Election 2018 Open Thread - Part 1

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Is there any chance there remaining ballots could still swing CA-10 to Harder?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Can someone who is smarter than me tell me that if these ballot counts are accurate, what are the chances of a last minute dem takeover in AZ?

Remaining ballots:
Maricopa 475-500k
Approximate split of outstanding Maricopa ballots:
300k - mailed in or received by post office on election day
200k - "late earlies" dropped off at the polls + provisionals.
Pima 80 to 100k
Pinal 40k

This is according to the twitter feeds of @robodellaz and @Garrett_Archer

Haven't chedked back at the SoS site, but Maricopa was a narrow Sinema edge, Pima was 60/40 Sinema and Pinal was 60/40 McSally.

Given there are a whole load more votes in Maricopa, the Democrats probably need to maintain a clear edge there, push their advantage in Pima and prevent a McSally blow out in Pinal.

I have no idea if any of that is possible or if it would make up the 16,000 vote shortfall, but shouldn't the 'late earlies' lean Dem?

Another thing to note, there are no outstanding rural counties where McSally was running up big margins.

If these are all the ballots left, and the splits exactly match the counted voted in each county, it won't be quite enough for Sinema; she'd lose by about 4k.  They'd need to be like 0.5%-1% more pro-Democratic than the counted vote to put her over the top.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The county map of CA-Sen seems like the most definitive refutation of the rational choice model of proximity voting I've ever seen.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Yeah, 1500-2000 votes is about the ceiling that Nelson could plausibly hope to make up in an actual recount.  Al Franken made up 500-600 votes in the MN recount in 2008, in a state 3-4x smaller.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

This is what the Broward ballot looked like: https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_official_sample_ballots,_2018

Is that Haitian?

I had heard about the "problem" with the Senate race being on the bottom left.  But if anyone missed that, it seems like the voter's fault.  That can't be the only thing going on if the undervotes are so clustered in one CD.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

This is what the Broward ballot looked like: https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_official_sample_ballots,_2018

That's for an election in FL-20, though. If you look at the map, the problems were all in FL-24.

I couldn't find the FL-24 ballot easily online.

Ah, the cover-up us always worse than the crime!!

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

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.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

1. When will the hand recount begin?

2. If it is proven to be a machine error, how many votes can Nelson expect to net from those 30,000?

The numbers I've seen suggest it is much closer to 20,000.  And some of these will be legitimate undervotes spread randomly across the county (maybe 20%-25%), irrelevant of any "machine error".

But the problem appears to be confined to the portion of the county in the 24th congressional district.  This is the most Democratic district in the state, being almost 50% black and less than 10% white.  It would not be uncommon for a statewide Democratic candidate to win 85% of the vote here.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I don't care about Florida at this point. Can someone say something about AZ?

OK, something about Arizona.

Mark Kelly, an Astronaut from Arizona who previously launched into space from Cape Canaveral in Florida, might potentially run for Senate in Arizona in 2020.

If he does so, he would be the second Senator to have launched into Space from Cape Canaveral in Florida - and depending on the outcome of the 2018 Senate race in Florida, he might serve simultaneously with his colleague Bill Nelson, Senator from Florida who also launched into space from Cape Canaveral. Voters love Spacemen, you know.

Have you had your Arizona fix, and now can we get back to Florida?

What about Harrison Schmitt?

I do agree though that Kelly would be far and away the best possible Dem candidate for this seat.  Absolutely a dream recruit.

And for people complaining there isn't enough AZ info here, why not just check out the designated AZ thread?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I highly doubt the undervote/provisional ballots are alone enough to pull Nelson ahead.

But people keep insisting that the regular vote is completed.  People have been suggesting that for the last two days, and yet vote from Broward keeps coming in.  Is there any reason to believe they have actually completed counting their regular early and VBM ballots (or at least completed submitting them to the state)?

This FL Department of Elections website suggests they haven't:
floridaelectionwatch.gov/CountyReportingStatus

That site shows the Broward early and VBM count as still incomplete.  And the website IS being continuously update, because they keep adding to the count of counties that have completed their provisional ballots.

I don't know why anyone would be confident that we have any idea how many votes are still outstanding.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I read Poliquin will sue, but on what grounds? Ranked choice is not that different from run-offs.

Presumably, the argument would be that it is unconstitutional to change the congressional election process through citizen initiative, because the Constitution gives the power to regulate congressional elections to state legislatures (subject to federal legislation).

This argument was rejected by the Supreme Court in the Arizona Redistricting Commission case in 2015.  But the vote was 5-4, with Kennedy breaking the tie to side with the four liberals.  With Kennedy replaced by Kavanaugh, the outcome could be different if the Court heard the same argument today.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

When does California start updating their results?  I've been trying to follow CA-10, but it doesn't seem like the results have changed since election night.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Why does it take Arizona and California so long to count their votes?  I can understand why some mail ballots don't arrive until after the election, but for the most part that doesn't seem to be the case here.
If the ballots are already in, why don't they just count them on election night like everyone else?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Why does it take Arizona and California so long to count their votes?  I can understand why some mail ballots don't arrive until after the election, but for the most part that doesn't seem to be the case here.
If the ballots are already in, why don't they just count them on election night like everyone else?

You can only verify and count so many thousands of ballots a day

Don't other states count millions on election night?  Oregon has entirely mail-in voting, and it seems like they are always counted almost immediately.  Same more or less with Colorado.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/amyewalter/status/1061459142030827520

^^ good point

If it wasn't for gerrymandering, Dems probably would've been a lot closer to that 63 number.

That seems unlikely to me because, without gerrymandering, they already would have been much closer to a majority after 2016.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

As a general principle, there's nothing stopping a state from adopting RCV to select presidential electors.  But Maine's specific initiative excludes presidential elections.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The ME-2 results seem stuck at 95% with Poloquin about 2K votes ahead, what percentage do you think Golden needs with the Indies to overtake him in RCV?

Caveat: this is a gross oversimplification!

The current results are:

Poliquin   131466
Golden   129566
Bond   16500
Hoar   6933

Total 284465

A majority is 142233, so Golden would need 12667 to reach that number.  Bond and Hoar together have 23433, so if ALL of their voters put alternative choices (which may not be the case), Golden would need to be ahead of Poliquin on just over 54% of them.

Why do they need to rescan the ballots to figure out the RCV results?  Why wouldn't they just count the second and third choices at the same time as the first choices?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

In the first round of voting in LA-SEN 2014, Mary Landrieu got more votes than Bill Cassidy, fair and square. And yet, she's not a Senator anymore. I wonder why Poliquin isn't complaining about that...

You're mixing up apples with oranges here. Cassidy beat Landrieu fair and square in a Runoff. Meanwhile in Maine a Computer decides the Race. How weird! Maine has no Runoff.

No, it's the same thing. If a non FPTP system isn't allowed, then runoffs shouldn't be allowed either. So Cassidy should be kicked out and Landrieu should take her rightful Senate seat.

I have this joker on ignore, so maybe you should ask him what the flying fyck he means when he says that a computer will decide the race.

I have him on ignore too (I took everyone off ignore for Election Night, but it didn't take long for him to get back on) but his arguments in the quotes are laughable.  RCV is just an efficient way of implementing a runoff; in fact, an alternative name for it is "Instant Runoff Voting".

If this were an "instant" run-off, we'd have the run-off results at the same time as the first-place count.  

Why don't they count the second and third place votes at the same time as the first-place votes?
I cannot fathom why this wasn't calculated on election night, at least as an estimate.  It would seem so much more legitimate.