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Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Second TX Primary Results Open Thread

Posted by DavidNYC

Note: All times are local (Central) time.

[10:03 p.m.] Up to 159 precincts now, but the results are not much changed. Unfortunately, Webb is still at zero, and many of the precincts which haven't come in yet are from pro-Cuellar areas.

I should add that a couple of members of the Band of Brothers are facing primaries tonight: Duane Shaw in TX-01 and Ted Ankrum in TX-10.

[10:10 p.m.] An aside: The Swing State Project just clocked in its 2,000,000th visitor ever a few minutes ago. We reached 1 million only six months ago (and it took us nearly two years to reach that mark). Thanks, well, a million!

[10:16 p.m.] Does this even make any sense? From the Laredo Morning Times:

Because of a technical difficulty, results from the Democratic and Republican primaries have been delayed.

The machine built to read the personal electronic ballots was incorrectly programmed, and as a result the votes must be extracted from flash cards attached to each machine.

I don't understand that second paragraph at all. The first half of the sentence refers to one machine, singular. The second half refers to multiple machines. What on earth is going on here?

[10:20 p.m.] Congrats to the SSP on the success - it's fantastic to be a part of that.

I know everyone is playing the waiting game, refreshing those pages like crazy. I am juggling these updates with requests from old media with requests from other candidates, who are running in local elections who have decided to spend their evening here with Ciro awaiting their own results. Also noteworthy are the dozens of union members who have been working these streets everyday to try and get the Bexar County vote out.

Ciro is getting ready to go live on the 10:30 news here in town. More from here when it happens.

Posted at 11:04 PM in 2006 Elections, Texas | Technorati

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Comments

Anyone hear if Republicans tried to get their people to vote for Cuellar since there was no GOPer in the primary?

Posted by: JJ at March 7, 2006 11:12 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

check this out....http://airwolf.lmtonline.com/news/pagea1.pdf

Look at Roxanne Martinez, the chief deputy of Webb County, programming an electronic voting machine on the bottom of the page.

Posted by: hufferwuffer at March 7, 2006 11:15 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

"Because of a technical difficulty, results from the Democratic and Republican primaries have been delayed."

Somewhere in the depths of hell the ghost of "Landslide Lyndon" Johnson is having a good laugh.

Posted by: billmon at March 7, 2006 11:26 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Based on a literal reading (assuming that the reporter actually knows what they are talking about), it sounds like the following:

1) there is one central tabulator that is programmed to read ALL flash cards.

2) Flash cards are attached to each and every voting machine.

3) The central machine is down, so each and every flash card from each and every machine must be tabulated by hand, separately - they are presumably read from their parent machine or some such.

Posted by: RedDan at March 7, 2006 11:28 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Grim. he seems to be down in every precinct that has any significant fraction reporting, mostly down by well more than Morales is getting. Obviously, it's total votes that matters, not percentages, but this looks bad. What went wrong?

County 2004% Precincts 2006%
----------------
Guadalupe 73% 39/39 57% - down 16 pts
Hays 64% 19/19 55% - down 9 pts
Frio 54% 11/11 37% - down 17 pts
McMullen 40% 6/6 14% - down 25 pts
Bexar 80% 96/102 75% - down 5 pts
Comal 72% 4/5 58% - down 14 pts
Wilson 65% 11/25 50% - down 15 pts

Posted by: Jonathan Dursi at March 7, 2006 11:28 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

The difference is the mighty (I)

Posted by: VirginiaBelle at March 7, 2006 11:31 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Late in the afternoon of Election Day, the corrupt South Texas border bosses whose support [LBJ] had purchased asked him when they should report the voting results from their counties, and he violated a fundamental rule of Texas politics: report your key precincts -- the ones in which you control the results -- only at the last minute, so your opponent would not know the total he had to beat. . .

Robert A. Caro
Means of Ascent
1990

Posted by: billmon at March 7, 2006 11:33 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Question for the campaign workers on this site:

So far, Ciro has done slightly worse in his home territories, and Cuellar has done slightly better in those same territories.

My question is this: How strong an effort was put into Webb County/Laredo by the Ciro campaign?

What are the potentials for reversing some of the losses in other areas? basically, if Ciro can swing Laredo/Webb in his direction, then the 58-34 lead may be enough.

If the pattern for the rest of the county holds in Laredo/Webb, then we're toast...right?

So, again, how much ground game went on in Webb/Laredo?

Posted by: RedDan at March 7, 2006 11:36 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

iVotronic machines are used in some Texas counties. From that link:

ES&S' iVotronic Touch Screen Voting System is a poll worker-activated, portable, multilingual touchscreen system that records votes on internal flash memory. A poll worker uses a device called a Personal Electronic Ballot (PEB; pictured above at left) to turn the machine on and enable voting. Voters choose their ballot language and then make their selections using a touchscreen, much in the same way that modern ATMs work. When the polls close, poll workers move summary data from each machine onto the PEB. The PEBs are then transported to election headquarters or their contents transmitted via a computer network.

I don't know that these are the particular machines used, but it kinda makes sense, if so.

Interestingly, one of those iVotronic machines was stolen this week from a Dallas county election judge

Posted by: sele at March 7, 2006 11:43 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I guess we can only hope that the League of Conservation Voters anti-Cuellar ads dampened some of the Webb enthusiasm. (For the record, I think this is a faint, but possible hope.) Because frankly, from what I've read, I think Ciro's campaign concentrated on their base and ceded Webb/Laredo to Cuellar.

Posted by: HellofaSandwich at March 7, 2006 11:43 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

The actual link for how iVotronic machines work. Sorry for the screwup.

Posted by: sele at March 7, 2006 11:46 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I don't think it's a good showing of his ground game when he has to send people "down there" on election night. Shouldn't Ciro already had people "down there" already?

Posted by: JJ at March 7, 2006 11:46 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Precisely, Billmon. I linked to your post on the subject vis-a-vis OH-02 in the thread below.

Posted by: DavidNYC at March 7, 2006 11:48 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

OK here's a stab at the "personal electronic ballot" issue. Sequoia machines (I don't know what kind they have there in Texas) have what I believe to be a flash card that must be inserted by each voter into the voting machine. It has some function of validating that ther person about to vote is permitted to vote. It is returned to the election judges and reused. That may be the "personal electronic ballot" if their system has some similar process.

The other flash cards are probably the storage for the votes and are separate from the validation card that the voter carries from the judges to the machine and inserts it while voting and removes it when done.

Have I made things more confusing?

Posted by: Jeff Wegerson at March 7, 2006 11:49 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Webb reporting

8,145 454 789 9,388

As EARLY votes. That would mean almost all the votes where early ones. This is NOT what other counties have.

What is going on here?

Posted by: Noel Schutz at March 7, 2006 11:53 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Even Webb's *early* results put Ciro behind in total vote count...

County     2004  Precincts  2006 so far
---------+-----+----------+------------
Atascosa   63%   1/24       29% - down 34 pt
Bexar      80%   97/102     74% - down 6 pt
Comal      72%   4/5        58% - down 14 pt
Frio       54%   11/11      37% - down 17 pt
Guadalupe  73%   39/39      57% - down 16 pt
Hays       64%   19/19      55% - down 9 pt
LaSalle    43%   1/7        33% - down 10 pt
McMullen   40%   6/6        14% - down 25 pt
Webb       15%   0/30       8%  - down 7 pt
Wilson     65%   11/25      50% - down 15 pt
Zapata     27%   1/8        14% - down 13 pt

Posted by: Jonathan Dursi at March 7, 2006 11:56 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment