Election 2018 Open Thread - Part 1

[Sestak]

The 24th CD race was uncontested, so that race wouldn't even appear on the ballots in that districts.  I wonder if that somehow screwed up the format of the other races on those ballots.

Yeah I'd like to see a CD24 Broward ballot.

[Sestak]

Nelson is in hand recount margin now, so if there is a machine error with FL-24/Broward, it will hopefully be found.

[Sestak]

https://twitter.com/meganmesserly/status/1060620635947261952?s=21

My SD going to recount for a supermajority.

Come on Julie!

[Sestak]

So does Jared Golden pull off a win?

Given RCV, probably.

[Sestak]

Is it now close to certain Jeff Denham and Young Kim have lost?

Why do you say that?

Absentees in California break heavily Democratic, but I'm not sure they'll be enough.

For beating Denham they should be.

[Sestak]

It will be 232-235 seats.

[Sestak]

I’m not too optimistic. Even though there were 25k more votes in the Gubernatorial race than the Senate race in Broward, it looks like Gillum did a whole point worse in broward than Nelson did. I don’t know why. Hopefully there’s not an error in favor of Nelson or anything that explains that.

A point discrepancy between candidates is normal, no?

[Sestak]

I'm following Steve Kornacki's twitter account for updates on this and have found it useful.

As far as I can tell, there is uncertainty around whether the remaining votes in Broward have been uncounted due to a machine error or due to human error caused by a poor ballot design in Florida's 24th congressional district.

My only question is whether this undercount is the 25K we have been talking about or if it's a separate issue.

It's the same thing, mostly.

[Sestak]

A couple notes about the undervote:

Nelson has 10,301 fewer votes in Broward County than Gillum
Scott has 10,647 fewer votes in Broward County than DeSantis

Also, Broward County, as far as I can tell, is not reporting any results on their site for the FL-24 race, but they are reporting results for the uncontested FL-20 race. As far as I can tell, there may not have even been a FL-24 slot on the ballot. CNN reports Hastings with 201,000+ votes in the FL-20 race, but 0 votes for Wilson in the FL-24 race.

wait WHAT

[Sestak]

A couple notes about the undervote:

Nelson has 10,301 fewer votes in Broward County than Gillum
Scott has 10,647 fewer votes in Broward County than DeSantis

Also, Broward County, as far as I can tell, is not reporting any results on their site for the FL-24 race, but they are reporting results for the uncontested FL-20 race. As far as I can tell, there may not have even been a FL-24 slot on the ballot. CNN reports Hastings with 201,000+ votes in the FL-20 race, but 0 votes for Wilson in the FL-24 race.

wait WHAT

There are 0 votes for Wilson because she wasn't on the ballot. She ran unopposed.

Is that a Florida thing? Whenever there have been unopposed races when I've voted, the unopposed person was still on the ballot.

"As noted by @oiler, Rep. Alcee Hastings, whose district is based in Broward, also had no opponent, but his race *was* on the ballot. However, a candidate *did* qualify to run write-in against him, and FL requires the ballot list the race in these cases"

Quoted from twitter -- but again this is a theory

Yes, but...10%?

I feel like it’s more likely that the placement for the race was weird and thus weren’t read by some of the machines.

[Sestak]

WTF is actually happening in Broward

https://twitter.com/MarcACaputo/status/1060654559612289024

God damn, what is it with Florida and elections being run in a hilariously incompetent manner?

My guess is that Florida is no different than any other state.  I think if we were to put a microscope on most of our elections we would see more incompetency than we are comfortable with.  Florida is just always so close that we end up looking at it more closely than others.

Nah, this is def a Florida thing.

[Sestak]

https://twitter.com/NewsbySmiley/status/1060571314749128704

Here's a link to one of the ballots that are being scrutinized because of the placement of the senate race.

Ag commish is right next to Senate and got a lot more votes.

No way that's just due to ballot design.

[Sestak]

Once again, we haven't seen an image of the ballot in FL-24, which is the problem area.

All of Broward has a larger dropoff than everywhere else. Not just the FL-24 area - that's just where it was most extreme.

[Sestak]

Once again, we haven't seen an image of the ballot in FL-24, which is the problem area.

https://twitter.com/NewsbySmiley/status/1060571314749128704/photo/1

Yes, we do.

that's FL-23

[Sestak]

Once again, we haven't seen an image of the ballot in FL-24, which is the problem area.

There's almost no way that the ballot design could be so uniquely terrible to explain such a vast difference not seen in any other county/district combo.

...unless the design also caused an offset that ed with the machines.

[Sestak]

Once again, we haven't seen an image of the ballot in FL-24, which is the problem area.

All of Broward has a larger dropoff than everywhere else. Not just the FL-24 area - that's just where it was most extreme.

In FL-24, there's a 10% dropoff in total votes between Gov and Sen. This is 3.6% in FL-20 and FL-22 and 2.8% in FL-23.

...and under 1% in every other county in Florida.

[Sestak]

https://twitter.com/NewsbySmiley/status/1060571314749128704

Here's a link to one of the ballots that are being scrutinized because of the placement of the senate race.

That doesnt look that egregious to be honest. There are multiple options on the left panel to vote for an I would assume most people who take the time to vote also take the time to read the whole ballot.

Yes, again, I think there is a machine issue here.

[Sestak]

Once again, we haven't seen an image of the ballot in FL-24, which is the problem area.

All of Broward has a larger dropoff than everywhere else. Not just the FL-24 area - that's just where it was most extreme.

In FL-24, there's a 10% dropoff in total votes between Gov and Sen. This is 3.6% in FL-20 and FL-22 and 2.8% in FL-23.

...and under 1% in every other county in Florida.

If you want to go that route, then correcting the total Broward error likely benefits Scott, not Nelson.

What makes you say that?

[Sestak]

Once again, we haven't seen an image of the ballot in FL-24, which is the problem area.

All of Broward has a larger dropoff than everywhere else. Not just the FL-24 area - that's just where it was most extreme.

In FL-24, there's a 10% dropoff in total votes between Gov and Sen. This is 3.6% in FL-20 and FL-22 and 2.8% in FL-23.

...and under 1% in every other county in Florida.

If you want to go that route, then correcting the total Broward error likely benefits Scott, not Nelson.

What makes you say that?

Scott had more undervotes countywide than Nelson, especially in FL-22 and FL-23.

wait, we know the Governor vote composition of the undervotes?

Or did you just mean Scott trailed DeSantis by more? Because DeSantis is just outrunning Scott everywhere.

[Sestak]

Arizona margin has been cut from 27K to 17K

The margin was 16K yesterday...

Sh*t, made a mistake, my bad.

[Sestak]

Maricopa singlehandedly wiped out McSally's lead statewide. Sinema gained 19.5K net votes.

Is that all of it or is there more?

~4 more of those to come next week.

I mean, Maricopa, specifically.

If this really was a 100K drop, then it was 100K of Just under 500K. So 4 more to come. But it looks like it may have been bigger then 100K.

I think it was around 150K

[Sestak]

If Sinema wins this thing, Dems need to contest AZ for real in 2020.

Replace OH/IA with GA/AZ/TX. So much for the Sunbelt Strategy being a failure solely because Ossoff lost, LOL.

Not completely ready to write off IA...

[Sestak]

Rick Scott set to give a press conference at 8pm. I'm alittle worried he's gonna start throwing around voter fraud accusations.

He's a Rethug. Of course he is.

[Sestak]

Are the other batches coming tonight or later?

[Sestak]

Orange County, CA just updated their numbers.

CA-45:  Walters margin dropped from +3.2 to +2
CA-48:  Rouda's margin increased from +2 to +2.4

Gonna take another sec to crunch the new CA-39 numbers

What about Kim vs. Cisneros?

He just said he's working on it.