Comments
Posted by aidan on November 26 at 4:42 p.m.
"A pre-holiday flurry of vote counting by three counties brought Hannah-Beth Jackson to within one-quarter of one percent of Tony Strickland"
If it's that close, doesn't that small of a margin warrant a re-count?
Posted by Prop 11 Passed on November 27 at 9:16 a.m.
Jerry, why all the gerrymandering comments about LA County in the last few stories? The fact is, SD19 IS A BLUE DISTRICT that went to a Republican in a year where everyone with an (R) next to their name got crushed. Is that not impressive in any way?
Posted by baden on November 27 at 9:16 a.m.
Great news. What a relief it will be to see Jackson out of politics. It will take some time to erase all the disservice she has done to the 19th district, though.
Posted by hank on November 27 at 9:46 a.m.
I think like the presidential outcome, people wanted a change & Strickland was the candidate for such.
It is funny how when a Dem takes the win it is seen as change. But when a Rep takes it there is some sort of conspiracy like gerrymandering, voter fraud, negative campaigning, etc. to cast a shadow over the outcome :) henry
Posted by jerryroberts on November 27 at 11:14 a.m.
Note to Prop. 11 Passed on Nov. 27 - I'm not suggesting the 19th is an exceptional case of incumbency protection - it's more the norm - but rather a very good case study because of the blatant, last-minute machinations that pulled the L.A. portion in, after the new maps had already been released in 2001, and after Sen. McClintock complained that he needed more GOP votes. It's rare to see the way gerrymandering works in such a transparent way, and rarer still to see the effects play out in real time the way they did with the county-by-county counting of absentees and provisionals. The 19th was drawn as a red district, and registration in 2001 favored the GOP by six or seven points as I recall; Dems closed the gap, helped by waning GOP enthusiasm for President Bush, and Obama-driven voter reg drive helped in this cycle. There were other factors at play in Strickland-Jackson race, to be sure, which I'll be writing about in next week's Indie, but the gerrymandering dynamic seems especially salient. Thanks for commenting.
Posted by hank on November 27 at 3:15 p.m.
If the issue of "fair play" is @ question here, well, as my dearly departed mom used to say: "Fair, forget about it, no such thing. Wrong/right, just/unjust, yeah, but fair is a fantasy."
The waning GOP enthusiasm definately had to do w/ the above mentioned reasons, but there's another factor & that is the "what good is my vote if a court is going to overturn it?" mindset.
This goes back to prop 187 back in 1994 & how it was shot down by the state courts under duress from the federal government.
The same thing will happen w/ prop 8, the majority votes were for it, but it will soon be overturned by the courts & the voter's voice will get overridden once again.
That's what the voting process has become, a show of question, almost as if to say "let's go 2 out of 3" :) henry
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