| Before the election, Doc Jess asked who would be Florida in this year's election? While Florida ended up being Florida in terms of the last state to be decided in the presidential race, despite Alan West's best efforts, Florida is not the last state with elections still to be decided. Putting aside Louisiana's weird rules which are producing a run-off between two Republicans for the last Congressional race outstanding, North Carolina had the pleasure of being the last Congressional race to be decided after the Republican challenger opted against a hand recount of selected precincts (having lost ground in the machine recount of all precincts). However, at the state level and at the legislative level, I am aware of at least two races still oustanding. First, in Montana, there is race for Superintendent of Public Education (which is actually more important than the title suggests because the Superintendent also sits on the State Land Board which controls mineral leases on state lands. After the initial vote was certified on Tuesday, the Democrat led by over 2,300 votes. That margin is just barely less than 0.5% (the key number in Montana), so the Republican has until Monday to request (and is expected to request) a hand recount which may take all of next week and into the following week to complete. The more interesting recount,however, is in North Carolina. While the machine recount settled two of the three recount races, it did not settle the third -- for State Senate District 1. The Democrat led on election night, but after all provisional and absentee ballots were counted, the Republican led by 32 votes. After the machine recount, the lead is down to 21 out of approximately 87,400 votes. The incumbent Democrat has now requested a hand recount. Under North Carolina law, each of the counties involved picks precincts at random for the initial phase of hte hand recount -- given the size of the counties that means one precinct per county for a total of eight precincts out of eight-four. If the Democrat gains enough votes to indicate that a full recount might change the result (which would only take a gain of two or three votes), all of the precincts would be recounted. At this point in time, six of the eight counties have announced that they will hold their limited recount on Monday, one has announced that the recount will be Friday, and the last county has not yet announced when it will conduct the recount. Regardless of the results of this recount, this race is proof again that every vote matters. The difference between the two candidates is only one-quarter of one vote per precinct, and whomever wins, the other candidates knows that ,with just a little better effort at getting out the vote, the result would have been different. |
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