Saved the best for last!
- The Secretary of State’s unofficial totals
- Saxby Chambliss (Ri) short 16,895 of 50%
- SoS Karen Handel calls for investigation of long delays in tabulating absentee ballots
- Political heavyweights expected for runoff campaign: John McCain sure, Barack Obama hopeful, Sarah Palin whah?
- View from Atlanta suburb Marietta: Early votes an "inconvenience for politicians." This one’s worth reading for the – ahem – writing. (snark)
- Dozens of voters fail to bring evidence of their citizenship to elections officials by the Friday deadline; their votes will be discarded.
- Campaign fundraising and spending Unfortunately, these figures are from October 15 (If anyone has more timely information, please comment it.)
- The latest Freedom’s Watch ad in support of Saxby Chambliss is no surprise. See the ad, which is currently on air, below.
1) With 99% of Georgia’s counties reporting, the Secretary of State’s unofficial totals
United States Senator,99% of precincts reporting
Chambliss Republican
Candidates Party Votes % of Votes
Saxby Chambliss Republican 1,864,909 49.8%
Jim Martin Democratic 1,754,108 46.8%
Allen Buckley Libertarian 127,785 3.4%
Totals 3,746,802
Unofficial And Incomplete Results of the Tuesday, November 04, 2008 General Election Last Updated Friday, November 07, 2008 11:30:16 PM
The results displayed are UNOFFICIAL AND INCOMPLETE until certified by both county election superintendents and the Secretary of State, a process that will not be completed until the week of November 10. These unofficial returns, transmitted by counties to the Secretary of State's Data Center on election night, are under continuous review for formatting accuracy and are subject to correction at any time. The results below reflect the votes for candidates listed on the ballot for this election. They do not include votes for qualified write-in candidates. Results for qualified write-in candidates will only be available upon certification of the election.
sos georgia
2 ) Saxby Chambliss (Ri) short 16,895 of 50%
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saturday, November 8, 2008, 10:00 AM
In the yet-to-be resolved U.S. Senate race, Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss is now 16,895 votes short of the magic 50-percent-plus-one mark that would let him avoid a runoff with Democrat Jim Martin.
For Chambliss, the 50-percent gap has increased more than 800 votes since Friday morning, though the overall percentages have not: Chambliss, 49.8 percent; Martin, 46.8 percent; and Libertarian Allen Buckley, 3.4 percent.
AJC Insider
- Secretary of State Karen Handel has called for an investigation into Fulton County’s long delay in tabulating absentee ballots this week.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saturday, November 08, 2008
By Jeremy Redmon, Mary Lou Pickel
Secretary of State Karen Handel has called for an investigation into Fulton County’s long delay in tabulating absentee ballots this week.
In an interview Friday morning, Handel said she would talk with the Georgia attorney general’s office later in the day about the matter.
A full report from the secretary of state inspector general’s office will be presented to the State Elections Board, Handel said.
"It is clear that Fulton County has had a systemic breakdown in its county elections office," Handel said. The State Elections Board makes decisions on whether there is probable cause to refer a case for sanctions and/or criminal prosecution.
As for the possible penalties, "it’s too early to speculate," said Matt Carrothers, Handel’s spokesman.
Handel said the State Elections Board can levy fines of as much as $5,000 per violation of state election code.
Fulton County began tabulating about 31,000 absentee paper ballots Tuesday morning.
Workers continued until about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, then went home because of exhaustion.
Work resumed early Wednesday morning and again continued all night. Thursday, the tabulating finished about midnight.
Those who tabulate absentee ballots are supposed to remain sequestered in a room until the close of the polls on Election Day. They also are supposed to continue working until all the votes are counted, unless the county consults with the secretary of state’s office first, according to State Election Board rules. That is to protect the security of the ballots and to prevent premature release of results.
Fulton County officials did call the secretary of state’s office on Election Night to ask if they could leave for the evening and return on Wednesday, Carrothers said.
They were told not to go, he said, but Fulton County decided to let them leave. A Fulton spokesman said the county was concerned that workers would make mistakes because they were exhausted.
Other counties kept their workers in place until they had tabulated all their absentee ballots, Carrothers said.
Gwinnett County had to count about 30,000 absentee paper ballots —- about the same as Fulton.
Gwinnett workers also had to hand-duplicate about 15,000 flawed paper ballots. Gwinnett had sent out thousands of non-machine-readable paper ballots by mistake in the weeks before the election and had to fix that problem on Election Day by transferring the votes by hand onto machine-readable ballots.
Gwinnett completed the hand-copying and tabulation by 10:30 Wednesday morning.
Fulton had markedly fewer paper ballots to transfer by hand.
About 10 Fulton election staffers were on hand late Friday night, waiting to count about 500 so-called overvote ballots —- ballots that may have errant or duplicate marks for a candidate or ballot issue.
A bipartisan vote review panel had examined only half of the sketchy ballots by 10 p.m. Friday, election officials said, but they anticipated completing all of the ballots, and letting election workers finish counting them before the night was over.
April Pye, interim director of the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections, acknowledged Thursday that the process was slow.
"Looking ahead in the future, we need an army of people," she said. "We need to plan on a much larger scale for early and absentee voting."
ajc metro
- With the stakes so high, a parade of political heavyweights is expected to beat a path through Georgia in the coming weeks.
The Chambliss camp has been in touch with Mr. McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, but nothing has been confirmed.
Chambliss spokeswoman Michelle Grasso said Mr. McCain had committed to come to Georgia, but they were working on a date.
Mr. McCain carried Georgia by 52 percent to Mr. Obama's 47 percent. Mr. Chambliss endorsed Mr. McCain just before the state's Feb. 5 presidential primary.
Nonetheless, Mr. Obama did draw new Democratic voters to the polls, especially in metro Atlanta. Mr. Martin will need to get those voters back out to win a runoff in the GOP-leaning state. His first runoff ad acknowledged as much. It featured footage of an Obama speech and said Mr. Martin would help the new president "get our economy moving again."
http://chronicle.augusta.com/...
U.S. Sen. John McCain will come to Georgia to campaign for Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the Moultrie lawmaker’s campaign confirmed Friday.
"We just have to work out the dates," said Chambliss’s spokeswoman, Michelle Grasso.
Grasso said the campaign is also in touch with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s office about a possible Georgia appearance.
"She wants to come down, but right now we are working with her schedulers to see if that’s possible," Grasso said.
Chambliss is headed for a Dec. 2 runoff with Democratic challenger Jim Martin of Atlanta. Neither candidate got a majority of the vote in their Nov. 4 contest with Libertarian Allen Buckley.
A high-profile runoff between Chambliss and Martin will likely attract political bigwigs from both sides.
Martin’s campaign has already been in touch with President-elect Barack Obama about a possible Georgia appearance, but Obama had not confirmed an appearance as of Friday.
Even though Obama won the presidency, McCain led the vote tally in Georgia.
ajc metro
- View from Atlanta suburb Marietta:
Marietta Daily Journal
By Brandon Wilson
[Entire article sic]
COBB COUNTY - The impact of the mass amounts of early voters, as well as Cobb's drift from a strong Republican county, are at least two significant issues for analysis in the aftermath of Nov. 4.
Nearly half of Cobb voters who casted ballots in this presidential election cycle voted early. One issue that will "complicate things" for politicians, as political science professor Dr. Kerwin Swint at Kennesaw State University puts it, is the fact that all votes that were cast early are not attributed to a voter's local precinct. Meaning, if a person voted early, that vote will not show up in the person's local precinct. Thus, making it very difficult for politicians to determine where his or her stronghold is in Cobb.
"Candidates are going to have to rely more on polling and telephone ID programs, which will be expensive," Swint said.
Marietta Mayor Bill Dunaway said the impact "is going to be a real dilemma."
"When I ran for mayor, I knew where the votes came from - the wards. So you spend most of the time and effort looking at those wards," he said. "Multiply that over the county - I don't know how they're going to do it."
Matt Towery, a former state representative, former campaign manager for Newt Gingrich and founder of Insider Advantage Georgia, agrees it is going to be an "inconvenience for politicians."
He said having the ballot indicate which precinct the early voter is assigned could rectify the issue.
However, equally and perhaps more inconvenient is the impact the high number of early votes had on the media this election cycle, Towery said.
Towery was getting ready to report returns live on Tuesday at 10 p.m. when he looked down at his computer monitor and said, "Where's the beef?"
With about 70 percent of Georgia precincts reporting, there were only about 2 million votes being reported, he said. Georgia ended up having roughly 4 million ballots cast, according to the secretary of state.
It was a similar situation at the Marietta Daily Journal.
Since all early votes were clumped together and did not come in until the next day, it skewed reported results Tuesday night - especially since, at least in Cobb, early votes were split rather equally between Democrats and Republicans.
When early ballots were finally included in the county, all the sudden Cobb Republican Sheriff Neil Warren and Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, for example, saw their seemingly comfortable lead diminish in Cobb by 4 to 5 percentage points. State Rep. Steve "Thunder" Tumlin (R-Marietta), whose race was too close to call at press time after midnight on Tuesday, ended up losing to Democrat Pat Dooley.
According to certified numbers from Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration, with all votes tallied, Chambliss received 53.3 percent of the ballots cast in Cobb, while Warren garnered 59.9 percent. In Wednesday's Journal, a graphic not including early votes showed Chambliss at 57 percent and Warren at 64 percent.
Towery believes election divisions should have received clearer instructions on how and when to report early votes.
Further, Towery believes so much early voting could be "dangerous for the public," noting some people's concerns that a lot of early ballots may not have gotten into the system.
"When you don't know where the votes are coming in from, it opens the door for possible abuse," he said.
He said Cobb maintains a very clean election department, but he has a "greater concern with other counties."
Dunaway thinks there will be a push for legislators to try and change the length of time registered voters can cast ballots early.
Another interesting fact regarding early votes is how split they were for president-elect Barack Obama and John McCain.
Speculation is that minorities were more motivated this cycle and thus casted early votes. However, this could also indicate a shift in political climate for the county.
Swint said trend lines and demographics do indicate that Cobb's four southern cities, Marietta, Smyrna, Austell and Powder Springs - all of which were carried by Obama in Tuesday voting - are becoming less Republican.
Towery, who said the county became strongly Republican in the '80s, "is slowly tending back to a 50/50 Democratic and Republican county."
"We are not there yet, but if trends continue like they have been over the last 10 years, by the 2012 presidential election a Democratic candidate may be able to win countywide," Towery said.
The county's two northern cities, however, Acworth and Kennesaw - which went to McCain on Tuesday - are even leaning further to the right, Swint said.
Precinct data from Cobb Elections shows that McCain carried unincorporated Cobb. The official numbers for the six cities, unincorporated Cobb, early votes and provisional ballots, certified Friday by Cobb Elections officials, show 170,957 votes, or 54 percent, for McCain, and 141,216 votes, or 45 percent, for Obama. Smyrna resident and Libertarian presidential candidate Bobb Barr garnered 2,966, or 1 percent.
Former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes earlier told the Journal, "When Obama takes over 45 percent of the vote in Cobb, it's a new day."
Towery said when he was in the state legislature in the mid '90s, Barnes had told him that the county will end up being Democratic again.
"And you know what, he may be right," Towery said.
http://www.mdjonline.com/...
- Most challenge ballots substantiated; Dozens of voters fail to bring evidence of their citizenship to elections officials by the Friday deadline. Their votes will be discarded.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saturday, November 08, 2008
By Mary Lou Pickel
Dozens of ballots cast in the presidential election in metro Atlanta won’t be counted because of challenges over citizenship.
On Thursday and Friday, metro area elections boards held hearings to decide what to do with "challenge" ballots from voters whose citizenship was questioned.
Voters whose ballots were thrown out did not present documents proving citizenship.
Georgia has instituted a controversial system of verifying citizenship of newly registered voters. The procedure has been questioned by the U.S. Department of Justice and is the subject of a lawsuit.
About 4,770 voters in Georgia were informed last week they would have to vote on a paper "challenge" ballot on Election Day because their citizenship was in question.
It was up to the voters to clear up the matter with their county elections office this week in order for their challenged vote to count.
In Gwinnett County, 300 people used the paper "challenge" ballot because the state was unsure whether they were citizens. Of those, 192 returned to the county elections office this week to bring documents proving they are citizens, said Lynn Ledford, Gwinnett’s elections director.
But 108 voters did not return. Gwinnett’s board of elections held a hearing Friday morning to give those voters one last chance to prove their citizenship. No one attended, so the board will not count their votes.
"We hate to have to do this," said Joan Zellner, vice chairman of the Gwinnett County Board of Registration and Elections.
In Cobb County, 227 people cast challenge ballots on Election Day. Of those, 161 returned to furnish their documents, said Beth Kish, Cobb county’s voter registration manager. Many people faxed in proof of their citizenship status, she said. "To have this many cleared up is fantastic," Kish said.
But 51 voters who cast challenge ballots had not provided proof of citizenship when the county held a hearing on Friday. Those votes will not be counted.
Georgia’s secretary of state verifies citizenship by checking voter registration application information against records held by the Georgia Department of Driver Services.
Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel has said only newly registered voters were checked, or those who changed an essential piece of information on their voter registration card, including name, date of birth, driver’s license number or Social Security number.
In DeKalb County it looked as if hundreds of people might have fallen into the noncitizen category, but on Friday, the county dumped only 39 ballots.
In DeKalb, 66 voters cast challenge ballots on Election Day. In the two following days, 27 of those voters came to the elections office, proving their right and ensuring their votes were counted, said DeKalb Election Director Linda Latimore.
"We had naturalization papers, passports, birth certificates, the whole lot," Latimore said of the documents that proved citizenship.
When the Georgia secretary of state gave DeKalb an updated list of voters who were not thought to be citizens last fall, there were more than 700 names.
Many of those, though, were flagged incorrectly, from something as simple as transposed numbers on their drive’s licenses or because they had common names, Latimore said.
Some of those red-flagged had even been registered for 25 years and were able to bring in their old voter ID cards, which showed their place of birth.
None of the Election Day voters in DeKalb whose ballots were challenged tried to pass muster with false documents, which would have indicated an attempt at fraud.
Instead, no one showed up Friday afternoon at the DeKalb election office training room to bring the right documents. The 39 bright pink envelopes, showing they were challenged, will end up being tossed.
Fulton County had 23 challenge ballots on Election Day, elections officials said Friday.
Thirteen people returned to show their documents this week, and on Friday no one showed at a hearing. Officials said they will throw out 10 ballots.
The Clayton County Board of Elections and Registration voted unanimously Friday morning to accept two citizenship challenge ballots after voters provided the appropriate identification.
The board voted unanimously to reject four ballots from voters who did not provide identification by the deadline.
http://www.ajc.com/...
- Fundraising and Spending
U.S. News as of October 15, 2009
Unfortunately, these figures are from October 15 (If anyone has more timely information, please comment it.)
Saxby Chambliss (as of Oct. 15, 2008)
Contributions and loans: $7,662,154
Spent: $8,906,639
Cash on hand: $836,008
Jim Martin (as of Sept. 30, 2008)
Contributions and loans: $2,392,590
Spent: $2,300,250
Cash on hand: $92,339
Allen Buckley (as of October 15, 2008)
Contributions and loans: $21,582
Spent: $18,039
Cash on hand: $5,583
http://www.usnews.com/...
- The Freedom’s Watch attack on Democrat Jim Martin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, November 7, 2008, 07:25 PM
Freedom’s Watch is a pro-Republican 527 that has played in other U.S. Senate races, and had sponsored ads on behalf of Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss in the general election.
No surprise with the ad below, which is currently on air:
youtube