election numbers mystifying
This morning, after putting the Daily Journal to bed at 1 a.m., we came into the office to find that Marsha Wharff's office had reissued vote totals in the Ukiah City Council race showing FEWER total votes than she had posted at 12:30 a.m. this morning.
How do you come up with fewer votes?
At Marsha's office they don't know.
There's speculation that perhaps some votes got counted twice last night. That's not very comforting.
Also, Marsha and her crew went home this morning and, Marsha, like Scarlet O'Hara, declared she would think about it tomorrow.
I don't know how, when you have two important races hanging out there - city council and sheriff - that you go home.
Also, why don't they know how many uncounted ballots are still out there?
I got an email from a voter in the Village of Mendocino last night who complained that when we went to a local polling place to hand in his absentee ballot, he was told to simply throw into an open basket sitting on a nearby table. No lid, no procedure, just "OK, throw it over there."
Some people, when they went to a poll to hand in an absentee ballot were asked for ID before leaving it. Others were not. Why?
Somehow, I fell less confident about these elections with each successive experience with mail-in voting.
A banner appeared over State Street in Ukiah yesterday hosted by Ukiah Valley Association for Habilitation which had some kind of unreadable message on it and then, clearly readable, a message to read more about it in the Daily Journal. UVAH did not have our permission to put our name on their banner and if you're one of the people out there who thought it was some kind of message from us about mudslinging in the recent election (that's how weird the banner appears) it was not. We had nothing to do with it. We did agree to do a story with UVAH about some of the successes they've had with their employment programs for the handicapped and that story is scheduled next week.
Someone suggested to me that I Google Patrick Bateman and I did and found that it is the name of a character in a movie called American Psycho, who is, among other things, a stocks and bonds guy. That's when I decided that our blogger is perhaps riffing off of that for whatever personal reasons he has and banned him. He has returned with more of the same and I will continue to ban him because he is not blogging in the spirit of communication. I let him rant about me and this newspaper several times before coming to that conclusion and as many of you know I have no problem with people who disagree with me or the Daily Journal. I never put editor's replies on letters that simply criticize us or a story. I put notes on letters that challenge why we did something a certain way because I believe it helps clarifiy the things we do and the decisions we make every day and helps make us more transparent.