Oakland will continue to wait on a new mayor.  Jerry Brown’s term doesn’t end until January, but Ron Dellums had hoped to avoid a runoff with Ignacio De La Fuente.

It will be at least several days before all votes are counted in the hotly contested Oakland mayoral election, county officials said Monday.  Former U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums is 214 votes short of the 50 percent plus one he needs to avoid a runoff against City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, according to elections officials. There are at least 2,000 provisional ballots to be counted in the mayoral election, Acting Registrar of Voters Dave Macdonald said. Countywide, there are about 11,000 ballots left to tally and an unknown number of damaged or mismarked ballots.  Of the 76,496 votes counted so far, Dellums has 49.65 percent and De La Fuente 33.37 percent, according to the registrar. Councilmember Nancy Nadel (Downtown-West Oakland) has 13.24 percent of the vote.
***
  Despite delays created by the county’s switch from electronic voting to paper ballots, Macdonald said Alameda County is ahead of several other large counties in counting votes, including Contra Costa and Santa Clara.

The possibility of recounts — or lawsuits — that could extend the election drama for many more weeks still remains. However, the person or campaign requesting the recount would have to pay for the work, Macdonald said. (OakTrib 6/13/06)

It’s amazing what Diebold has done to our elections process.  Why, in the 21st Century, does it take us longer to count votes than it did in the 19th?  It’s pretty ridiculous that we can’t have election finality by a week after the election.  It’s just one more reason to get out and support Debra Bowen in what will be a challenging race against Bruce McPherson.