Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Good thing we don't have Chads. . .

OK, I thought I could take a small break this morning, but there is late news,

First of all Jim Kolbe has refused to endorse Randy Graf, no surprise there really.

The second is that Steve Huffman has announced that the race is not over as there are still a large amount of early and provisional ballots out there that have yet to be counted.

Graf better have a lawyer, because I smell vote finding.

Here is the breakdown:

Current lead by Graf 3354 votes

Number of outstanding provisional ballots 2, 700

Number of early ballots still not counted 2,800

It would be foreseeable that this could possibly make a difference except that the above numbers are a combined total of Republican and Democratic ballots.

Let's give Steve the benefit of the doubt and say that by some incredible fluke, 75% of these ballots are for the Republican primary.

That leaves a possible vote universe of 4125 votes.

Keep in mind that this assumes that all the provisional ballots are valid.

This would mean that in order to secure a tie or better, Huffman would have to score 81% (I rounded down) of this remaining vote AND have the remaining 19% uniformly move to another candidate other than Graf. Any vote going to Graf increases the percentage that Huffman needs.

The fact that this is still be floated as a remote possibility even should make one wonder if there is some sort of chicanery afoot. If I were Graf, I would make sure to have observers present for the rest of the "counting" process.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Let's assume, for argument's sake, that all those early and provisional ballots are Republican. Huffman actually did better in the early balloting than the others, but, assuming the votes break down by the same percentage as the other early ballots, Huffman only gains 300 votes on Graf. Assuming the provisional ballots- which are cast at the polling places- break down the same way as the other votes cast at the polling places, Graf gains most of his margin back, anyway.