%
Bird, Bob	AI	13113	4.16%
Gianoutsos, Ted	NA	1375	0.44%
Haase, Fredrick D.	LIB	2482	0.79%
Stevens, Ted	REP	147004	46.58%
Write-in Votes		871	0.28%

**
Our earlier post continues below:

Mark Begich, Mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, is almost certain to become the 58th Democrat in the United States Senate this next term, as the Alaska Division of Elections shortly before 1 p.m. AKST reported the results of the count of over 16,000 additional absentee and questioned ballots from Southeast Alaska, the Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak and Anchorage.

The Division of Elections expects to count an additional 6,000 votes this afternoon, all of which are absentee ballots from in and around Anchorage, generally a Begich stronghold.

Begich now leads Stevens by 2,374 votes, or .77% of the vote, 146,286 to 143,912.

From the Anchorage Daily News:

Today's count should pretty much decide the race, although there will be overseas absentees to count over the next couple days and a likely recount in early December.

Since the state moved to mostly machine counting, recent Alaska recounts have resulted in little change in the final tally.

Begich has so far today doubled the 1,022-vote lead he held over Stevens on Friday, the last time the state counted votes in the race.

If Begich wins, he'll be the first Democrat to represent Alaska in the U.S. Senate in nearly 30 years.

If Al Franken defeats Norm Coleman in Minnesota in a race still too close to call, and if Democrat Jim Martin can beat Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss in a Georgia special election early next month, Democrats may claim a "filibuster-proof" majority, should all members of their caucus vote as a block on issues facing filibuster by the minority Republicans.

Here is the latest vote count from the Alaska Division of Elections:

US SENATOR
		Total
Number of Precincts		438
Precincts Reporting		438	100.0 %
Times Counted		311954/495731	62.9 %
Total Votes		307587

Begich, Mark	DEM	146286	47.56%
Bird, Bob	AI	12829	4.17%
Gianoutsos, Ted	NA	1334	0.43%
Haase, Fredrick D.	LIB	2398	0.78%
Stevens, Ted	REP	143912	46.79%
Write-in Votes		828	0.27%

In the meantime, the GOP caucus in the U.S. Senate delayed their vote on sanctioning Sen. Stevens after his seven felony convictions late last month, preferring to await news of whether Stevens would be returned to the Senate by Alaska's voters.

Updated vote counts will be made available here when available from the Division of Elections.

Begich Lead Over Stevens Expands Slightly in Alaska U.S. Senate Vote Count - Nov. 14, 2008

2008-11-14T17:03:00.000-08:00

The Alaska Division of Elections has completed their counting of about 14,000 additional ballots in this Friday afternoon tally, leaving about an additional 20,000 ballots to count.

Mark Begich has expanded both his numerical and his percentage lead over Sen. Ted Stevens. Begich now leads Stevens by 1,022 votes, up from the 814 vote lead he had on Wednesday. While on Wednesday Begich lead Stevens by .29% of the vote, his lead is now .35%.

It is unknown whether there will be further reporting this evening (as on Wednesday), or none until next week. It is also unknown at this time which state House districts have and have not been included in today's count. There had been a number of uncounted absentee and questioned ballots in Alaska House districts (including House Districts 2, 5, 36, 38, 39 and 40) in which Begich beat Stevens on election day by double digits.

Here are the current results as reported by the Alaska Division of Elections as of 3:56 p.m AKST:

US SENATOR
		Total
Number of Precincts		438
Precincts Reporting		438	100.0 %
Times Counted		297328/495731	60.0 %
Total Votes		293345

Begich, Mark	DEM	138959	47.37%
Bird, Bob	AI	12144	4.14%
Gianoutsos, Ted	NA	1249	0.43%
Haase, Fredrick D.	LIB	2270	0.77%
Stevens, Ted	REP	137937	47.02%
Write-in Votes		786	0.27%

Sen. Stevens is running about 13 percentage points behind the McCain / Palin ticket, which carried Alaska with about 60% of the vote. Mayor Begich is outperforming Obama / Biden by just over 10 percentage points. The remaining three percent not voting for either Begich or Stevens seem to be going primarily to the Alaska Independence Party U.S. Senate candidate, who is gathering a bit over 4% of the vote in the Senate race. (The AIP candidates for President and Vice-President were receiving about .5% of the vote in that race.)

According to the Anchorage Daily News (ADN), 56% of ballots which had remained to be counted as of Friday, November 14 came from districts which Mark Begich carried on election day, some by a substantial margin. 59% of uncounted absentee ballots came from such Begich districts, while just a slight majority of questioned ballots (usually ballots cast in a precinct in which the voter was not registered) came from Begich-favoring districts. The balance of those ballots, including from the university district in Fairbanks, are slated to be counted early next week.

It should also be noted that Mayor Begich made a major push for his supporters to cast early and absentee ballots.

The Elections Division expected to use today to count all remaining ballots from Matanuska-Susitna Borough (a Republican-leaning area which includeds Sarah Palin's base of Wasilla), along with western and northern Alaska. Most Fairbanks ballots were to be counted today as well. If those included the university district, they could have offset the conservative area surrounding Wasilla.

The Alaska Elections Division is scheduled to count the remaining ballots from Anchorage (where Mark Begich serves as mayor) and the Southeast, which trends Democratic. However, the absentee ballots counted earlier were reportedly cast earlier, perhaps just as Sen. Stevens was being convicted of seven ethics-related felonies by a Washington, D.C. jury. Later ballots could reflect Stevens return to Alaska to rally his supporters, raise protestations of innocence, indications of appeal, all of which lead to some apparent shifting of public sentiment about the senator on his home turf.

The Anchorage Daily News, an excellent source of news on the Alaska U.S. Senate election and all things Alaska, provides a breakdown of the ballots which remained to be counted as of Friday, November 14:

The Division of Elections will count the remaining ballots as follows:
Today (Friday)
• About 510 questioned ballots from Southeast, the Peninsula and Southwest Alaska
• About 5,180 absentee and questioned ballots from Mat-Su
• Questioned, absentee ballots from Richardson Highway and the Interior
• About 3,600 absentee and questioned ballots from Western and Northwest Alaska, and North Slope
Monday
• Leftover absentee ballots from Richardson Highway and the Interior
Tuesday
• About 15,700 questioned and absentee ballots from Anchorage
• About 8,300 absentee ballots from Southeast, Kenai Peninsula and Southwest Alaska

This post will continue to be updated on receipt of new information on today's count.

Related posts:

Begich Expands Lead on Steven in Alaska Senate Race (November 12)

Begich Takes 3-Vote Lead Over Stevens in Alaska Senate Balloting (November 12)

Alaska Election Results - President, U.S. Senate, U.S. Congress (Interim, Preliminary), November 4 - 5, 2008

Graphic - file share on Flickr.

Begich Expands Lead on Steven in Alaska Senate Race

2008-11-12T23:33:00.001-08:00

Continuing their counting of ballots, the Alaska Division of Elections at 7:33 p.m. on November 12, 2008, reported that they had counted an additional 13,500 or so votes since their 3:30 p.m. vote report, in which Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, the only Anchorage-born person to hold the post of Mayor of Anchorage, lead Senator Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the history of the U.S. Senate, by 3 votes.

Based in the additional votes counted since 3:30 p.m., Begich moved into an 814 vote lead over Sen. Ted Stevens - 132,196 to 131,382, with 35,000 or so ballots remaining to be counted over the coming week.

From the Alaska Division of Elections, here are the incomplete, updated results of the U.S. Senate race, as of 7:33 p.m. AKST this evening, November 12, 2008:

US SENATOR
		Total
Number of Precincts		438
Precincts Reporting		438	100.0 %
Times Counted		282383/495731	57.0 %
Total Votes		278837

Begich, Mark	DEM	132196	47.41%
Bird, Bob	AI	11315	4.06%
Gianoutsos, Ted	NA	1140	0.41%
Haase, Fredrick D.	LIB	2086	0.75%
Stevens, Ted	REP	131382	47.12%
Write-in Votes		718	0.26%

From the Anchorage Daily News:

The state Division of Elections tallied some 60,000 absentee, early and questioned ballots on Wednesday. The ballots broke heavily in the Democrat's favor, erasing the 3,000-vote lead Stevens held after election night Nov. 4.
***
The state still needs to count at least 15,000 questioned ballots and an estimated 20,000 absentee ballots that made it to the Division of Elections after election day last Tuesday.
Most regional elections headquarters will count their remaining ballots on Friday. But the most populous region, based in Anchorage, won't count its ballots until either Monday or Wednesday, state elections chief Gail Fenumiai said.
Begich pushed hard in the campaign for people to vote early, a factor both Democrats and Republicans said contributed to his surge. More than 9,000 of those early ballots weren't counted until Wednesday in order to give the state time to double check and make sure people didn't vote early and then come back and vote election day as well.
***
Republican Party of Alaska Chairman Randy Ruedrich wasn't giving up hope for Stevens, saying Begich's advantage could lessen as the state finishes counting the early votes.
"We expect that the subsequent absentees will be more truly by mail absentees, which should be much more favorable to Republicans," he said.
But state Democratic Party spokeswoman Bethany Lesser said Begich workers are "cautiously optimistic" the lead would hold.
She noted that the election district based in Nome, which covers northern and western Alaska, has not counted any of its absentee ballots yet. Begich beat Stevens in that area on election day, just as he did throughout Bush Alaska, a traditional Stevens stronghold that relies on federal appropriations.
***
But that was before the FBI and IRS raided (Stevens') Girdwood home and a Washington, D.C., jury found him guilty of lying on financial disclosure forms about $250,000 in gifts and home renovations from the oilfield services company Veco Corp.

Begich, whose grandfather emigrated to the U.S. from Croatia in 1911, is the son of Alaska's early representative in Congress, Congressman Nick Begich. Congressman Begich disappeared over Alaska in 1972 in a small, twin-engined Cessna in which he was traveling to a campaign event with the U.S. House Majority Leader, Hale Boggs, of Louisiana. Mark Begich was ten years old when his father (and Boggs) disappeared over Alaska, remains and wreckage never to be found.

(Congressman Begich was running for re-election against Don Young when he disappeared. Congressman Begich won that election posthumously; Don Young won the special election to fill out Begich's term, and Young has been re-elected to that seat every election since, apparently continuing that run this year against Ethan Berkowitz.)

(Ethan Berkowitz continues to trail Congressman Don Young in voting for Alaska's sole congressional seat; the vote margin remains at about 15,000 votes, representing an approximate 5.5% lead for Young, who had been tied to corruption allegations. Will this vote differential between the Senate and House races, after polling showing a strong lead for former Alaskan House Minority Berkowitz against Congressman Young someday be postulated as "the Berkowitz effect?")

Prior related post: Begich Takes 3-Vote Lead Over Stevens in Alaska Senate Balloting

(Minor edits 11/13/08 8:50 a.m. PST)

Photo: Mark Begich at Fairbanks, Alaska Labor Day Picnic; courtesy Wikipedia / Creative Commons.

Begich Takes 3-Vote Lead Over Stevens in Alaska Senate Balloting

2008-11-12T17:27:00.000-08:00

Update on expanded Begich lead as of Wednesday evening, background, here:

Begich Expands Lead on Steven in Alaska Senate Race

Original post continued below:

As of this past Monday, the State of Alaska was reporting approximately 90,000 uncounted ballots -- from less-accessible areas of the state, mail-in ballots (which, under Alaska law, are counted if they are postmarked by election day) and provisional / challenged ballots.

After 28,519 of those ballots had been counted earlier today, Sen. Ted Stevens' lead, which had been 3,257 votes, had shrunk to 971.

After an additional 15,000 or so ballots were counted this afternoon, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich took the lead over Stevens by three votes, 135,019 to 135,016. Both candidates are now calculated to have 47.24% of the vote.

With an additional 45,000 or so ballots to review and count over the coming hours and days, the trend is quite positive for a Begich come-from-behind victory, perhaps after a full or partial recount.

Here are the Alaska U.S. Senate results, as of 3:30 p.m. AKST on November 12, 2008. Do note that there are additional ballots remaining to be counted: this is not a final count:

US SENATOR
		Total
Number of Precincts		438
Precincts Reporting		438	100.0 %
Times Counted		267941/495731	54.0 %
Total Votes		264655

Begich, Mark	DEM	125019	47.24%
Bird, Bob	AI	10913	4.12%
Gianoutsos, Ted	NA	1076	0.41%
Haase, Fredrick D.	LIB	1961	0.74%
Stevens, Ted	REP	125016	47.24%
Write-in Votes		670	0.25%

The Anchorage Daily News reports that the elections division had an additional 10,000 ballots to count today, with today's ballots coming from all regions of the state; the Division of Elections reportedly expects to count "roughly 35,000 additional absentee and questioned ballots over the next week."

Were Begich to hold on to become Alaska's new senator, the Democratic caucus would increase to 58 members (presuming Lieberman stays in the caucus), greatly increasing the power of the Democrats to move legislation they desire through the Senate, with the help of two or three of the more moderate / fearful Republicans.

Minnesota and Georgia U.S. Senate races remain to be decided.

(In the contest for Alaska's House seat, former statehouse leader Ethan Berkowitz (D) continues to trail incumbent Don Young (R), now by a margin of about 15,000 votes, or just under 6%, or a closing of the gap by about 1,000 votes. Berkowitz' deficit is unlikely to be made up from the counting of the outstanding votes.)

h/t: FiveThirtyEight.com

(Edited at 7 p.m. PST, adding paragraph citing Anchorage Daily News.)
(Photo: Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, courtesy Mark Begich for Senate.)

Circuit City Files for Bankruptcy

2008-11-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

Circuit City, a Fortune 500 Company and the second largest electronics retailer in the U.S. with upwards of 46,000 employees and over 670 Superstores across the country, today filed for the protection of the United States Bankruptcy Court.

Circuit City stated that the filing was an effort to continue to receive merchandise from wholesalers, to whom it owes substantial sums of money. (If wholesalers believe they will receive payment for the new merchandise sold to Circuit City (CC), they may essentially treat the company as a new entity, looking at the likely earnings from the new sales, and "ignoring" the prior losses on which it may receive pennies on the dollar.)

Circuit City made a similar filing in Canada, where their subsidiary InterTAN Canada Ltd operates over 850 retail stores and dealer outlets.

Circuit City had been cutting costs and reducing workforce, replacing retail sales employees with lower-cost workers (in a move which could backfire as consumers become increasingly irritated with the retailer, taking their business elsewhere.) CC announced a cut of an additional 700 jobs from their Richmond, Virginia headquarters.

While Circuit City had been suffering a deteriorating position in the market, exacerbated by consumer nervousness and credit tightness, they claim that three factors led them to file for bankruptcy protection: erosion of vendor (wholesalers such as Hewlitt-Packard, Samsung, Sony, Zenith, Toshiba...) confidence, decreased liquidity (inadequate cash on hand, access to credit), and the global economic crisis.

From the Associated Press:

"Without immediate relief, the company is concerned that it will not receive goods for Black Friday and the upcoming holiday season, which could cause irreparable harm to the company and its stakeholders," Besanko said in the filing.
The company's biggest creditors are its vendors: Hewlett-Packard has a $118.8 million claim followed by Samsung ($115.9 million), Sony ($60 million), Zenith ($41.2 million), Toshiba ($17.9 million) and others. Smaller creditors include GPS navigation system maker Garmin, Nikon, Lenovo, Eastman Kodak and Mitsubishi.
Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst David Schick said in a note to investors that since Circuit City is a well-known brand it could re-emerge from bankruptcy, saying "We believe the marketplace has a slot for a higher-end chain with a commissioned sales force."
But Stephen Lubben, the Daniel J. Moore professor of law at Seton Hall Law School, said the company's surivial depends on "whether these folks here like Sony and Hewlett-Packard are going to be willing to work with Circuit City going forward or whether they think they're a lost cause and cut them off permanently."
Lubben said it has the added burden of facing Chapter 11 at a difficult time for retail.
Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank analyst Mike Baker told investors that consumers learning about Circuit City's bankruptcy may choose elsewhere due to a lack of confidence in the company.

Circuit City shares were down 56% on the news, to 11 cents per share, before trading of its' stock on the NYSE was halted.

(Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons.)

Over 2.7 Million Ballots Remain Uncounted in California

2008-11-07T16:49:00.000-08:00

According to the California Secretary of State, there are over 2,700,000 ballots from the November 4, 2008 election yet to be counted by the counties. Those counties must report results reported to the Secretary of State by December 2, 2008.

There are over 615,000 uncounted ballots in Los Angeles County, more than 250,000 in conservative Orange County, more than 150,000 in Alameda, 29,700 in Marin, over 38,500 in San Francisco, 140,000 in Sacramento, 105,000 in San Bernardino, 225,000 in San Diego....

From the distribution of the uncounted ballots and a review of how those counties voted on various propositions, it would not appear that there would be a large enough swing to change the result of Proposition 8, the marriage equality (gay marriage) initiative. However, the voting tendencies of those who mailed in ballots in the last few days, or who dropped them off at their polling places, or who voted at the wrong polling place cannot be predicted with any specificity. In most years, absentee ballots in California trend conservative / Republican; however this year, the Democrats were pushing absentee / early voting.

It would appear that the outstanding ballots could have an impact on several local races, including the Brown / McClintock race in the 4th Congressional District, (where over 40,000 votes apparently remain to be counted - over 10,000 in Nevada County, 20,000 in Placer, 16,000 in El Durado and an unknown number in the small portion of Sacramento which is in the 4th Congressional District.)

Also impacted will be the Jackson / Strickland race for the 19th Senate District seat, (above map) where Jackson holds a narrow lead thanks to voters in Santa Barbara County; she narrowly trailed Strickland in the portions of the district falling within Ventura and Los Angeles Counties (27% of Santa Clarita.) There are about 36,750 uncounted ballots remaining in Santa Barbara County, 75,900 in Ventura County, though it is unknown what portion of those are within the 19th District (see above map, showing about half of the county, including the county seat of Ventura, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and Camarillo within the district. Virtually all of Santa Barbara County, including the City of Santa Barbara, and Isla Vista, home to U.C. Santa Barbara, is in the 19th District.) With the nature of these votes, predicting the outcome of the counting with any degree of accuracy would seem to be extremely difficult.

Statewide, the results of Proposition 11, the redistricting initiative, could quite conceivably be impacted by the yet-to-be-counted ballots.

The full county-by-county list of uncounted ballots, divided into "Vote-By-Mail", "Provisionals", "Other" and a total of "Estimated Remaining, along with information on the most recent update by each county, can be found in a pdf here, courtesy California Secretary of State Debra Bowen.

Related posts:

California Election Results - Propositions, Brown/McClintock (4th CD), Jackson/Strickland (19th SD) - Updated November 6, 2006 ;

Key California Congressional, State Senate, Assembly Results (as of 11/5/08);

California Election Results - Propositions (Interim, Updated) (as of 11/4/08.)

(Map: CA 19th State Senate District.)

Behind the Scenes Photos of Barack & Michelle Obama, Family, Key Staff, Election Night, Chicago, November 4, 2008

2008-11-07T16:38:00.000-08:00

Over 100 mostly behind-the-scenes photos of President-Elect Obama and his family, key staff, and other election night sights at the Obama's Flickr account.

California Election Results - Propositions, Brown/McClintock (4th CD), Jackson/Strickland (19th SD) - Updated November 6, 2006

2008-11-06T09:46:00.000-08:00

California Secretary of State Total (Unofficial) Votes from Precincts - 100% Reporting.

(Updated, related posts at bottom of this post.)

Totals, as of close of business November 6, 2008, do not include over 2.3 million [pdf] [over 2.7 million as of 11/7/08 - ed.] challenged or provisional ballots, or absentee ballots received by mail or at the polls on election day. From the California Secretary of State:

Vote-by-mail ballots received in the mail or returned to polling places on Election Day cannot be counted until signatures on the envelopes are verified against voter registration records. Elections officials have 28 days after the election to process all valid provisional ballots cast at polling places on Election Day and all vote-by-mail ballots received by elections officials by mail or in person by 8:00 p.m. on Election Day.)

The Secretary of State then has seven additional days - until December 9, 2008, to certify the election results.

County-by-county updates on status of uncounted ballots available here [pdf.]

With that in mind, in the 4th Congressional District, McClintock (R) leads Brown (D) by 644 votes, with an estimated 20 to 40,000 late absentee, provisional and "missing" votes outstanding. According to the Sierra Sun:

TAHOE CITY/TRUCKEE — It could be weeks until many local races are decided, after area counties reported thousands of absentee ballots still uncounted.

While County Web sites posted all precincts as reporting late Tuesday night, officials said potentially tens of thousands of absentee ballots are still uncounted.

“There may be 10,000 to 12,000 absentee ballots that were turned into the polls, and 3,000 or 4,000 provincial ballots,” said Placer County Clerk Recorder Jim McCauley. “That has the potential to sway some local elections."

While a more accurate tally of how many ballots are uncounted is expected soon, results won’t be changed until the canvassing period ends in a matter of weeks, McCauley said.

“We don’t do the results peace-meal (sic),” he said.

Gail Smith, acting assistant clerk recorder for Nevada County, said the canvas ends Dec. 2.
***

Early estimates for Truckee uncounted ballots [an area in which Brown ran well - ed.] were around 1,000, and another 2,700 for the rest of the county, Smith said.

And the trend holds true statewide, with an estimated 2.6 million to 3 million ballots still untallied, reported the Associated Press.

Truckee Town Council is one race locally that hangs in the balance.

“Four years ago I got 3,700 votes, and Josh [Susman] got 3,300, and this year so far we both have about 2,200,” said current Mayor and candidate Barbara Green. “Something is not quite right.”

The missing votes could have repercussions as far reaching as the tightly-contested 4th Congressional District race between Republican Tom McClintock and Democrat Charlie Brown, Green said.
***

“Clearly there’s been a major administrative error... said Alison Elder, Measure U chair.
***
(Emphasis added.)

Turnout throughout the area was reported to be higher than usual, often at record high levels.

**

In the 19th State Senate District, Hannah Beth Jackson leads Tony Strickland by 108 votes out of more than 300,000 votes cast. Jackson narrowly trails Strickland among voters in both Los Angeles and Ventura Counties; her margin of "victory" comes from voters in Santa Barbara County.

**

California Statewide Propositions:

The closest measure is Prop. 11, Redistricting, which is passing by a 99,000 vote margin. On Prop. 8, Yes votes lead No votes by 5%; due to the numerous outstanding ballots, the No on 8 campaign has not conceded defeat.

"Maps", below, show vote percentages by county (though that feature seems to be out of commission this morning.)

State Ballot Measures	100.0% ( 25423 of 25423 ) precincts reporting as of Nov. 6, 2008, at 7:06 a.m.
Statewide Results

Name			Yes Votes	%	No Votes	%
1A	Y	Safe, Reliable High-Speed Train Bond Act	5,072,778	52.2%	4,661,366	47.8%	Map

2	Y	Standards for Confining Farm Animals	6,259,522	63.2%	3,656,765	36.8%	Map

3	Y	Children's Hospital Bond Act. Grant Program.	5,314,603	54.9%	4,383,084	45.1%	Map

4	N	Parent Notif. Before Terminating Minor's Pregnancy	4,761,793	48.0%	5,157,390	52.0%	Map

5	N	Nonviolent Drug Offense. Sentencing, Parole, Rehab	3,910,125	40.0%	5,843,962	60.0%	Map

6	N	Police, Law Enforcement Funding. Criminal Laws.	2,927,597	30.7%	6,581,530	69.3%	Map

7	N	Renewable Energy Generation	3,419,193	35.1%	6,307,979	64.9%	Map

8	Y	Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry	5,387,939	52.5%	4,883,460	47.5%	Map

9	Y	Criminal Justice System. Victims' Rights. Parole.	5,100,970	53.5%	4,438,988	46.5%	Map

10	N	Altern. Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy Bonds	3,889,794	40.2%	5,763,536	59.8%	Map

11	Y	Redistricting	4,666,457	50.6%	4,567,689	49.4%	Map

12	Y	Veterans' Bond	5,998,849	63.5%	3,452,835	36.5%	Map

Official counts are due to the Secretary of State from the counties on or before December 2, 2008.

Related posts:

Over 2.7 Million Ballots Remain Uncounted in California (11/7/08)

Key California Congressional, State Senate, Assembly ResultsCalifornia Election Results - Propositions (Interim, Updated)

(Photo: USAF Lt.Col. Charlie Brown (Ret.), candidate for U.S. Congress, 4th C.D., Cal., courtesy Charlie Brown for Congress)

(Minor edits at 11:50 a.m., 11/6/08, plus addition of reference to 20- 40,000 outstanding ballots in CD4; reference to 2.3 million uncounted ballots added at 11:40 p.m., updated total to 2.7 million 11/7/08 at 6:25 p.m., added related post)

President-Elect Barack Obama's Victory Acceptance Speech, Video & Text - November 4 - 5, 2008

2008-11-05T21:31:00.000-08:00

Prepared remarks of President-Elect Barack Obama, delivered on Nov. 4, 2008, at Grant Park in Chicago, IL.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.
It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.
It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.
I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he's fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.
I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.
I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation's next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House. And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.
To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.
But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to it belongs to you.
I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.
It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.
I know you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you we as a people will get there.
There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.
What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.
So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.
Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends&though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection." And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.
And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.
For that is the true genius of America that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.
And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.
At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.
When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.
When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.
She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.
America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?
This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:
Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Democrat Merkley Projected to Win Oregon U.S. Senate Race

2008-11-05T20:11:00.000-08:00

Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate moves to 57 seats.

The Portland Oregonian is calling the Oregon U.S. Senate race for Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley over incumbent Republican Gordon Smith.

With 84% of the vote counted, Merkley, who had been trailing through most of the vote count, has pulled ahead of Smith by something over 5,400 votes, 710,454 to 705,027.

The race is being called despite the fact that 16% of the vote remains to be counted, based upon the location of those uncounted ballots. All but a smattering are from Democratic strongholds Lane County (Eugene), where with 76% of the ballots counting, Merkley is leading Smith by nearly 30,000 votes, at 58% to 38%, and from Multnomah County (Portland), where 71% of the ballots have been counted, and Merkley has a 38% lead over Smith, with 67% of the vote (157,385 votes) to 29% (68,262.) (Third party candidate Brownlow has 8,850 votes in Multnomah County.)

Based upon the location of the uncounted ballots, we join the Oregonian in calling the Oregon U.S. Senate seat for Jeff Merkley.

Democrats will now have at least 57 seat in the U.S. Senate, with Minnesota, Alaska & Georgia yet to be determined. There is a very real possibility that we will have no final determination of the winners in any of those races for several weeks, based upon the need to count late absentee ballots, provisional / challenged ballots, and, in the case of Georgia, the likely need to conduct a run-off election.

And you thought we were done with elections for the year.

(Photo: Jeff Merkley, L, Gordon Smith, R., courtesy Jeff Merkley.com.)

Key California Congressional, State Senate, Assembly Results

2008-11-05T11:16:00.000-08:00

In the 4th Congressional District, with 100% of precincts reporting, Charlie Brown (D) trails Tom McClintock (R) by 451 votes: 155,771 (50.1%) to 155,320 (49.9%)

In the 3rd Congressional District, Dan Lungren (R, Inc.) has defeated challenger Dr. Bill Dunston (D), by a margin of 12,321 votes, 49.4% to 44.2%

In the 46th Congressional District, incumbent Dana Rohrabacher (R) held off challenger Debbie Cook, 52.3% to 43.5%.

There do not appear to have been any upsets among the California congressional delegation.

In the 19th State Senate District, with 100% of precincts reporting, Hannah Beth Jackson leads Tony Strickland by 108 votes: 153,106 (50.1%) to 152,998 (49.9%.) Provisional ballots likely remain to be counted, and Strickland and the Republican party are likely to call for a recount.

In State Assembly races, in the 78th District, Democrat Marty Block beat Republican John McCann, 55% to 45%, while in the 80th District, Democrat Manuel Perez defeated Republican Gary Jeandron, 52.5% to 47.5%.
(More to be added.)

(Photo: Hannah Beth Jackson)

Franken Takes (65 Vote) Lead in Minn; Georgia Vote Totals Too Low - May Not Include Early Voting Totals; More

2008-11-05T00:40:00.000-08:00

Update (11/05/08, 10:45 a.m. PST): In Minnesota, Norm Coleman (R, Inc.) leads Al Franken (D) by 694 votes with all precincts in, per NBC. Election not called pending provisional ballots, possible recount.

Oregon U.S. Senate: Many votes still not counted, particularly in Portland area, which is running heavily for Merkley (D) over Smith (R, Inc.) Currently, Smith is sitting on a 9,000 vote lead. We expect a narrow win for Merkley when all votes have been counted.

Georgia U.S. Senate race appears headed for a run-off; incumbent Saxby Chambliss (R) currently stands at 49.9% of the vote, needed 50% +1 to avoid runoff with Jim Martin (D), who garnered 46.7%. After heavy early voting, election day voting was light, and overall turnout evidently was lower than in the 2004 presidential election.

**end update**

Al Franken pulls ahead in the senate race in Minnesota - by 65 votes - out of over 2,500,000 votes cast in the race.

Indiana called for Obama. 99% of precincts reporting, Obama has a 23,000 vote lead out of more than 2,600,000 votes cast.

North Carolina still too close to call, despite 100% of precincts having reported. Obama leads NC by 12,000 votes out of over 4,000,000 cast. Provisional ballots may change the results.

Georgia vote totals are very low, may not have included early voting in the total numbers released -- which may result in a run-off for U.S. Senate.

Nebraska allocates electoral votes by congressional district; second district (Omaha) too close to call.

From FiveThirtyEight.Com:

If Franken holds on, if Jeff Merkley in Oregon can win (Multnomah is the big Portland Democratic engine and is largely outstanding)[ed note: as is Lane County, home to Eugene, OR], then it is increasingly likely that the Dems will converge on Georgia for the next four weeks to try to win the 60th Senate seat.

More political fun to come.

Alaska Election Results - President, U.S. Senate, U.S. Congress (Interim, Preliminary), November 4 - 5, 2008

2008-11-05T00:25:00.000-08:00

Update: (11/5/08 2:30 p.m. PDT) With 99% of the precincts counted in Alaska, Sen. Ted Stevens continues to hold a 1.5% lead over his challenger, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, for Stevens' senate seat. However, as the Anchorage Daily News reports:

With all but three of Alaska's 438 precincts reporting, the Republican Stevens held a 1.5 percent vote advantage over Democrat Begich -- 48 percent to 46.5 percent. About 4,000 votes separate the candidates. The thin margin means the Senate race might not be decided for two weeks.

Still to be counted are roughly 40,000 absentee ballots, with more expected to arrive in the mail, as well as 9,000 uncounted early votes and thousands of questioned ballots. The state Elections Division has up to 15 days after the election to tally all the remaining ballots before finalizing the count.

If the lead holds, Stevens will shock the nation and be the first person ever re-elected to the U.S. Senate after being found guilty on criminal charges. Polls had shown the Republican down by at least 8 percentage points on the day before the election.

After leading significantly in late polls, Ethan Berkowitz (D) has apparently lost his effort to unseat controversial Congressman Don Young (R), who has been Alaska's sole congressman since 1973.

**

Update: As of12:22 a.m. AKST, 96.1% of Alaskan precincts have reported, and Sen. Ted Stevens, recently convicted of seven felonies related to ethics violations, appears to be heading to a narrow reelection as Alaska's senior senator.

According to the Alaska Division of Elections, the votes stand as follows:

US SENATOR
		Total
Number of Precincts		438
Precincts Reporting		421	96.1 %
Times Counted		219615/495731	44.3 %
Total Votes		217306

Begich, Mark	DEM	100968	46.46%
Bird, Bob	AI	8788	4.04%
Gianoutsos, Ted	NA	876	0.40%
Haase, Fredrick D.	LIB	1575	0.72%
Stevens, Ted	REP	104564	48.12%
Write-in Votes		535	0.25%

Earlier posts follow.

**
Alaska election returns, as of 10:59 p.m. AKST, from the Alaska Division of Elections. Location of precincts "still out" unknown to this writer.

Registered Voters 495731 - Cards Cast 193696 39.07%

Num. Report Precinct 438 - Num. Reporting 316 72.15%

US PRESIDENT
		Total
Number of Precincts		438
Precincts Reporting		316	72.1 %
Times Counted		193696/495731	39.1 %
Total Votes		193112

Baldwin and Castle	AI	957	0.50%
Barr and Root	LIB	928	0.48%
McCain and Palin	REP	119161	61.71%
Nader and Gonzalez	IND	2369	1.23%
Obama and Biden	DEM	68646	35.55%
Write-in Votes		1051	0.54%

US SENATOR
		Total
Number of Precincts		438
Precincts Reporting		316	72.1 %
Times Counted		193696/495731	39.1 %
Total Votes		191670

Begich, Mark	DEM	88284	46.06%
Bird, Bob	AI	8051	4.20%
Gianoutsos, Ted	NA	701	0.37%
Haase, Fredrick D.	LIB	1343	0.70%
Stevens, Ted	REP	92810	48.42%
Write-in Votes		481	0.25%

US REPRESENTATIVE
		Total
Number of Precincts		438
Precincts Reporting		316	72.1 %
Times Counted		193696/495731	39.1 %
Total Votes		191311

Berkowitz, Ethan A.	DEM	84125	43.97%
Wright, Don R.	AI	8205	4.29%
Young, Don E.	REP	98515	51.49%
Write-in Votes		466	0.24%

California Election Results - Propositions (Interim, Updated)

2008-11-04T21:15:00.000-08:00

Update as of 9:33 a.m. PST, November 5, 2008-- 96.4.5% of precincts partially or fully reporting:

(Secretary of State has lost their formatting, so it won't be so pretty. Those opposed to Proposition 8 (or 11), it's not so pretty x2.) These will pretty much be your final results:

High speed train wins, Animal rights wins, Parental notification re: minors' abortions loses, Restricting marriage to a man & a woman wins (52/48), Redistricting modification wins (and is the closest contest on the propositions ballot.)

In Los Angeles County, Measure R passed with over 2/3 of the vote, so we'll be taxing ourselves by a 1/2 cent sales tax increase to fund transit solutions, including subway & light rail.

Mark Ridley-Thomas will be my next County Supervisor, defeating former LAPD Chief Bernard Parks 61 / 39. The Board will shift somewhat to the left with MRT's election.

From the California SOS:

State Ballot Measures
1A - Safe, Reliable High-Speed Train Bond Act
  YES:  4,959,358        52.3%
NO:   4,535,334        47.7%
02 - Standards for Confining Farm Animals
  YES:  6,113,393        63.3%
NO:   3,555,798        36.7%
03 - Children's Hospital Bond Act. Grant Program.
  YES:  5,176,800        54.8%
NO:   4,277,341        45.2%
04 - Parent Notif. Before Terminating Minor's Pregnancy
YES:  4,617,395        47.7%
 NO:   5,056,551        52.3%
05 - Nonviolent Drug Offense. Sentencing, Parole, Rehab
YES:  3,823,631        40.1%
 NO:   5,689,619        59.9%
06 - Police, Law Enforcement Funding. Criminal Laws.
YES:  2,839,236        30.6%
 NO:   6,433,739        69.4%
07 - Renewable Energy Generation
YES:  3,328,190        35.1%
 NO:   6,153,681        64.9%
08 - Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry
YES:  5,220,694        52.2%
NO:   4,792,873        47.8%
09 - Criminal Justice System. Victims' Rights. Parole.
 YES:  4,953,343        53.3%
NO:   4,343,613        46.7%
10 - Altern. Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy Bonds
YES:  3,783,465        40.2%
NO:   5,625,858        59.8%
11 - Redistricting
YES:  4,546,307        50.6%
NO:   4,453,419        49.4%
12 - Veterans' Bond
  YES:  5,842,902        63.5%
NO:   3,370,304        36.5%

**

Measure R (L.A. County - Sales tax increase to fund MTA transit improvements, including subway, light rail - Required 2/3 vote to pass tax increase):

100% of precincts reporting:

YES                1,633,442    67.41
NO                   789,601    32.59

Below are prior posts on California election returns:

***

Update as of 1:05 a.m. PST, November 5, 2008-- 68.5% of precincts reporting, including 70.5% of L.A. County:


Statewide Results

Name			Yes Votes	%	No Votes	%
1A	Y	Safe, Reliable High-Speed Train Bond Act	3,609,888	51.6%	3,397,276	48.4%	Map

2	Y	Standards for Confining Farm Animals	4,456,619	62.6%	2,672,201	37.4%	Map

3	Y	Children's Hospital Bond Act. Grant Program.	3,707,872	53.2%	3,268,931	46.8%	Map

4	N	Parent Notif. Before Terminating Minor's Pregnancy	3,403,419	47.7%	3,721,229	52.3%	Map

5	N	Nonviolent Drug Offense. Sentencing, Parole, Rehab	2,764,446	39.4%	4,249,201	60.6%	Map

6	N	Police, Law Enforcement Funding. Criminal Laws.	2,073,101	30.2%	4,773,873	69.8%	Map

7	N	Renewable Energy Generation	2,412,634	34.4%	4,581,492	65.6%	Map

8	Y	Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry	3,869,603	52.6%	3,496,111	47.4%	Map

9	Y	Criminal Justice System. Victims' Rights. Parole.	3,657,728	53.4%	3,199,012	46.6%	Map

10	N	Altern. Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy Bonds	2,713,193	39.0%	4,228,876	61.0%	Map

11	Y	Redistricting	3,400,837	51.2%	3,247,245	48.8%	Map

12	Y	Veterans' Bond	4,276,965	62.9%	2,531,055	37.1%	Map

**

Update as of 11:50 p.m. PST November 4, 2008.

From the L.A. County vote (below), and the fact that San Francisco votes are nearly all counted, I'd project that Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage, will pass. Litigation almost certain to follow shortly.

California statewide totals (44.3% reporting):

Name			Yes Votes	%	No Votes	%
1A	Y	Safe, Reliable High-Speed Train Bond Act	2,572,568	51.2%	2,460,553	48.8%	Map

2	Y	Standards for Confining Farm Animals	3,212,708	62.4%	1,943,157	37.6%	Map

3	Y	Children's Hospital Bond Act. Grant Program.	2,606,354	51.7%	2,444,388	48.3%	Map

4	N	Parent Notif. Before Terminating Minor's Pregnancy	2,483,769	48.2%	2,665,880	51.8%	Map

5	N	Nonviolent Drug Offense. Sentencing, Parole, Rehab	1,964,214	38.6%	3,114,526	61.4%	Map

6	N	Police, Law Enforcement Funding. Criminal Laws.	1,506,927	30.3%	3,456,554	69.7%	Map

7	N	Renewable Energy Generation	1,731,886	34.1%	3,344,794	65.9%	Map

8	Y	Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry	2,835,815	53.3%	2,487,781	46.7%	Map

9	Y	Criminal Justice System. Victims' Rights. Parole.	2,678,125	53.9%	2,298,826	46.1%	Map

10	N	Altern. Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy Bonds	1,916,088	38.4%	3,071,396	61.6%	Map

11	Y	Redistricting	2,511,152	52.0%	2,325,484	48.0%	Map

12	Y	Veterans' Bond	3,093,007	62.5%	1,855,852	37.5%	Map

**

L.A. County and Statewide totals (37.1% returns in L.A. County, 44.3% statewide.) Sorry for the poor formatting, but I want to get the numbers out quickly:

Name			L.A. County				State				Map
Name			Yes Votes	% Yes	No Votes	% No	Yes Votes	% Yes	No Votes	% No	Map
1A	Y	Safe, Reliable High-Speed Train Bond Act	503,682	53.5%	438,745	46.5%	2,572,568	51.2%	2,460,553	48.8%

2	Y	Standards for Confining Farm Animals	634,083	66.0%	326,680	34.0%	3,212,708	62.4%	1,943,157	37.6%

3	Y	Children's Hospital Bond Act. Grant Program.	563,319	59.9%	377,125	40.1%	2,606,354	51.7%	2,444,388	48.3%

4	N	Parent Notif. Before Terminating Minor's Pregnancy	471,650	49.2%	485,926	50.8%	2,483,769	48.2%	2,665,880	51.8%

5	N	Nonviolent Drug Offense. Sentencing, Parole, Rehab	381,194	40.3%	564,658	59.7%	1,964,214	38.6%	3,114,526	61.4%

6	N	Police, Law Enforcement Funding. Criminal Laws.	293,300	31.9%	624,384	68.1%	1,506,927	30.3%	3,456,554	69.7%

7	N	Renewable Energy Generation	343,530	36.7%	592,364	63.3%	1,731,886	34.1%	3,344,794	65.9%

8	Y	Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry	538,957	53.9%	462,081	46.1%	2,835,815	53.3%	2,487,781	46.7%

9	Y	Criminal Justice System. Victims' Rights. Parole.	489,826	53.3%	429,201	46.7%	2,678,125	53.9%	2,298,826	46.1%

10	N	Altern. Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy Bonds	417,697	44.5%	519,467	55.5%	1,916,088	38.4%	3,071,396	61.6%

11	N	Redistricting	435,519	48.4%	463,498	51.6%	2,511,152	52.0%	2,325,484	48.0%

12	Y	Veterans' Bond	598,468	65.4%	317,409	34.6%	3,093,007	62.5%	1,855,852	37.5%

**

**
Earlier totals:

State Ballot Propositions:
20.9% of the vote counted:

Name			Yes Votes	%	No Votes	%
1A	N	Safe, Reliable High-Speed Train Bond Act	1,422,926	48.4%	1,514,143	51.6%	Map

2	Y	Standards for Confining Farm Animals	1,876,377	62.0%	1,150,073	38.0%	Map

3	N	Children's Hospital Bond Act. Grant Program.	1,435,666	48.3%	1,532,213	51.7%	Map

4	N	Parent Notif. Before Terminating Minor's Pregnancy	1,498,349	49.6%	1,517,748	50.4%	Map

5	N	Nonviolent Drug Offense. Sentencing, Parole, Rehab	1,078,977	36.1%	1,906,935	63.9%	Map

6	N	Police, Law Enforcement Funding. Criminal Laws.	898,239	30.7%	2,025,866	69.3%	Map

7	N	Renewable Energy Generation	1,006,278	33.5%	1,988,731	66.5%	Map

8	Y	Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry	1,614,809	54.5%	1,352,566	45.5%	Map

9	Y	Criminal Justice System. Victims' Rights. Parole.	1,631,490	55.4%	1,314,771	44.6%	Map

10	N	Altern. Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy Bonds	1,090,714	37.2%	1,836,691	62.8%	Map

11	Y	Redistricting	1,548,662	54.1%	1,317,042	45.9%	Map

12	Y	Veterans' Bond	1,791,515	61.2%	1,140,240	38.8%	Map
In interpreting the above results, note that no votes from either Los Angeles or San Francisco Counties are included in these totals. (Map of California voting systems by county via CalVoter.org)

Live Streaming Video - Barack Obama Victory Acceptance Speech, Chicago, Illinois, November 4, 5, 2008

2008-11-04T20:51:00.001-08:00

McCain Concedes, Congratulates Obama

2008-11-04T20:19:00.001-08:00

Sen. McCain's graceful concession speech is a class act. His early words of congratulations, concession that the American people have spoken clearly, and recognition of the historic nature of the election are words that needed to be said, and he said them well.

The recognition of the historical nature of the election, the importance to African Americans and to the nation was well commented upon. Sen. McCain recognizes that we must put our history of racism behind us. He pledges to help Obama lead us, asks other supporters to help as well. Importantly, he refers to America as the "country we both love," hitting back against those who would argue that Obama is not a true and loyal American.

McCain interrupts crowd when some boo mentions of Barack Obama, says Obama "will be my president." An effective, graceful concession speech from Senator John McCain.

(Addendum: at 8:40 p.m., added: "Importantly, he refers to America as the "country we both love," hitting back against those who would argue that Obama is not a true and loyal American.")

Election Results Tracking Map - November 4, 2008

2008-11-04T15:09:00.000-08:00

h/t: d-day

Nationwide Poll Closing Times - Map

2008-11-04T12:44:00.001-08:00

Expect substantial delays in actual closing: people in line at official time of closing (should be) qualified to vote; some estimate those lines could take two hours or more to clear.

If you wish to vote with shorter (or no) wait times, we recommend voting before 4 p.m. your local time, before folks are voting as they come home from work.

All poll closing times are Eastern Standard Time.

More info, larger map at Swing State Project.com.

Virginia: E-Vote Machine Problems; Optical Vote Scanners Jamming Due to Rain; Email Hoax at George Mason University

2008-11-04T11:10:00.000-08:00

Dry your hands before you vote, says Virginia Board of Elections spokeswoman.

FBI investigates GMU hoax vote email.

The Virginia Board of Elections has had multiple reports of jamming of the optical scanning of ballots which have been voted in several "isolated" parts of the state.

"Ballots are getting wet and affecting the machines. You need to be sure to dry your hands before completing your ballot" said spokewoman Susan Pollard. A wet ballot could be unreadable, or could jam the optical scanner which records the votes as they are deposited intothe ballot box.

There were also reports of failures of electronic pollbooks [pdf - Diebold "Using Electronic Pollbooks"] , in which all voter identification and other data are kept. Replacement pollbooks are being sent to those precincts reporting pollbook failures. It is reported that there are paper backups available for those in precincts in which the e-pollbooks have failed.

According to the Washington Post:

The Board also reported that all but three of the state's 2,349 precincts opened their polls on time this morning at 6 a.m. Those precincts -- in Virginia Beach, Mount Olive, and Richmond -- all were up and running later this morning. Pollard said two of those precincts opened late due to unspecified "human error."

Election Protection, the nonpartisan group working to safeguard and oversee problems in voting nationwide, reports more widespread problems in Virginia. For example, at one location in Henrico County, five e-voting machines failed. Voters had to wait up to four hours for the machines to become functional; there were no replacement paper ballots available.

In one town in the far western part of the state, voting machines didn't offer a full slate of choices in a state Senate race; some voters voted before the problem was discovered.

Again from the Washington Post:

"There has been a wide range of problems, ranging from machines not booting up to machines not bringing up the full slate of choices," said Karen Newman, of the Fair Elections Legal Network. "There have been problems with optical scan machines, apparently from getting wet. In Chesterfield, there were a number of problems with marked ballots being improperly fed through the machine. And there's some human error as well."

The coalition has been lobbying Virginia to extend its voting hours until 9 p.m. to accommodate voters affected by the problems, but so far to no avail. All voters who are in line by 7 p.m. will have the chance to vote, and advocates are urging voters to stay in line, even if the lines are hours long.

"Long lines were expected in this election, but widespread equipment problems have thrown fuel on the fire in Virginia," said Barbara Arnwine, of Election Protection. ***

[T]he Campaign Legal Center has noted problems in Fairfax County, at the Glenmar Park School, Clermone Elementary School, Reston Christ Lutheran Church and Holmes Elementary School.

Gerry Herbert, of the Campaign Legal Center, told us that there also have been problems in Newport News, Virginia Beach, Mechanicsville, Lynchburg and other locations around the state. In Accomack, on the Eastern Shore, persistent witnesses said that the presidential ballot never showed up at the fire hall, and the three times they went to vote the presidency screen didn't show up on the machine.
(Emphasis added.)

The Virginia Board of Elections is reportedly receiving an "unprecedented number of calls" regarding today's voting. Earlier this morning, many calls to the Board were being dropped in mid-conversation. Voters were being urged to go to the Board's website: www.sbe.virginia.gov, to obtain information regarding polling locations, registration status and other related information. Live chat with staff members is also available from that site.

**
Meanwhile, someone has hacked into the email system at George Mason University overnight, and sent out an email to 30,000 students and 5,000 school employees "from the office of Provost Petern N. Stearns" advising that election day had been moved to November 5. The messges were sent to the university's three campuses in Northern Virginia, in an apparent attempt to hold down student voting there.

GMU is reportedly working with University police and the FBI to determine the source:

"Somebody was able to access a closed list, and the question we're trying to answer is how was that person able to get in there and do that," said Daniel Walsch, a George Mason spokesman. "We are working with authorities to try to locate the source, and hopefully we can identify the source, as we are taking it seriously and will prosecute if we find the person."

Stearns, the provost, sent out a message to the University community shortly before 1 a.m. to try to debunk what he called "troubling rumors" about the election. He wrote that the election is on Nov. 4 for both political parties and that it is untrue that any student jeopardizes their financial aid package by voting, a reference to earlier hoax e-mails that have circulated.

(Graphic source: Radford.edu. For educational, not-for-profit use only.)

Madelyn Dunham, 86, Barack Obama's Grandmother, Dies of Cancer

2008-11-03T14:48:00.000-08:00

Madelyn Dunham, 86, the woman who helped to raise Barack Obama during his years growing up in Hawaii, while his mother worked overseas, has died in Hawaii at age 86 of cancer, just a little more than one week after Obama's emotional last visit with her, and one day before an historic presidential election which may lead to her grandson's selection as President of the United States.

Dunham died between 4 and 5 a.m. Eastern Standard Time this morning; Sen. Obama was informed while campaigning in Florida, at about 8 a.m.

The campaign released a statement from Obama and his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng this afternoon:

It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer. She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances. She was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure.

Our family wants to thank all of those who sent flowers, cards, well-wishes, and prayers during this difficult time. It brought our grandmother and us great comfort. Our grandmother was a private woman, and we will respect her wish for a small private ceremony to be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, we ask that you make a donation to any worthy organization in search of a cure for cancer.

John and Cindy McCain issued the following statement:

We offer our deepest condolences to Barack Obama and his family as they grieve the loss of their beloved grandmother. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them as they remember and celebrate the life of someone who had such a profound impact in their lives.

Reuters notes that:

Dunham had followed Obama's presidential bid with great interest, and her death comes one day before U.S. voters will render their verdict in the race between Obama and Republican John McCain.

Obama affectionately called her "Toot" -- short for "tutu," the Hawaiian word for grandmother -- and frequently spoke of her on the campaign trail.

Dunham had recently broken her hip but the campaign had refused to comment on reports she was suffering from cancer.

See further details from the Washington Post, which has a fine early story on Sen. Obama's personal loss.

Commentary

While the analogy is not a perfect one, the death of Madelyn Dunham quickly brought to mind the story of Moses on Mount Nebo, after leading his people to the promised land, a place which he himself would not enter.

None of Obama's parents or grandparents survive to see him as he strides toward an historic place toward the end of one part of his improbable journey.

It will be a new generation which will lead our nation to a place it has never before been. We will soon discover whether this is the year in which he, and we, enter that land.

(Photo from Reuters / Jason Reed. For educational, noncommercial use only.)

Huge African American Turnout in Georgia - Might An Upset Be In the Cards?

2008-10-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

Georgia, the ninth most populous state in the union, is demonstrating, along with several other states (notably North Carolina, Louisiana and parts of Ohio) , an unusual mix of early voters for the 2008 general election.

Of particular note is the large turnout of African American voters. While 28.7% of the population of Georgia is black, black turnout through Thursday, October 30 reportedly constituted 35.1% of all voters to date. Over 56% of early voters are women. Over 2,000,000 people have early-voted in Georgia; in 2004, somewhat over 3,500,000 voted in total - both early and on election day.

There are at least two significant races in Georgia which may be impacted by this surge of African American voters. Barack Obama, who hasn't led in any significant poll in Georgia this year, and trails by 4 to 6 points in most polls, could do substantially better than suggested by polls which presume a 22 to 28% black turnout. However, Obama has reportedly failed to spend on television advertising in the Atlanta Metro market, home to over half the population of the state.

One writer at a Republican election site quotes the CEO of the Georgia-based polling firm Insider Advantage as saying:

“Obama is doing better among white voters than Kerry did in 2004 (according to exit polls of that race), carrying some 28 percent of the white vote. He’s carrying around 75 percent both of the Hispanic and ‘other’ vote, which makes up between four and five percent of Georgia’s electorate. He is winning among independents, outside of the margin of error of the poll.
“While this is a tight race, the problem for McCain is that all but 3 percent of whites have made their decision and approximately 8 percent of black voters have continued to say they are undecided or voting ‘other.’ This will likely move closer to 95 percent for Obama when all said and done. Obama has room to go up.

“If the race were to remain the way it is today, you won’t see these numbers come to fruition until very late in the night of Nov. 4 or perhaps the next day. The early numbers will likely show McCain ahead, as the counties where Obama is doing best are some of the largest counties and will be the slowest to report.”

However, Towery also writes in a post dated October 28 that Obama, by pulling resources from Georgia, has harmed his very real chances to win the state, and harmed the chances of the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator from Georgia, Jim Martin:

While both Martin and Chambliss are up in the latest poll, Towery said Martin's gains in past polls showed he was gaining momentum. That appears to have faltered with Obama's redeployment of resources to other states, he said. “Ironically, Obama had a better shot of winning Georgia than North Carolina or Florida but he’s letting it slip away.”

The number of black voters ought to help Jim Martin in his senate race against incumbent senator Saxby Chambliss. Polls in that race have shown a close race without factoring in the larger-than-calculated African American turnout.

Martin is trailing by only 2% in the latest Rassmussen poll in Georgia, which also shows a high (12%) group of undecided voters in the Senate race. SurveyUSA, is showing an undecided rate of 7% among black voters, with only 3% of whites reportedly undecided. Presuming the black undecideds break heavily for Martin, the senate race could be the closest U.S. Senate race in the nation. (Keep in mind that under Georgia law, the winner in the senate race must win at least 50% of the vote +1 to avoid a runoff.)

A final factor to watch on election night is the percentage of the vote Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, formerly a Republican congressman from Georgia, pulls from the Republican ticket. In the latest Insider Advantage poll, conducted yesterday, October 30, reportedly the only one to include Barr in their polling, he was pulling 6% of the vote, giving Barack Obama a 1-point advantage over McCain (well within the margin of error.)

When the higher African American turnout is factored in, Obama may be positioned to surprise some folks in Georgia this Tuesday night (or, more likely, Wednesday morning.) As in other states with heavy early voting by Democrats and/or African Americans, watch for early Obama leads to possibly narrow as the votes from a different mix of voters on election day are tabulated and announced.

Regardless, with all these factors at play, were I a betting man, I'd put my long-shot money on Barack Obama to win Georgia's 15 electoral votes, beating McCain by one to two points in the state.

**

Update: (10/31/08, 6:40 p.m. PDT) Obama campaign manager David Plouffe has announced a decision to launch television ads in Georgia, citing positive early voter turnout numbers. "We're just going to give it a little go . . . and see how close we can get it," said Plouffe. The campaign also plans television ad purchases in North Dakota and in John McCain's home state of Arizona, where polls have shown a tightening of McCain's lead down to 3 or 4 percentage points.

Related posts:

North Carolina Early Voting Appears to Favor Democrats;

Republicans Looking for People Willing To Sue in Nevada As Democratic Voters Surge;

Stevens Falls Behind in Alaska Senate Race - Rassmussen Poll - October 29, 2008

(Map of Georgia, Fulton County / Atlanta highlighted, courtesy Wikipedia Commons.)

North Carolina Early Voting Appears to Favor Democrats

2008-10-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

News, analysis

The early (absentee and "one-stop") North Carolina vote is running quite heavily Democratic in voter registration, fairly heavily female, and more heavily African American than most polls had factored, records through October 30 show.

As of October 30, over 2,078,000 voters had cast early ballots in North Carolina, 91.8% of which were cast at "one-stop" polling centers. 52.6% of those voters were registered Democrats. (Last year, 48.6% of voters in N.C. were Democrats.)

56.5% of early voters in North Carolina are female; 26.6% of all early voters are Black. (Most polls in North Carolina have adjusted their sampling assuming that 19 to 21% of the voters turning out would be black.) Of course, it is unknown what the turnout figures of the various demographics will be on election day.

Black voters are also reportedly voting Democratic in substantially greater proportion than they did in 2004, at least one respected polling organization, PPP said this Wednesday, October 29:

The 2004 exit poll showed John Kerry winning black voters in the state 85-15. A private poll we conducted statewide over the last few days showed Barack Obama winning them 95-5. That may not sound like a huge difference, but look at it this way. Kerry won them by 70. Obama's winning them by 90. Let's conservatively put black turnout at 20%. A 20% improvement with 20% of the population is worth an extra four points for Obama statewide.

Most recent polls of the presidential race in North Carolina have the candidates within two or three points of each other. An increased African American turnout of the order suggested above, coupled with the increased Democratic voting of the African American electorate would translate into an additional five percent of the vote for the Democrats (rather than the four percent suggested by PPP, based on a 20% Black turnout), pushing North Carolina into a "lean Democratic" state heading into November 4.

Expect Barack Obama (and Kay Hagan, the Democratic senate candidate against Liddy Dole) to open in North Carolina with a significant lead, which will likely close as the night wears on. If it doesn't close quickly, the race is over.

Related posts:

Huge African American Turnout in Georgia - Might An Upset Be In the Cards?;

Republicans Looking for People Willing To Sue in Nevada As Democratic Voters Surge;

Stevens Falls Behind in Alaska Senate Race - Rassmussen Poll - October 29, 2008

(h/t: United States Election Project.)

(Map courtesyNational Atlas.gov)

Republicans Looking for People Willing To Sue in Nevada As Democratic Voters Surge

2008-10-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

The Washington Independent reports that Republicans are looking for people willing to sue in Nevada over surge in Democratic voter registration.

In Washoe County [ed. note: including Reno; Washoe County highlighted in red on accompanying map], 68,250 early ballots cast have been cast through through Tuesday, and Democrats have widened their lead to 7,300 voters. Democrats cast 31,900 votes, while Republicans cast 24,560.
***
The strong Democratic turnout has Republicans mulling possible legal challenges. “We question whether these are valid registrations,” said Smith, the Washoe County GOP chairwoman.

While talking to Smith, she was interrupted by a cell phone call, which she inadvertently put on the speakerphone. It was the state GOP executive director Zachery Moyle, and the two discussed what could be done about the tsunami of Democratic Party registrations.

“I’m looking for people to sign on to a lawsuit,” Moyle said to Smith, who fumbled with the phone while turning off the speaker. “You didn’t hear that,” she said glancing in my direction.
(Emphasis added.)

53% of the 241,861 early votes cast in Clark County (including Las Vegas) through Tuesday have been by Democrats, while only 30.1% of those early voters were Republicans (with the balance being independent or others.)

Democratic turnout for early voting in Clark County in the 2004 general election was 46% of early voters; the 7% increase in turnout percentage of Democrats over 2004 figures suggests that the 2004 Republican victory in Nevada, by 20,000 votes, will not easily be repeated.

Yet, The Washington Independent reports, there are ongoing efforts to decrease the Democratic vote in the state:

Democratic Party leaders said the only evidence of voter fraud so far in Nevada was a series of phone calls made to Democratic Latino voters telling them they could vote by phone and didn’t have to go to the polls. “The Republicans who are complaining about voter fraud are doing it simply to scare people,” contended Kincaid, the Democratic Party spokesman.

The earliest election returns from Nevada next Tuesday evening should primarily consist of the votes of these early voters; those first vote totals should lean Democratic significantly. How steeply, if at all the vote totals move toward the Republican ticket as later returns come in will indicate how late a night those following the Nevada race will have to "look forward to."

Huge African American Turnout in Georgia - Might An Upset Be In the Cards?;

North Carolina Early Voting Appears to Favor Democrats;

Stevens Falls Behind in Alaska Senate Race - Rassmussen Poll - October 29, 2008

(Interactive map of Nevada available here, from the Keck Library at University of Nevada, Reno.)

(Map illustration, above, courtesy Wikipedia Commons.)