I apologize for getting behind; between my day job, family, and unrelated political activity I haven’t been able to post any reports since my previous report until today. So this is three reports in one.

The random sample update for Monday, August 18th, was released after hours; it had a time-stamp of 5:32pm. It reported completed random samplings from the following counties: Lake (65.8% valid), Marin (76.9%), Monterey (71.9%), Santa Clara (65.6%), Stanislaus (71.9%), Tulare (72.0%), and Ventura (82.2%). In addition, the date when Inyo County reported their raw count of 616 signatures was changed from 11 August to 6 August. That correction is balanced by the obvious typo that Ventura’s sampling was completed 18 July instead of 18 August. The above average validity rates of Marin, Monterey, and especially Stanislaus, Tulare, and Ventura counties brought the overall validity rate up from 66.9% to 69.2%. If the validity rate stays that high (but keep reading), Six Californias will qualify for a full count.

Another random sample update was released on Tuesday, August 19th. This had reports from four more counties: the small ones of Colusa (they did a full count, with a validity rate of 79.4%) and Del Norte (random sample, 59.2% valid), and the large ones of Sacramento (60.5%) and San Diego (69.5%). The overall validity rate dropped slightly to 68.3%, still high enough to qualify for a full count.

A third random sample update was released on Friday, August 22nd. This added two more counties as completing their random samples: Contra Costa County (validity rate 56.1%) and Imperial County (60.4%). That brings the overall validity rate down to 67.5%. Contra Costa County also discovered that they had 8 fewer raw signatures than they originally thought, bringing the total raw count down to 1,135,346 (was 1,135,354). Combining that with the lower validity rate gives a projected total of 766,359 valid signatures, 876 fewer than needed to qualify for a full count.

A total of 33 counties have completed their random sampling. We’re still waiting for the raw counts from Amador and Trinity counties. (Could it be that no signatures were collected there?) That leaves 23 still to report; the top ten are Los Angeles (311,924 raw signatures), San Bernardino (88,067), Riverside (74,478), Orange (52,217), Alameda (51,366), Fresno (38,382), Kern (26,444), San Luis Obispo (12,906), El Dorado (11,649), and Humboldt (7,280). I expect they will determine if Six Californias gets a full count.

In other news (and as President of an organization that believes in multi-party democracy I feel obligated to report this), the UCES’ Clowns (whoever they are) have announced their intention to qualify as a political party. If you would like to help them (I’m not necessarily advocating that you should, mind you), just fill out the online voter registration form and when you get to the part that asks “Do you want to disclose a political party preference?”, select “Yes”, then select “Other”, and then type “UCES’ Clowns” into the text box next to “Other”. They need to register a number of voters equal to 1 percent of the votes that will be cast in the upcoming November election in order for candidates to list them as their party preference in the June 2016 primary. 10,300,392 votes were cast in November 2010, making the previous qualification threshold 103,004, but turnout is expected to be lower this year so they’ll probably have a (slightly) easier time of it. In addition, the Veteran’s Party of America and the Constitution Party of California are also in the process of attempting to qualify as political parties.

–Steve Chessin

President, Californians for Electoral Reform (CfER)

www.cfer.org

The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of CfER.