SAN BERNARDINO CITY ELECTIONS UPDATE: No Runoff for Ward 6?
Posted by: SB Insider | 11/09/2007 5:05 PM
BREAKING NEWS...
New results posted from the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters suggest San Bernardino City Council candidate Rikke Van Johnson may have crossed the fifty percent threshold and possibly may avoid a February 2008 runoff.
Rikke Van Johnson is a first-term incumbent defending his seat against former two-term city councilmember Betty Dean Anderson.
On election night, initial semi-official returns suggested Van Johnson was held under fifty percent, which triggered a runoff between him and Anderson. Today's results seem to indicate Rikke Van Johnson may have just enough to win the seat now, without a two-candidate runoff contest.
So what's next in this race?
The County Registrar is reporting a new update will be released Friday, November 16, 2007 at 5PM. It is possible Rikke Van Johnson could swing once again to below 50 percent.
Another option is a recount, which would have to be requested by Betty Dean Anderson. Of course, a recount doesn't guarantee Van Johnson's margin will be diminished. A recount could also show Van Johnson gaining ground.
Irrespective of what happens, these results must be disheartening for Anderson, who was within just two points of Van Johnson when early postal votes were reported. Then late reports showed she had prevented Van Johnson from winning the seat by a scant 15 votes. News reports detailed how both camps were gearing up for the three-month duel.
And now this.
Red County San Bernardino will monitor this developing story and dramatic turn of events on the city's west side...
This is why many sports ban the use of performance enhancing drugs. Another form of doping is blood...
Can someone double check my math please.
According to my calculations, Rikke Van Johnson was held to a runoff after the final update on election night by 4 votes.
He originally had 651 votes out of 1309 cast. In order to avoid the runoff, he would have had to have had 655 votes.
Then the latest update this afternoon indicates that he has avoided a runoff by capturing over 58% of the provisional ballots cast.
I find this amazing on two different fronts, first the number of provisional ballots cast and the percentage he received.
Yesterday, I called the registrar and was told that all absentee ballots dropped off at the polls on election day were accounted for and all that remained in the updated numbers today were provisional ballots.
I find it curious that there would be 204 provisional ballots cast, when only 1309 total were cast on election day. Thus, over 15% of the ballots cast in the 6th Ward election were provisional?
And to top it off, Johnson received over 58% of those provisional votes and consequently avoids a runoff by a mere 14 votes? (1,513/2 = 756.5)
I wonder if Valerie Pope Ludlam was out helping get last minute votes for Rikke...