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We have no idea where this San Clemente hotel stands on Measure OO, if it takes a position at all.  We’re just using this photo from www.bwcasablanca.com just as the background for for this gag:  “You paid it for her, you can pay it for me!  If she can stand it, I can!  Pay it!”

Headlines:

• OC almost out of CA-49 ballots; Issa’s lead drops to 1,982.
• Newman’s lead expands from 3,083 to 3,127 in OC, 2,178 overall
• Alvarez’s margin over Cano in SAUSD remains at 70
• Martinez gains only 7 votes on 103 counted; margin falls from 661 to 654
• Barnes’s lead remains at 289
• Moreno expands lead from 66 to 73 votes on 27 counted
• Measure OO lead drops from 17 to 11 on 16 counted

Yeah, yeah — everybody except us has called this race … but that gives us the exclusive headline!  Douglas Applegate climbs to under 2,000!  In OC, the votes have dwindled, with Darrell Issa gaining 33 votes to Applegate’s 22.  But in San Diego, the votes are dwindling a lot less: Issa gaining 573 and Applegate gaining … 990!  Put them together and Issa lead has dwindled to 1,982.  Of course there’s no way that Applegate could still get the 9,500 or so votes counted that would allow him to win at that pace — right?

BEFORE

NOW

No report from LA today; that comes in tomorrow.

BEFORE:

NOW:

Josh Newman should not get to attached to the number 2,136 — because he’s now up by 2,178!

Newman cut Ling-Ling Chang’s lead in San Berdoo by 2 votes.  (Provisionals!)  More importantly, he gained 128 votes in OC to Chang’s 88. The question of whether there’s a vast cache of Asian votes for Chang remaining in LA will likely be answered by tomorrow.  (With a “no.”)  Newman does not look like he’s on track to reach a victory by a full 1% — he’d need to extend his lead to 3,200 or so — but maybe LA will have something to say about that!

Here comes our first real nail-biter.  At last night’s DPOC we were assured more than once that Alfonso Alvarez had beaten Angie Cano for the third seat — and I couldn’t remember how my great grandmother used to make the “Evil Eye” sign, so I was in no position to stop it!  But the big news in this race is that only 79 new votes have been tallied.  Alvarez and Cano both got ten of them — so that 70 vote margin is looking a little safer.

The days, they dwindle down to a precious few — too few for Michele Martinez to overtake Andrew Do at the rate of 7 or 8 votes per day.  Today it was 7 — she gains 55 to Do’s 48.  I’m going to keep covering it, because for a last-minute recruit this is still an excellent showing.  (Vince Sarmiento and Sal Tinajero, either of you could probably have won this one.)

Steve Lodge picked up four times as many votes as Denise Barnes today!  Literally, 4 votes to 1.  Meanwhile, I heard in DPOC-land last night that Leonard Lahtinen was truly irked at Mark Daniels running against him.  And it’s not unreasonable to think that without Daniels in the race, Lahtinen would have picked up another 800 net votes from Daniels.  There was a way for Lahtinen to get Daniels out of the race — come out early and strong against the subsidies.  As it was, Daniels also played a second significant role in the race, poking Lodge with his pitchfork, ably aided by Angel Van Stark, until Lodge would blow his stack.  Daniels is going to make it onto some nice City Commission — unless he gets appointed as City Historian or something, for which he is richly qualified — given how important he turned out to be for Barnes’s victory.

Dr. Jose Moreno’s lead climbs from 66 to 73, on 27 new votes counted.  (He outpolled Jordan Brandman by 14 votes to 7.)  Moreno is now at 35.96865544%.  I think that he’s a good bet to reach at least 36.001%.  Another 14 out of 27 day like this would get him there.  Note also that, as in District 1, the majority of votes were for the anti-subsidy candidates!

The lead over the past couple of weeks has been: 286, 292, 282, 320, 113, 40, 37, 28, 22, 17, and now 11.New votes counted in the past four reports have been 177, 23, 22, then 55 over the weekend.  Today saw another 16 added.

“NO” has been getting about 2/3 of the votes recently.  So they’d need about 16 or 17 more votes to win.

Based on that trend, you’d expect the remaining votes to be counted to be somewhere right around 16 or 17.

FUN!

Now let’s play WHAT’S LEFT TO COUNT!

Total Ballots Left to Count, Nov. 28, 5 p.m.

Total estimated number of provisionals to count: 130,000 (had been 130,000 in Monday’s report)

Total provisionals counted: 102,798 (had been 95,320 in Monday’s report)

Total estimated number of provisionals left to count: 27,202 (had been 34,680 in Monday’s report)

Total estimated number of vote-by-mail ballots returned at the polls to count: 146,374 (had been 145,374)

Total vote-by-mail ballots returned at the polls counted: 146,100 (had been 145,283 in Monday’s report)

Total estimated number of vote-by-mail ballots returned at the polls left to count: 274 (had been 91 in Monday’s report)  [SO THAT’S ANOTHER 1,000 LATE-DISCOVERED BALLOTS]

Total estimated number of election day paper ballots to count: 27,000 (had been 27,000)

Total election day paper ballots counted: unchanged  (had been 26,944)

Total estimated number of election day paper ballots left to count: unchanged (had been 56)   UNCHANGED

Total estimated number of eligible vote-by-mail ballots received after Election Day left to count: 14,200 (had been 14,200 in Monday’s report) 

Total eligible vote-by-mail ballots counted: 14,200 (had been 14,200 in Monday’s report)

Total estimated number of eligible vote-by-mail ballots left to count: 0 (had been 0 in Monday’s report)   UNCHANGED

To make that easier to grasp at a glance: an estimated 27,624  ballots remain to be counted = 

92 early VBMs + 274 VBMs returned at polls + 0 VBMs arriving after Election Day +
56 paper ballots + 27,202 provisional ballots

AND INTRODUCING A NEW FEATURE: TOTAL BALLOTS THAT WERE COUNTED TODAY!

0 early VBMs + 800? [unclear due to added ballots] VBMs returned at polls + 0 VBMs arriving after Election Day +
0 paper ballots + 7,478 provisional ballots

So, in other words:

• OVER 75?% PROVISIONAL BALLOT COUNTING DAY
• OF UNCOUNTED BALLOTS REMAINING, 239 ARE NOT PROVISIONALS AND 27,202 ARE PROVISIONALS
• THE PROPORTION OF  PROVISIONALS IN THE REMAINING DAYS WILL KEEP RISING
• IT LOOKS LIKE THERE WILL BE THREE DAYS LEFT OF COUNTING (WITH ABOUT 8,000 PROVISIONALS PER DAY) PRIOR TO THE MANDATORY 1% CANVAS OF BALLOTS, BUT IF THEY START SENDING HOME SOME OF THE TEMPORARY STAFF THEN IT MAY TAKE LONGER.  OR IT COULD BE SHORTER, BECAUSE NEAL KELLEY CAN BE UNPREDICTABLE!
• OF THE EXTRA 1,900 BALLOTS IN YESTERDAY’S “TOTAL TO BE COUNTED” FIGURE, 1,000 OF THEM APPEAR TO VBM BALLOTS RETURNED AT THE POLLS.  NO IDEA WHAT THE OTHER 900 WERE.  THEY MAY BE ACCOUNTED FOR TOMORROW, JUST AS THE 3,000 EXTRA BALLOTS DISCOVERED IN SATURDAY’S TOTAL RESULTS WERE FINALLY REFLECTED IN THE INCREASED TOTAL OF “EARLY VBM” BALLOTS ON MONDAY.  AND YES THAT’S DISTURBING, AND YET BELATEDLY FINDING A BOX OF BALLOTS THAT HAD NOT BEEN PROPERLY ACCOUNTED FOR SEEMS TO HAPPEN REGULARLY, AND NOT JUST IN ORANGE COUNTY.  IT DOESN’T NECESSARILY MEAN ANYTHING SINISTER SO LONG AS THEY’RE PEOPLE WHO VOTED BUT HAD NOT BEEN ACCOUNTED FOR IN THE PRIOR COUNT.  IT’S CERTAINLY JARRING, THOUGH, AND DESPITE THE OBVIOUS DRAWBACKS I WISH THAT THEY’D BE MORE UPFRONT ABOUT IT, BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE BY KEEPING TRACK I’M UNINTENTIONALLY DOING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM INTO THE COUNTY AGENCY I MOST RESPECT.