NATIONAL SENATE/HOUSE RESULTS THREAD (LATE RESULTS/POSTMORTEM)

[cinyc]

Well the NY-1 has gone into the bizzaro world of how sealed an envelope was.  Some ballots were thrown out because they were improperly sealed, others were counted over the objections by the Altschuler campaign that they were closed with scotch tape rather than licked closed.  Yes, you read that correctly.   Bishop has increased his lead to 264 votes after 120 more ballots were allowed to be counted.

GOP elections commissioner asked for the vote count to be stopped (for reasons currently unknown) and altschuler and the GOP are now in closed door meetings.


http://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/spin-cycle-1.812042/1st-c-d-how-sticky-is-sticky-enough-1.2511678?showAll=true

Hah, because, you know, any vote-tampering operation aiming to change/defraud hundreds of absentee votes, wouldn't be able to reseal an envelope in a convincing manner?

It's moot now that Altschuler has conceded, but that's actually not as frivolous a challenge as it sounds.  New York law requires:

"After marking the ballot or ballots he shall fold each such ballot and enclose them in the envelope and seal the envelope. He shall then take and subscribe the oath on the envelope, with blanks properly filled in."

If I remember correctly from the last time I cast an absentee ballot, the signature for the oath may be across the seal on the back of the envelope.  So taping over it could be a fraud issue.  But I might be wrong about that, since it's been a while.

[cinyc]

Judge rules against Joe Miller's challenge to write-in votes in Alaska Senate race (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner)

Yes, Miller has until Tuesday appeal to the Alaskan Supreme Court - but I doubt he's going to win there, either.  It's over.

Judicial opinion here, from the Anchorage Daily News website.

[cinyc]

Honest question: Why are so many of the close races with Republican Party candidates trailing on the defensive?

For the protracted federal legal battles, it seems that Congressional Republicans in California, Alaska, and New York were disproportionately responsible for the delay.  Maffei and Ortiz kept their causes going a bit longer than necessary, but that was still substantively less days than the former (I believe both Harmer & Vidak conceded after Maffei).  Am I crazy here?

And for governors races, Democrats won all of the close races except Florida & Ohio -- which, of course, doesn't necesarily speak to Republican's weakness, as they had a number of blowouts in Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc.  And, of course, Emmer, like Miller, were particularly sore-losery in their legal challenges with less than 0.01% of succeeding.

The New York votes in contested races were counted very slowly - and statewide, there actually were more close races that dragged on with Republicans leading (NY-25, the Buffalo and LI SDs plus an AD in Westchester that was just finalized in the last day or two) as trailing (NY-01 and the Westchester SD).  And there's still an AD race, I believe in Dutchess, that is outstanding.  Democrats dragged their feet in the races in which they trailed; Republicans in the other.  It's just how it works in politics.

The races were close and things probably took a little bit longer due to it being the first time many counties had used the new voting machines.   There was less to argue over with the old lever machines.

[cinyc]

I assume it is clear now Cinyc, that the GOP took control of the NY State Senate. Is that correct?

Yes.  32-30.  The new Buffalo-area Republican is a registered Democrat who ran on the Republican line but will vote for the Republican leadership and likely caucus with the Republicans, though.

The outcome of the outstanding Dutchess/Orange/Ulster Assembly race (AD-100) will determine whether the Republicans have 50 or 51 seats out of the 150 in the Assembly, up from 39 after the 2008 election.  Some sources claim that regardless of the outcome, Democrats lost their veto-proof majority in the Assembly - though I'd have to check whether 100 or 101 votes are needed to override a veto.  In any event, it probably doesn't really matter too much with a Democratic governor, I suppose.   The AD-100 Republican challenger is up by 62 with 118 ballots that a judge is deciding whether to count, most challenged by the Republican. The Democrat lead on election day, but uncounted Ulster County ballots subsequently put the Republican ahead.

[cinyc]

As expected, Miller is appealing the decision to the Alaska Supreme Court.  Arguments will be heard on Friday.

[cinyc]

As expected, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled against Miller this afternoon.  The federal judge who told Miller to go to the state courts first will hold a hearing on Monday to hear any remaining federal constitutional issues not taken up by the Alaskan Supreme Court.  That will likely go over about as well as Miller's state case.

It's still over.

The Alaska Supreme's opinion is available here.

[cinyc]

That's not a terribly implausible scenario, as there are about 5 black people in Vermont.

But don't you know that subsamples in polls are ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS RIGHT NO MATTER HOW SMALL!!!!11!!!! [/Dgov]

Do I honestly have to make that clear before every post?  I kind of assumed that the people posting here would have enough common sense to know that when I'm using exit polls, I'M USING EXIT POLLS.  Your mileage may vary.

That doesn't really matter.  Exit polls filter out likely voters who don't vote, but are more prone to non-representative sampling, and either way subsamples in exit polls are basically just as bad as with polls.

Not really.  Exit polls usually have much larger samples than your typical poll (often 2,000+ respondents), making the margins of error on subsamples much lower than your typical poll.  Thus, while the subsample MoE will be higher than for the overall exit poll, all things being equal, subsample exit poll results are more likely to be within the margin of error than in your typical regular poll.  Not that exit polls don't have their own unique biases, including potential selection bias that may or may not be more egregious in an in-person poll than a phone poll.

Why do you think Miller humiliated himself this way, doing a Don Quixote, except in his instance an ignoble one?  I mean the guy is a f'ing lawyer from Yale isn't he? So he does not have the Palin excuse. He actually should know the ropes on this.

I don't think Miller thinks he's humiliating himself.  He views it as fighting "for the integrity of the election" - and for what he believes to be the correct legal result.   Also, the Palin and Murkowski factions of the Alaska Republican party absolutely hate each other.  Miller is fighting this battle on behalf of the Palin wing of the party.  And he has the money, so why not?

According to his recent press release, Miller will continue with his federal appeal, but will allow the state to certify the election results in the interim.

[cinyc]

I don't think Miller thinks he's humiliating himself.  He views it as fighting "for the integrity of the election" - and for what he believes to be the correct legal result.   Also, the Palin and Murkowski factions of the Alaska Republican party absolutely hate each other.  Miller is fighting this battle on behalf of the Palin wing of the party.  And he has the money, so why not?

Future electoral prospects? Voters don't like sore losers.

Honestly, I don't think Miller has any, anyway.  The Murkowski machine so sullied his reputation that he can't recover.  That happened because she pretty much ignored him during the primary and had to go nuclear.