Fresno County elections officials say they'll have the remainder of the ballots counted in the sheriff's race by Friday, and plan a 4 p.m. release of the totals that day. Most observers believe that Assistant Sheriff Margaret Mims will prevail over Cal Minor, the retired captain from the California Highway Patrol.
Mims' lead has grown from 155 votes to 740 as of the last count and there is little reason to think that Minor can reverse the trend when the last 10,000 votes are counted on Friday. But you never know until the final results are released.
The new sheriff will actually succeed Sheriff Richard Pierce in January. Pierce's successor will inherit all sorts of problems, including a budget deficit, a lack of jail space that has allowed some prisoners to be released early and terrible morale problems among the deputies and other department employees.
All in all, Pierce is leaving the next sheriff with quite a mess.
It would be great if we could send him to his room until this mess got cleaned up. Leave it to a woman to be the one left to mop it up. You'd think that he'd at least leave things as good or better than the way he found them. Not worse.
Am anxious for Friday numbers at 4pm when they are written on the Election's Office board. As Deputy Eric Schmidt said in the Fresno Bee article on Tuesday Nov. 14th about the Election, it could be anybody's race. Although the trend has been towards Mims increasing her lead, given the crazy nature of this race it still could go either way. Still, I'm saying it'll be a 1,000 lead by Mims getting 77,550 to Minor's 76,550. It's a guess but if the numbers actually work, I'm going to Vegas!
Why do we have to wait a week between updates? Does it take that long for results to come in from the outlying areas by stagecoach?
These are absentee and provisional ballots. The absentees must be verified by comparing the signature on the envelope of the absentee ballot packet that was mailed or handed in at the polls to the signature on the voter registration affidavit in a file in the elections office. It is a very time-consuming process because each piece has to be handled seoarately before the ballot can be scanned by computer.
The provisional ballots have a similar process, only they are determining if the voters are eligible to vote and that the votes are counted in the right races. For example, a voter could have voted in the wrong precinct, and would not be eligible for a City Council race in that precinct, but could vore on county and statewide issues.
I was being a bit sarcastic. I know it takes longer to count them by hand, but I don't understand why they can't update their website more frequently. Don't they enter the daily tallies into their computer? If the numbers were trending towards Mims last week, then suddenly Minor comes out on top, that's going to raise some questions in our more conspiracy-minded citizens.
Last week and this some I know, myself included, went down to the Election's Office and signed in as an observer. I believe this is open to the public but call to check that first.
It's an interesting tour of sorts, from seeing the security on opening the ballots, with the checking as to signatures, and being correctly filled out. Although they could go through about 8000 a day that's if all is good and no issues at hand. Provisional ballots are ALL about having issues.
Some had mistakes where the ballots were marked and then X'd out and then correctly marked so those have to be hand counted. Also this counting just doesn't go for the Sheriff's race but all the other issues and candidates too. As Jim Boren wrote they need to qualify if that voter could vote for certain candidates given their actual registration address. Multiply that times 7000 and it's time consuming.
I asked Victor Salazar last Thursday as to why not let the numbers come out daily or sooner, and the response was as some thought: To protect the integrity of the count along with not interrupting the process to get an update. Thus at 4pm on Friday, everyone will know at the same time as to the totals. Well Victor will be the one to know first as he writes it on the dry erase board at the Election's office. Still though, it will be an exciting moment to dictate the next 4 years of the Sheriff Department's and this County's future. Now if only that came with looser pocket strings from the B.O.S. too!
Twenty-four hours from this writing, it should all be known and a done deal, one would hope. I do know that the media will be both at the Election office and also at Margaret Mims Headquarters where supporters, friends, and the candidate will be watching the televised report. It'll be shown live at least on KSEE24's 4 o'clock news report, so all should know at the same time. All other media will be there as well, but not sure they'd break into regularly scheduled programming for this bit of news. Just don't know if it's interrupting Oprah-Worthy to some.
I agree as to the comment about how a sudden change in the Absentee voters trend on this 3rd announcement of numbers would seem suspicious if Minor were to suddenly get 62% of the remaining votes to go ahead. Will wait 24hrs and then see if that actually happens. Still, eight months ago who could've predicted this Election or the next event at 4pm Friday? Just have to love this process that keeps that faith that EVERY vote does count!
Seems Victor Salazar's announcement on November 9th about 10,000 remaining was a bit under the mark.
There were about 16,500 additional votes added last night, with 5-6000 Provisional left to process. Thus when that announcement was made about the 10,000 there were actually 21,000 left?
Time warping back to Florida and hanging chads? Hopefully with their averaging 3,300 processed a day, they can get these DONE by Wednesday!
Everytime I see this headline I think of "Blazing Saddles." The new Sheriff may need to be as resourceful as the one in Mel Brooks' film to bring the department together, judging from all the comments I've seen.
If anyone can do it, Mims can. Go Margaret! Congrats!