Betty Yee holds 2nd place (barely) as counting continues

by Brian Leubitz

Counties across California are making progress on the unprocessed ballots. For most races, this isn’t really a big deal. However, in the Controller’s race, where the 2nd place result is likely to be determined by a few thousand votes at most, every vote is critical. Here’s the situation as of 10AM today:

Swearingen: 870,625

Yee: 758,401

Pérez: 757,328

Evans: 752,556

Evans is falling behind a little bit, which is a very comforting sign for all the Democrats out there worried about a 2 Republican race. (Like, umm, me.) But with 791,885 unprocessed ballots, including over 148K in Los Angeles County alone, there is a lot of uncertainty left. You can check the most recent unprocessed ballots report here. The most recent report at the time of writing this is from last evening.

Counties have a little less than a month to certify their results to the Secretary of State, so a bit of patience is required. Not necessarily easy though.

UPDATE: John Pérez has now taken a small lead (1123 votes) as of Wednesday morning as a big batch of LA ballots came in. The total unprocessed votes now stands at 328,576.

UPDATE 2: Yee took the 2nd place spot back this afternoon. She now leads by 2,820 over Pérez.

Election Results Leave Many Puzzled

by Brian Leubitz

Yesterday was the election, but I’m not going to give you the typical wrap up of last night’s election. There are many good places for that, the LA Times, the SF Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee, all the usual suspects. I also highly recommend Josh Richman’s Political Blotter. But today, I’m on a bit of a mission/rant, one that I started last night on twitter. And it really can’t be fully fleshed out in 140 character chunks.

This is our first real statewide primary with the so-called “jungle primary” aka Top 2. We saw same strange outcomes in 2012 with legislative and Congressional races, but those could be shrugged off as local anomalies. The 31st Congressional District is usually cited as the worst case scenario, with Pete Aguilar, the top Democratic vote getter falling two points short of making the top 2.  But in that race, Democrats only received 48.5% of the vote. Not having a Democrat was a bit silly, and could have been avoided (with a back room deal). However, the general election would still have been a tough race.

But take a look at the following scenario: Democrats split 48.4% of the vote, with a left-leaning third party candidate getting another 5.7%. In this scenario, Republicans garner only 46%. However, two Republicans move on to the general election.

Supporters of Top 2 often claim that June shouldn’t be determinative. It is a low-turnout election, so the two most popular candidates should move on. Or that the Democrats should have done a better job in organizing, or choosing candidates. They should have split that 48.4% better, or one candidate should have been stronger. But isn’t that essentially encouraging back-room deals? That is not what democracy should look like. If the good government groups that were behind the measure along with Gov. Schwarzenegger hoped they were enpowering the people, they should have known better.

This of course brings us to the Controller’s race (updated results here). Right now, the case isn’t as grim as my scenario just listed. Ashley Swearingen, the Republican Mayor of Fresno, leads all candidates with 24.4%. Former Speaker John Pérez is currently in second place with 21.7%, leading Republican David Evans by 2,436 votes and Democratic Member of the BOE Betty Yee by 5,643 votes. If those numbers hold up, Pérez would be the favorite to win in the fall.

But just who is this David Evans? He filed no campaign finance report with the Secretary of State, or at least nothing has yet appeared on Cal-Access. His website is vague and very 1998. He does have that video I posted, but there is otherwise very little information to go on. He is apparently a CPA, which I suppose is a reasonable qualification, especially when voters are none too pleased with their politicians. And his ballot designation of “Chief Financial Officer” and first ballot position are quite valuable when voters are coming into the ballot booth with very little information. But even with a good ballot designation, how exactly did he get 636,109 votes?

Because there is no campaign finance report, we don’t know how he used whatever small amount of money he had. Maybe he bought a few slate cards and hoped that his ballot designation would bring him luck. Apparently it did, although the legality of “Chief Financial Officer” seems somewhat questionable, considering adjectives aren’t normally allowed. Maybe there were some IEs for him, whether out of gamesmanship or sincere support for Mr. Evans, but I wasn’t able to track down on Cal-Access, but who knows with that website.

That being said, how could it truly be said that if Evans picks up 3,000 votes, that he and Swearingen are the strongest two candidates? Or the candidates that the voters of California want to see on the ballot. Not only does Top 2 disenfranchise lesser parties, in this case it could possibly disenfranchise the majority of the voters in the race between the two left-leaning parties.

Top 2 is fatally flawed. It is riddled with problems that promote the worst kind of gamesmanship and do nothing to promote democracy. Maybe somebody could dream up a more workable system, but it is a solution in search of a problem. And now it is a problem in search of a solution: the easiest being the complete repeal of Top-2 voting.

Primary election will bring very limited answers

by Brian Leubitz

Voters across the state are heading to the polls today. Or, at least a few of them will head to the polls today, as we will see a high vote by mail total in addition to a low total turnout. But, there are precincts open across the state just waiting for some voters.

The big question today is just how many Dem-on-Dem races will we see in November. In the statewide races, Ashley Swearingen looks to be set for the Top2, but which Democrat will join her in the Controller general election is anybody’s guess. Former Speaker Perez has ramped up spending these past few weeks and is coming on strong. BOE Member Betty Yee had an early lead, and if the traditional voting patterns hold up, could maintain it. Tom Torlakson and Marshall Tuck look set for another round in November. And the race for #2 is getting interesting as Neel Kashkari and Tim Donnelly fight it out. The other races are a little bit less exciting.

But the Democratic Party is where the action is. While there aren’t party primaries per se, several legislative and Congressional races are being fought for the Democratic base. A few districts will likely feature a rematch in November: San Francisco Assembly and Ted Lieu’s Senate District. Others could very well land in that category: Sbranti v Glazer, Honda v Khanna, and a few others.

Propositions 41&42 look to be headed for victory, but you never really can tell until you get that first batch of vote totals after the polls close at 8. Most important of all is that we remind our friends and family to vote. This is going to be a low turnout election, every vote is that much more important.