We are now ten days since the local election and we now have some preliminary updated vote counts. It appears that there were about 6200 new votes in the Measure G election. The yes percentage ticked up to 65.69—still a full point shy of the two-thirds mark it needs to pass.
The two most interesting races at this point are the Fourth and Fifth Supervisorial elections—the new results show bad news for the incumbents, albeit in different ways.
It seems much more likely that the 4th Supervisorial race is going to a November runoff. Jim Provenza is now at 49.3 percent. The clear trend since the returns came in on Election Day has been pushing him below the 50 percent mark he would need to win it outright.
Linda Deos’ showing now has her at 37.7 percent—stronger than a lot of people would have predicted.
If this result does hold, it becomes interesting to see where David Abramson’s solid 13 percent of the vote will go. One might guess that some of that will go to the challenger, but that remains to be seen. Another dynamic is that we would expect—if things have returned to a sense of normalcy by November—a higher turnout in the fall.
Perhaps the most surprising result is long-time Supervisor Duane Chamberlain, who led by a mere 90 votes after Election Day, now trails by 164 votes against former Woodland Mayor Angel Barajas. It was eight years ago that another Latino former mayor of Woodland challenged Duane Chamberlain, but Chamberlain←mainly on the strength of his rural vote—was able to defeat Art Pimentel by over 7 percentage points or about 450 votes.
Once again it is a heavy rural-urban split, where Angel Barajas is winning in the Woodland and Knights Landing areas and one precinct right around Yolo County Airport, but Duane Chamberlain is carrying most of the rural votes including communities like Esparto, Madison, Dunnigan, and Zamora.
Duane Chamberlain was first elected in 2004 and has served four full terms.
While Measure G has inched up to 65.69 percent yes, we believe this measure will fail. In fact, our analysis from Election Day has largely held. The measure had 63.9 percent in the initial returns from the pre-Election Day vote-by-mail ballots. It received about 66.9 percent of the vote in the ballots cast at the polls on Election Day.
The new batch has 4200 yes votes to 2071 no votes. That breaks down to 66.975 percent of the vote.
That is very slightly better than it received on Election Day, but not nearly enough. We had projected that it would need 68.8 percent of the remaining ballots to win. It has fallen well short of that.
There are probably another 6000 to 6500 out there, but barring some unforeseen surge in those remaining ballots, we believe that Measure G will finish with just under 66 percent of the vote, perhaps 100 votes shy of winning.
One thing that is clear is the early voters did Measure G in—it would be helpful perhaps to understand why that is the case.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Do you not all see the insanity of this stupid voting system we have? When will we all wake up and demand choice voting? P.S. Alan Miller is awake!
With choice voiting, you could have voted for David Abramson without worrying about your second choice ending up in a runoff because you voted for your first choice, David Abramson. But maybe you wanted to vote for David Abramson, and did. Or maybe you thought ‘he doesn’t have a chance, so I’ll vote for X, so Y doesn’t get in. Well, that all would have been taken care of with choice voting, because you’d have voted already for your second choice. Instead, you get split strategies over voting for a third candidate, people criticize each other for taking the other strategy, and we end up in a runoff. And what if half of Yolo County is dead in November when the runoff comes? See . . . without choice voting, there is no democracy!
If you support David Abramson, you should vote for him, not try to set up a system where you get a second vote when he loses.
No, the current system requires strategic voting if you are actually concerned about future governing rather than just expressing your personal preference. For exale, you might prefer Ralph Nader because of his policies, but you know the real choice is between Al Gore and George Bush. You know that George Bush is much more likely to pursue policies abhorrent to you than Al Gore, but you know that Bush is more likely to win if you vote for Nader instead of Gore. This is the dilemma faced by Nader voters in Florida in 2000. The current system requires that you consider the likely votes of others when casting your own ballot. Only a fool (as was demonstrated so clearly in 2000) doesn’t make this calculus and naively casts their vote.
If you support Ralph Nader, you should vote for him, not try to set up a system where you get a second vote when he loses.
O for Chr*st’s sake, DS, that makes no sense on any level — not mathematically, politically, or common-sense. Majority voting only works in America because of the power of the major parties, and the stupidity of the average voter.
Thank you for your cogent, respectful reply.
Alan,
Because you frequently write tongue in cheek, I am unsure of your meaning. By “stupidity of the average voter”, do you mean stupidity as in “lacking in knowledge & understanding” or do you mean it as “does not agree with me”?
You’re very welcome. Australia has choice voting on every level. Why? That’s right, the Australians are smarter.
I truly wish I were smart enough to know.
With people now feeling the financial pain because of the Coronavirus market crash I doubt any new parcel tax proposals will pass for some time.
The latest numbers from County Elections has yes on Measure G at 66.33% but still over 200 votes from passing.
With over 23,000 votes, that’s probably pretty close to it. The one thing i do wonder – have they counted provisional ballots yet.
As of 9:32 AM yesterday the Secretary of State has Yolo County with 8048 ballots remaining although it doesn’t say how many have Measure G votes.
1046 vote by mail.
2745 Provisional.
2904 Conditional.
1353 other.
Its going to be real close in the end.
Looks like it’s actually passed.
I’ll wait until the official canvass is posted… but, am prepared to say, “I told you so”, and at least one or more of the posters/authors/administrators may (after canvass is complete) want to consider apologizing for what they said, about it (passage) not “being possible” but am 100% sure David and others will not… they’ll “ignore” the comment… I knew it was going to be close close, but repeatedly advised waiting for the canvass… something about deaf ears…
Some actually rebuked/discredited me for suggesting, “time will tell”… dismissed the possibility…
Results from the Yolo county Elections website…
67 of 67 precincts reporting (100.00%)
Davis Joint Unified School District
Measure G
Votes
Vote %
Yes
17,688
67.31%
No
8,592
32.69%
But as of 5 PM today, the canvass is not complete... we STILL need to wait until that process is complete, before I crow or some folk eat crow. Still ~ 4000 ballots being processed… not all will be ‘valid’ ballots… if they are not deemed to be, they will not be counted. ‘Trust me on this’…
https://www.yoloelections.org/election-returns
recall, 66.66667is the metric…
Missed the irony… 67 precincts…
That’s 4000, county-wide… not just Measure G voters… so, maybe a third of that…
What’s left to be counted, countywide.
Hiram… gee, I wish I had said that, and provided the link to that info… my bad…