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Not a reflection on the pace of the vote count, which is admirable. Just some amusing memery.

Notable results and non-results:

• Ashleigh Aitken has cut her deficit against Harry Sidhu from 527 to 484, but that’s with only 341 new ballots counted in the Mayor’s race.  The vote share between Aitken and Sidhu remained at about 56% of the total vote.  (Interestingly, the two candidates who outperformed today were Robert Williams and Rudy Gaono, the main African-American and Mexican-ancestry candidates, which may tell us something about the provisional ballots.)
• So without further ado, let’s go down to “What’s Left to Vote?”  Ooh, just 12,2o6 ballots left to count, of which  11,689 (95.8%) are in the critical combined (I believe) category of provisionals and conditional voter registrations.
• The proportion of the ballots containing votes in the Anaheim Mayoral race remains at a remarkably consistent 7.4%.  If that holds up — and look at the section in green below for reasons think that it might increase — then that means that Anaheim can expect only 903 more ballots.  If that comes to pass, we’d expect her to narrow the gap by about 114 more votes, which means that she’d lose by 370 votes.

OK, this next section is a repeat from last time:

• That projection is not a good sign for Ashleigh, but let’s go through the numbers anyway.
• Here are the obstacles for her:
  • Not all of those votes will be counted; for some, verification will be unsuccessful or impossible to conduct.
  • We can’t presume that all of those votes are from Anaheim.
  • Even if they are from Anaheim, some may not have voted in the Mayor’s race.
  • Even if they voted in the Mayor’s race, some may not have voted for one of the top two candidates.
  • Even if they voted for either Sidhu or Aitken, not enough may have voted for Aitken.

So does that means its over?  Probably — but not definitely.  The question is whether the remaining ballots are a representative sample of what has come before.  I don’t know — and I’m certainly not going to trust anonymous comments from other blogs by people claiming to know.

Here’s the scenario where Ashleigh wins:

Vote count observers supportive of the Sidhu campaign — and yes, we’d probably be talking about those associated with Disney, because this would be expensive and who else? — could have been challenging these ballots disproportionately from Anaheim.  (For all we know, all of the other ballots in this category have been done.)  They would probably be challenging ballots from certain districts, if they know them, but might simply be challenging ballots from new voters (if they have that information handy) or simply those with female or Latino names.

When a ballot is challenged, a process goes into effect that takes some time to complete.  (I know that this is true of absentees and I believe that it is also true of provisionals.  Could be wrong.)  Now, which ballots would likely be around at the very end of the election (with the exception of damaged ballots)?  Those that had been challenged, right?  It’s not clear that there is an organized effort to challenge ballots anywhere else in the county — or in Anaheim, though I have anecdotal reports — and if there was one in Janet Nguyen’s district it would have been given up days ago as futile.

So these remaining ballots could be very unlike those that have already been counted.  To use a gross analogy, it’s like the last teaspoons-full from a large tumbler of water that has been drunk by a three-year-old child are probably going to be quite different in composition from the first teaspoons-full that could have been skimmed from the top of the container before the backwash and slobbering commenced.

• Ashleigh could win if:
  • something like the above scenario of ballot challenges did occur
  • it was solely, mainly, or at least substantially focuses on ballots from Anaheim
  • the ballot challenges were biased toward delay or disqualification of the counting of Democratic ballots
  • those ballots that took all of the way to the end to count are more likely to be for the Democrat among the two front-runners than previous ballots

This just doesn’t seem entirely unlikely.  If the lawyers and other observers did a good job of targeting ballots for challenges — and Disney could afford the best, right? — then this is exactly what they would intend to happen.  This is why Republicans in Florida call for a premature end to counting ballots.  And part of a benefit of this (wholly unethical and arguably illegal) procedure is that it makes people believe that a late swing to the Democrat came about by fraud — when it actually came about through biased challenges leading to a skewed sample of ballots being counted last.

So: probably over.  Doesn’t look good for Ashleigh.  Still possible!

More results below!

WHAT’S LEFT TO COUNT?

Total Ballots Left to Count

Here are the downballot races that are still close.  I have generally included the static numbers from Tuesday’s OC ROV report and the Secretary of State’s office (for multi-county races) and the trend from the previous reports on Saturday.  In each race, the name in orange is currently barely in and the one in magenta is currently barely out.  (I’m somewhat arbitrarily and selectively drawing the line right around “under 2%,” down 1% from the previous day’s criterion.)

If you know anything interesting about these races and why we should care about them, please speak up!

But let’s start by adding a close county contest to the list that absolutely does not matter — except that it’s probably the result that will be discussed long after the rest of these are forgotten.  Will OC go Blue for Governor?

This is for bragging rights only.  I’d say that given late trends, it’s almost sure that Newsom does take OC.  Are we therefore “blue”?  Well, we did also go blue in all of the other state executive races except for Insurance Commissioner and Board of Equalization, but I think that we’ll have a better answer in either 2022 or 2026, when Trump is out of our system.  At any rate, at the local level, we’re clearly not.

Normandin picked up 35 votes, Perry 21, Kelly 28, and De Bretteville 32.  Kelly’s lead dropped from 35 to 31.  I don’t think that she catches him, but we don’t know if there’s a cache of ballots still out there from this district.  They’re probably running (or ran) out of ballots, but we’ll keep watching.

Hill picks up 17.  Barke gains 20.  Margin shrinks from 36 to 33.  We’ll keep watching.

Schulman picks up 142.  Kunath up 96.  Dan Walsh gains 119.  Margin falls from 1,155 to 1,163.  No matter: we’re calling this one over.

Jeng up 217 in LA (down 13), minus Cuadra by 131 (up 14) in OC, equals Jeng up by 86 — down from 113.  That’s a drop of 27, on top of the previous drop of 25, so we’ll keep watching!

Marks adds 43 and is safe.  Kowalke adds 40.  Hayden adds 35.  Lead up to 198.

This looks over, but we’ll keep watching it because the final margin might matter to future elections.  Singer is safe.  Briscoe adds 20.  Souders adds 26.  VDMark 33.  Margin shrinks from 644 to 637.  Decisive, but one wants even more!

Chaffee adds 363, Shaw ads 337.  I guess I just want to know the final margin here.

See my discussion up at the top of the post.  Very likely Sidhu.

These are from provisional ballots, which by definition are cast on election day.  The margin fell from 14 to 10; Park gained 7, Vaughn 11, and Val 14.  Despite her late troubles, Park is winning in the provisionals.  This is nerve-wracking, but we’ll keep watching.

Kempf adds 17, Christoph  16.  Margin now at 246.  Hey, is this over?  Looks over to me.

Moore up by 14, Rainey by 7, Troutman by 9.  Pretty much done, but maybe there’s a cache of ballots out there still to count.

Duffy continues to widen his lead, picking up 79 to 57 for Stoaks.  Is it dissipated surfers that are voting provisionals for Duffy?  Whatever it is, after trailing most of the way he’s starting to look inevitable.

Ward up 41, James up 34.  Ward’s still looking good for third.

Pulido picks up 129; Tinajero gains 146; the margin drops by 17 to 703.  As with Anaheim, challenged provisionals may be at play here, but so far Tinajero’s late gains are so far coming too slowly to make up the deficit.  He has certainly vindicated the faith that many of us had that he would be Pulido’s strongest opponent — and, with Pulido termed out, a plausible successor.  (Well, except that multiple Democrats running will likely split the vote.)

No change.

Swan picks up 247; Pollard gains 275.  Pollard has been gaining in the late ballors, but not nearly enough.  We just want to be absolutely sure on this one, so no early call.

Moorhead picks up 80,  Maddox gains 81.  Is over.

YES adds 226 votes.  NO adds 111 votes.  Margin jumps from  6,838 to 6,953.  I’m only leaving this up here because of the probable correlation to the Mayoral vote.