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December 23, 2005
Debating What to Say...
The recount has wrapped up - and we lost. Reality is we didn't lose the recount on Tuesday or Wednesday. We lost it on Monday when the judges who heard the very compelling argument to manually recount the optical scan ballots in 156 precincts statewide instead decided to do it in 9 Republican heavy precincts. Re-counting the machine tapes netted nearly the same result that was there election night, and according to my calcs they should've netted an identical result. But I digress.
The reality of the situation is that it's very likely that Creigh Deeds won this election. The localities that showed substantial undervotes that were above normal, higher than the percentages for other races this year, & higher than the undervote on the AG Race in 2001 were mostly Democratic-leaning. Not all, but most. It was very likely that Senator Deeds would've picked up a sizable amount of votes in these areas, enough to flip the election. Our expert witness was Kim Brace of Election Data Services - who's been analyzing electoral numbers for many many years. Theirs was a man with a degree in Astrophysics and no election background. And yet, the courts sided with them.
Recount day for me was spent mostly at a Conference Room table running & rerunning numbers. There were some rumors on various blogs of pickups for Creigh, but they were completely fabricated. On Wednesday I was in the basement of the courthouse, laptop in tow, running all the totals as they came in. Early in the day there were a couple of places where we thought we'd picked up some substantial votes because of the tapes - but those gains proved to be simple mistakes made by those bringing us numbers. The tapes brought what I referred to as a Dim Sum of Gain Some Lose Some. Everytime we picked up a vote in one precinct, we drop one somewhere else. That's why, after all was said and done - there was very little shift in the vote totals. Had we been able to actually recount, things would've been different.
Creigh was the far better choice for Attorney General. Now he returns to the State Senate, deciding what to do next. As for me? Election 2005 is FINALLY over. I go into Cycle 2006 in a much different position. I'm not going to be working on any races this year, beyond the scope of providing support to them through work. And it's quite nice that all the campaigning is over, and I still have a job.
I'll write again from London.
Posted by MikeSager at December 23, 2005 9:19 PM
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