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11/12: It looks like Phil Bacerra has won by a margin of 150 over Manny Escamilla — does anyone want to argue that the DPOC endorsement of Beatriz Mendoza wasn’t worth even that much? — with today being the last day for challenging ballot rejections being Wednesday 11/13, and inside sources saying that there aren’t enough ballots rejected on signatures to make a difference.  (Of course, ballots rejected on residence, given how much people move these days, are also of interest.)  Bacerra has apparently lawyered up (or made arrangements to do so if need be) with conservative leaning Mark Rosen, in case there’s any litigation.  The Registrar’s decision not to release information to candidates about who has rejected ballots strikes me as a poor one, even if it’s a precedent from last cycle, but in a race with a three-figure margin I doubt that it will be pursued.

Meanwhile, eyes look to 2020, where the Voice is reporting that Pulido’s spiritual son Jose Solorio will be running against Republican Ceci Iglesias and former Councilwoman Claudia Alvarez.  That lineup leaves a lot of space on the Left, which will likely be energized; with no lefty candidate coming forward so far, maybe Manny could have a shot.  (And if this comment smokes one out, that’s fine too!)

Original introduction follows:

Yes, for some people, the story of the night will be the Democrats taking over both legislative houses in Virginia — giving them a trifecta and the ability to draw lines that aren’t intended to disenfranchise minorities, as well as to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (subject to a few technicalities that the Supreme Court may decide).  But in some of Orange County’s “S” cities — Santa Ana, San Clemente, and Stanton — voters had some smaller fish to fry!  To the results page!

Torres, Bacerra, James. Surprise of the night: we have a photo of James.

First Gleaning: the VBMs!

Today’s first installment of OC’s Election Results is brought to you by the number “0” — the number of “completed precincts” in each race.  That “0” means that what you’re seeing here are the vote-by-mail ballots, which tend to skew more conservative.

Yep!  We have confirmation that these are the VBM ballots!

So: Torres and Benavides doing ell in the VBMs.  The others are out.

Gene James looking good, but we’ll see how Hinkle does in the day-ofs.  That’s a lot of ground to make up, though.

Hey, I could be wrong, but I would think that Bacerra would do best among the VBM voters and that both Mendoza and Escamilla would do comparatively better on the day-ofs.  This is where DPOC and its allies could make a difference if they could turn out volunteers — but did they, really? Escamilla’s money would tend to give him a better ground game.

Sure, why not?

What stays in Stanton happens in Stanton.

SECOND GLEANING, 9:30

The first 835 votes cast today are in!

Torres is pulling away a little — from an 11% to a 13% lead — but of course how significant that is depends on where the votes came from, something I could look up but won’t.  Still, going from a margin of 613 to one of 927 in just 835 votes is a good sign for her. A better sign is that almost all of the precincts are done.  This is SO unlike Sidhu vs. Aitken!

Sure enough, James faded a bit — but with all the precincts complete he looks like he won, even if the straggler ballots have three days to show up.

Bacerra adds 603, Mendoza adds 385, Escamilla adds 551.  Only 7 precincts left, though this is a race where one might actually see some movement through Friday.  What it looks like to me is that if DPOC didn’t endorse Mendoza, Escamilla wins.  For those DPOC members who wanted Bacerra to win, mission accomplished — you’ll likely have your conservadem rep who will have received less than 30% of the vote while about 50% will have gone progressive.  Golf clap to the anti-progressives.

I think that we can call both of the Stanton issue contests.

THIRD AND 10 P.M.

Another 755 votes in — and it’s not over yet!

Vern is going to be insufferable about this, but: good call!

Finished-for-the-night race is finished for the night.

From whom did those bottom three names take votes?

Wow!

FIRST NIGHT, LAST CALL!

146 more in-person votes to end off the night.  Now it’s going to be up to damaged ballots, late-arriving ballots, and maybe some provisional ballots that need to be checked out.  Results will be final by Friday evening, but we’ll probably know what they are before then.  The Registrar never put up a “What’s Left to Count?” link for this election — for what are probably obvious reasons, but I have to admit that I miss it.

See what happens when you get Vern to post an ad favoring you in the Juice!  This year, it has not failed!

Is over.  We should do some research on those top two, I guess.

The night’s biggest disappointment. This is the only race where there’s even a minuscule possibility of a change in the outcome — it would depend on there having been a lot of ballot challenges affecting provisional voters — but don’t expect one.  (Our reporting of future nights’ results will probably be well after they’be been announced at 5 p.m., so drop anything really startling into the comments.)

Look, fellow progressives — this is what you get when you don’t coordinate between potential candidates.  The Establishment usually has its sole favored candidate, more often while progressives split the vote.  This is why we need a single transferable vote — and it’s also why we’ll probably never get one.

Cannabis tax gets a vote equal to the Great Fire of London.  Even without the Satanic implications, that’s a wry coincidence.

I don’t recall Stanton hotels/motels as being among the priciest, so this is probably a good move.  It’s also as close as the city will get to taxing prostitution.

Thank you for joining us for this coverage, if you did!

NOV. 6: THE DAY AFTER

Remember, for the days after the election we switch from orange to a series of other colors, to make the passage of time easier to follow.  Or just because I like it.  Today is … Green Day!

As predicted here, the only likely news was going to come in the Santa Ana Ward 4 race — and sure enough, there has been some!  But first: almost everything else!

Only 71 new votes came in at precincts — probably verified provisional ballots and damaged ballots, though conceivably some hand-counted paper ballots as well — but 4,053 came in through the mail.  If memory serves, this is most of what you expect of the late-arriving VBMs, but I don’t recall what proportion it is of them.  I could look it up, or ask the Registrar’s office, but instead let’s just presume that it’s 2/3 of the total.  (Although honestly, how long does it take intra-city mail to arrive in Santa Ana?  Maybe it’s more like 95%.)  So let’s see what our 4,124 new voters did.

First, Carolyn Torres got another 933 votes.  Benavides got 503.  The margin grew from 13.5% to 15.5%.  She’s got almost exactly 150% of his vote total, and any further change this week will only be in her favor.  Contreras got 245 more, maintaining the same percentage; Aguinaga got 144, dropping by 0.3%.

James up by 797; Hinkle up 567.  The gap narrows from 25.4% to 24.2%.  So Hinkle did relatively better in the late-arriving VBMs than in the early ones, which should be some small consolation.

No miracles here, but we did settle a dispute over the underlying dynamics of the race.  In the first batch of late arriving VBMs, Bacerra picked up 674 votes, Mendoza picked up 457, and Escamilla picked up 827, showing the he was the choice of the late-voting mostly poor and Left.  Bacerra from from 28.2% to 27.8%; Mendoza went from 24.7% to 24.0%, and Escamilla went from 23.5% to 25.4%.  (The final three went down 0.4, up 0.1, and down 0.5 respectively.)  Again, the DPOC endorsement was probably worth 400-500 votes to the underfunded Mendoza, and it’s a safe bet that Escamilla would have picked up at least a net 305 of them.  I don’t blame Mendoza for staying in the race; I do blame DPOC for picking the weaker candidate if they could just not endorse at all.

This had a slightly lower percentage of the late-arriving vote.  I would have lost that bet!

This had a slightly higher percentage of the first day of late-arrivals vote.  Quick, to the Mathmobile!  194 yes to 114 no were the new votes on the cannabis tax; 196 yes to 101 for the bed tax.  More of the late voters cared about the cannabis issue, but that is an awfully high correlation between votes.

Enough fun for the day.   Tomorrow’s section headline will be in blue.

NOV. 7: NADA

Santa Ana Post Office must be pretty good.  Nothing else came in.  Expect that Friday also.  The only thing likely to change is the provisional ballots — and that won’t change anything.  No more updates unless the Registar’s office has some news for us.  Congratulations to Carolyn Torres and Stanton.

CORRECTED: Apparently the results page didn’t refresh when I accessed in this morning, which is weird given that it had been a hard reboot. Oh well, here are the corrected figures — and a corrected storyline!  What follows is hand-corrected results taken from this page rather than a normal copy-and-paste, so there is a non-zero possibility of errors.

New precinct ballots counted: 162; total raised 0.05%.  New VBMs counted (on the second of three days for stragglers): 996; total raised 0.6%.

Torres up 442 votes, total share up 0.4%.  Benavides up 233, share down 0.3.  Do the rest yourself.

James: 292 votes, down 0.3% share.  Hinkle: up 210, up 0.2%.

Bacerra has 247 new votes, down 0.4% in share.  Escamilla: 395 new votes,  up 0.9% (!) share.  Mendoza: 239 new votes (almost as many as Bacerra!), down 0.1%

That is one solid win.

Almost as solid.

NOV. 8: LAST MAIL-INS DAY!

The Registrar’s “what’s left to vote” feature has reappeared, and it says that there are only 24 ballots left to count.  But there are also rejected provisionals to get counted if they’re legitimate..

Less memorable, but ok.

Nov. 12: POST-LONG WEEKEND

* Indicates Incumbent Candidate, if any
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* Indicates Incumbent Candidate, if any
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