After the election

It’s as though we’ve been running a race, we’ve sprinted the last mile and the track announcer is telling us to hold our tickets. I cannot begin to imagine what this must be like for candidates.

In an environment where everything is forever speeding up, our elections are slowing down. The trade-off is significantly higher turnout. The price we pay is to be patient. I don’t know about you, but that’s not my strong suit.

So, just how many ballots are left to be counted? In San Mateo County, people who make a study of elections data say it could be somewhere between 100,000 to 105,000. That would mean a voter turnout perhaps as high as 70%, not the 31% reported on the county elections site as of Wednesday afternoon, before the next update. In Santa Clara County, it could be another 200,000-plus.

How those numbers break down in the undecided races is anybody’s guess, although the leading Democrat in the 13th Senate, Josh Becker guessed about 100,000 outstanding ballots in that race, according to a campaign email he sent out yesterday.

13TH SENATE: From the beginning, there was a distinct possibility that the five Democrats in this race would divide up the vote and that Republican Alex Glew win a spot on the November ballot, where he is likely to get wiped out by the Democrat. That’s what happened — he was the top vote-getter in the San Mateo County portion of the district, and a strong third in Santa Clara County, which is about one-third of the district.

In second is Becker, although the additional ballots may flip Glew and Becker. A case could be that Glew voters turned in their ballots early and that the vast majority of the uncounted ballots will be Democrats. 

But the numbers don’t bode well for the other Democrats, each of whom ran well in their respective counties, but poorly in the rest of the district. Indeed, only Glew and Becker got around the same percentage of the vote in both counties. For Becker, it spoke to the campaign he ran and his mid-district base of support. For Glew, he was the only Reep. But Sally Lieber, as an example, got about 25% of the vote in Santa Clara County, but only 12% in San Mateo County.

Could someone vault over Glew or Becker? Anything’s possible, but third-place finisher Shelly Masur would have to jump from 15% of the vote to about 25%. Could she get 30-35% of the outstanding ballots? That’s a pretty steep hill to climb and would represent a bloc of voters who ran entirely counter to all the votes already tallied.

COOLING ON SCHOOLS: The San Mateo Union High School District bond measure was the only one of six school measures that didn’t appear to pass. It was at 54.2% and needed 55% to pass, so it could still get over the transom.

And while all of the other measures passed, most did so with substantially less support than school measures have enjoyed in past elections. That prompted San Mateo County Supervisor Dave Pine to suggest on the Peninsula TV Election Night Show that voters may be wearying of a seemingly constant stream of school bonds.

THE REAL SHOCKER: In Foster City, many thought the recall of Councilman Herb Perez was very close. Well. The yes vote is now just more than 77%. In a phone conversation yesterday, Perez made an interesting point: His second and final term was supposed to end last year. The council voted to move its elections to even-numbered years, and Perez got a fifth year, which became the year he finally wore out his welcome.

ELSEWHERE ON THE BALLOT: Congresswomen Jackie Speier and Anna Eshoo both advanced to the November election with ease, but the general election could be a source of aggravation for Eshoo. In the March 3 election, Democratic Saratoga Councilman Rishi Kumar did his best to hector her. He sent out a districtwide mailer, but mostly he hounded her online (and the suspicion here is that all the comments on his online posts were written by Kumar). She still got three times the votes, but he kept her below 60% — 58.4% to 15.9% — and it was enough to get him into the November election.

Mark Simon is a veteran journalist, whose career included 15 years as an executive at SamTrans and Caltrain. He can be reached at marksimon@smdailyjournal.com.