I am following two very close races:
- MoCo Council D5, where Tom Hucker leads Evan Glass by 217 votes (out of 18,609 cast)
- MD D19 Delegate, where Maricé Morales leads Charlotte Crutchfield by 399 votes (out of 26,854 cast)
These races are not over, because MoCo Board of Elections (BoE) still has not processed about 2100 provisional ballots. These ballots result from registration discrepancies found when voters sign in at the polling place. The voters are allowed to vote, but their registrations have to be investigated and validated before their votes are actually counted. The BoE will start gong through these tomorrow.
So, do the candidates who trail by 200 or 400 votes actually have a chance at this point? Unlikely and here’s why:
- The approximately 2100 provisional ballots are county wide. (The BoE could not tell me in advance of processing them how many fall into which districts.) With eight state districts in the county and five county districts, and assuming a relatively smooth distribution of provisionals across the county, that would mean approximately 263 provisionals per state district and 420 per county district.
- An unknown number of these provisional ballots will be disallowed, meaning that the actual number counted will be lower than these estimates.
- So, for Crutchfield to overtake Morales would require her to win more than 100% of the outstanding votes; that is, her only chance is if for some reason D19 has a huge surplus of provisional ballots and then she would have to win virtually all of them. Forgeddaboutit!
- For Glass to overtake Hucker, he would have to win 51.6% of the provisionals. Given Glass’s 37.44% of votes already counted, this is a stretch, but by no means impossible. With the likelihood that some of D5′s provisionals will be disallowed, the road for Glass to climb becomes that much steeper. Partisans of the two candidates in this race will be on pins and needles for days to come.
For all of those who stayed home this election, you have only yourselves to blame for not being among the handful of votes to decide these two squeakers.
Though I did not endorse Hucker in D5, I am rooting for him as hard as I can. Given the victories by the pro-development forces in the rest of the county (except for Marc Elrich’s first-place finish in the at-large race), Hucker would be the only potential moderate-growth progressive to partner with Elrich.
As I came out of my polling place yesterday, Glass approached me politely to say that he thought I (and the Post’s Bill Turque) had treated him unfairly by lumping him in with the developers. Of course, I first turned sour on Glass based on his horrific mailing about the transit center debacle. Only after that did Turque’s piece about the developers’ embrace of Glass come out. Anyway, I was mulling Glass’s point as I was on my way to Elrich’s victory party last night. Just then, I drove past Developers’ Row, the Lee (big developers) property at the corner of Colesville and East-West Highway, where they put up huge signs for their best pals. There stood a mega Glass sign, right next to Nancy Floreen’s and George Leventhal’s. One doesn’t get these gifts from developers without being in their pockets. I stopped wondering then and there whether Turque and I had been unfair to Glass in any way.
Full disclosure: I ended up voting for Hucker, notwithstanding my endorsement of Terrill North. I knew that the Hucker-Glass race would be very close and that my friend Terrill didn’t stand a chance.
I am delighted to see Morales beat Crutchfield in D19, given Crutchfield’s association with Ben Kramer and Alec Stone.
©2014 Keith Berner
