They haven't Stolen it yet...
By Byron LaMasters
I don't have any new news in regards to the Heflin / Vo recount other than this AP article:
Nearly a week after the general election, the race between one of the most powerful lawmakers in the Texas House and a political novice remained undecided Sunday.
Longtime Republican Rep. Talmadge Heflin, the chairman of the House budget-writing committee, is trailing his Democratic challenger, businessman Hubert Vo, by just a few dozen votes.
The absentee or mail-in ballots and the provisional ballots, used when someone's eligibility to vote is questioned, had yet to be counted in the race.
Vo had asked election officials to delay that count from Thursday until Sunday when a countywide ballot canvassing was scheduled.
Officials began but didn't finish counting the county's 3,000 absentee ballots on Sunday. They planned to finish on Monday as well as count 4,000 provisional ballots.
Intermingled with all these ballots are about 189 provisional and 200 absentee ones from people who voted in the race between Heflin and Vo.
This process is usually without much fanfare but this time it had at least 24 poll watchers, half Democrat and half Republican, looking on and taking notes.
Hopefully, we'll have some (good) news tomorrow.
Update: Ok, here's my attempt at crunching some numbers from the district. Of much interest to me is the decrease of Vo's margin from 110 to 52 to 38. With a 110 vote margin, the election seemed pretty secure. Assuming that there are 378 outstanding ballots, Heflin would need 65% of those votes in order to win. With a 38 vote margin, Heflin only needs 55% of those votes. Looking at the absentee votes already counted in the race Heflin won over 75%. However, only 200 of the estimated 387 votes are absentee ballots. The rest are provisional ballots - which I expect would lean Democratic. So -- who knows. This will surely end up with a recount either way. I doubt that we'll have a clear winner tomorrow, but if Andrew says the GOP is stealing this one, we'll do our best to ensure that they don't get away with it.
Posted by Byron LaMasters at November 7, 2004 10:28 PM
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Well, this race is an obvious candidate for a recount, especially given the suspicious drop in margin from 110 to 52 to 38 on election night.
Anyone know what sort of ballots and machines are used in that district? Are they paper ballots subject to a recount by hand? Or are we dealing with Diebold here?
