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A brief summary of how the recount will happen, given to me by a state party official close to the process…
ES&S (Election Systems and Software, Inc) will deliver to the counties (or has delivered) new software for the voting machines that will have them count only votes for governor. The sealed ballot boxes (or perhaps not) will be opened assuming the appropriate court order has been issued. (I hear some counties have not required a court order to release ballots.)
Workers will separate GOP primary ballots into their own stack(s). Those GOP primary ballots will be fed through the voting machines. Ballots that register no votes in the governor’s race will be rejected by the machines instead of being recorded as no votes (or undervotes). Rejected ballots will be examined by workers for any sign of marks that would indicate the voter had been trying to indicate a preference for the race.
I know no more than that.
Except that one interested observer told me, “Straight line winds have knocked out all power at the Jefferson County facility. Conspiracy theorists saddle up.” Though I’ve since heard that the power is back up.
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HA! To add to your conspiracy, there was a blink in power in downtown Tuscaloosa around an hour ago that was enough to cause rebooting of computers in the main courthouse. I imagine it screwed with the machines in the annex where the counting is continuing as well.
Alabama Power must be pulling some strings to help Little Timmy.
A true Republican would understand the hand of God in these things and not waste time on conspiracy theories.
One wonders about Hubbard and if prehaps he like to see Tim make it into the runoff so Byrne will win.
One must also consider that it would take but 1 dishonest poll worker to scew the election. Just one… Don’t need much of a conspiracy there.
Any way you slice it – if Tim overturns the certified results of the election – he is going down.
Considering the unraveling of the Bentley campaign and that fact the worst about the doctor is yet to come, perhaps Byrne would prefer Bentley at this point.
I think Byrne would prefer Bentley. Once it is know that Bentley was a democrat go to vote on all kinds of tax increases and other legislation he will go down in flames.
http://www.selmatimesjournal.com/news/2010/jun/15/bentley-campaign-wants-stop-hand-count-undervotes/
The James camp does want some handcounting. Now that’s nonsense and must not be allowed.
http://www.shelbycountyreporter.com/news/2010/jun/15/bentley-disputing-primary-recount-methods/
Apparently the recount will not be finished today. Shelby does not start until tommorrow.
Whatever happens…this spoils the energy in the GOP Governors race. Similar to what Graddick vs Baxley did to de-rail the Dems chances back in the 1980’s. History repeats itslef.
DC, I don’t think so (although it could blow up for other reasons). The Graddick-Baxley thing was very different. There was no recount there. Everyone agreed that Graddick got the most votes and won but then the Democratic Executive Committee went into a backroom and just decided that Baxley should be declared the winner because they divined that crossover voters (Republicans voting in the Democratic run-off) had given Graddick the edge.
In this case, you are going to have (at some point) the Secretary of State saying that either Bentley or James came in second and deserves to be in the run-off. That declaration is not going to be made by the Republican Executive Committee.
Mr Conservative, I think you are right. BUT, if Bentley loses because the undervote is counted by hand (I think it should be), then expect Bentley and his supporters to cry foul.
If Bentley succeeds in getting the undervote not counted, and James and his supporters are convinced this cost them the election, expect them to cry foul.
I don’t think this is anywhere as vicious as the Baxley-Graddick fight, but the “winner” might not be able to count on the support of the “loser” at all.
I could be entirely wrong (I’m not infallible) but I am beginning to think Tim actually believes he won the second spot. With Bentley now calling for a halt to any examination of the undervote, Tim might just be right.
If Bentley loses his place because of James’ shenanigans, I will vote ANTI-JAMS any any election he appears.
No “major changes” so far…but then all
James needs is lots of little bitty ones, all in his direction.
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/06/alabama_recount_few_changes_in.html
Jamws already has a little bitty one.. He just needs to be a
gracious loser when this is all over and support Bentley.
Whoever the fool is that thinks Byrne doesn’t have some bad votes as well is crazy as a run over dog… Bradley is scared to death because he knows he can not control the voting in the the runoff and it is killing him.. He suffered at the end of his campaign with his one message “Union Bosses” “Paul Hubbert” is the cause of all our problems and he never offered any realy solutions.. We will see… We will see…
Mr. Conservative: unlike general elections, primary elections are political party events, and the secretary of state can only certify primary results which have been certified by the party as the winner/winners.
Bentley gained votes in the first day of the recount.
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/06/first_day_of_recount_helps_rob.html
Pragmatical, I think you are right, the Republican Executive Party may have more of a role than I initially thought. But I still think it is different from the Baxley-Graddick affair. Mike Hubbard may be the one who say X is the second place finisher and in the run-off but he is going to do it based on what the Secretary of State or local probate judges tell him the vote total is. He is not going to (like in the Graddick-Baxley manner) and say, “Well, the secretary of state says that Graddick got the most votes, but we are giving it to Baxley anyway.”
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/06/first_day_of_recount_helps_rob.html
Not working out for Tim.
Bentley may want to tell his Huckabee brain trust to shut up, they look dumb as hell blasting the process with headlines like “Recount Helping Bentley” coming out. Ah, but I’m sure they are smarter than all of us. Keep crying Hucks.
This whole thing is bad for the party but good for Democracy. The Tea Party people fail to see that the democratic process put us where we are today. And it wasn’t one election that got America here. It was several, and if you look at the results, we are a country that swings to extremes. I think there are too many people who get worked up for one November election and then sleep through the next. The anger of the Tea Party should be directed at those voters, because the problems with America came about through the legislative process of voting, not through some foreign power.
Lawyers and “businessmen” are fine, but James sure could have used a statistician on his team of advisers.
He seemed to think that his chance of winning this recount was worth spending a ton of money and effort (and possibly damage his future chances for office). A math guy would have told him he had only a tiny chance, probably under 1%, and by far the most likely result was that Bentley’s lead would grow, which appears to be happening here.
His team also claimed it was “nearly statistically impossible” that two vote machines at one precinct received the same number of total votes cast by each party, implying a double-counting error. But two machines right next to each other will inevitably be approached by a similar number of people. Therefore, across hundreds of machines in 67 counties, this was quite likely to happen somewhere and, in view of the different candidate breakdowns in the two boxes, random chance was the most probable explanation by far.
Recount helping Bentley is Al.com’s headline. Overall Bentley’s lead grew by a little bit yesterday. Now with many counties out of the way, its really unlikely the recount will work for James.
But apparently he is indicating he is going forward with the electioin contest hearing on June 24.
At first I thought this delay was going to hurt Bentley but it has kept his name in the news solid for 2 weeks now with no expense on his part. In the mean time, Byrne is still having to pay to run his lame commercials.