Friday, June 09, 2006

bilbray by 4.25%

* calipendence points with horror to this article from the right-wing CNSNews.com:
"The Republican Party is congratulating Brian Bilbray on his victory in California's special congressional election.
With most of the vote counted, Bilbray led Democrat Francine Busby by about 5 points -- 49.5-45 percent, according to Wednesday morning press reports."
Calipendence also sent through the following results and notes that Bilbray won by only 3.87 points. (apologies for the colours)


U.S. REPRESENTATIVE 50TH DISTRICT - (RUN-OFF)
Precincts: 500
Counted: 500
Percentage: 100.0%

BRIAN BILBRAY - REP (60319 votes) - 49.33%
FRANCINE BUSBY - DEM (55587 votes) - 45.46%
W. GRIFFITH - IND (4492 votes) - 3.67%
PAUL KING - LIB (1875 votes) - 1.53%

I don't know exactly where/when calipendence got those numbers from (I presume they came from the sdvote.org site that he linked to). The same site now gives Bilbray a 4.25% lead. In both cases apparently 100% of precincts were fully counted.

BRIAN BILBRAY - REP
64554
49.50%
FRANCINE BUSBY - DEM
59021
45.26%
W. GRIFFITH - IND
4846
3.72%
PAUL KING - LIB
1995
1.53%


The second set of numbers has an extra 8000 votes - perhaps they have been adding postal and/or absentee votes or something. Regardless - it certainly wasn't a 5 point win.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Raw Story has a link to Bradblog about how poll workers were able to take home(!) Diebold voting machines prior to the elections.

"I volunteered to be a poll worker in the 49th. I took a short course on Sunday morning, loaded up the machine, and had it Sunday and all day and night Monday. I couldn't believe it! Folks, get in the polling places to watch for funny business.

Terry Olson"

Anonymous said...

I'm sure that Brad was conditioned to this news with an email sent by a fellow Democratic Group member here in San Diego to him and myself that basically was describing how this happened back in the April election too. (names have been removed in interest of privacy)

Hello:

I'll be a poll worker in the 50th District Congressional Elections
and have already received a manual and such. What struck me as particularly
tone-deaf of the registrar's office is that I'm going to be taking the
voting equipment and ballots home with me on Friday 4/7 for the election of
Tuesday, 4/11. All of this will be sitting in either my home office or my
garage until I deliver them my precinct and set them up. Does this sound
familiar to you? Remember Black Box Voting's movie where San Diego Country
was ridiculed for doing this? We do have to have the polls open by 0700 and
I guess the logistics of delivering the equipment direct to the polling
place seem a little overwhelming to the Registrar but, I'd be willing to put
it down to just being cheap and not truly valuing voting.

Thanks,

Anonymous said...

You know, timing is everything... Just today there is the newer news that ties Abramoff and his associates more into the murder of Sun Cruz Casinos founder Gus Boulis in 2001. Had we known that a week ago, as long as the opposition was "stretching" their logic so much to make Busby sound like an "immigrant lover", I think we could have made the same stretch that Bilbray likes to be associated with murderers, with his trip to the Marianas on Abramoff's dime!

That flick "Everyboy's Gotta Learn Sometime" had such a great "Sopranos" segment on that issue. I hope they update it with this newer information. That could serve as a good ad in the fall against all of these Rethuglican bums that were tied to Abramoff!

Anonymous said...

Calipendence, I understand the Dems are going to go back and undo the Marianas Labour legislation pushed through by Abramoff. Good sign.

As for the rest of the stuff, as you know, any one of a dozen scandals should have brought the Bush admin to a standstill. But none of them have. It seems the US media has just turned the volume off and the public doesn't want to know. People only seem to be moved by Iraq, migrants and gays. That's a depressing set of priorities.

I wish you guys the best in the 2006 elections but, really, something has to happen on the public awareness front.

btw we have high levels of ignorance about US politics here in Australia, as well. It seems if you're comfortable, or otherwise flat out earning a living, you just accept what's on the box. (I manage to squeeze some bits into our newspapers though).

Cheers.

lukery said...

damien - good work on getting in the media here. sorry i didnt get around to your suggestion the other day. it kinda seemed a lil futile.

calipendence - yeah - i remembered that 'take home your own bit of democracy' story from last time round... amazing.

damien - re the media - bob parry repeats and repeats that the non-whackos needs to build their own media infrastructure. perhaps the ykos thing might be a small sign in the right direction...