From Sabato's Crystal Ball
"As of Wednesday afternoon, Gov. Jeff Colyer (R-KS) trailed Kansas
Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) 40.6%-40.5% in Kansas’ gubernatorial
primary. If Colyer’s deficit holds, it would mark the first primary loss
for an incumbent governor in 2018.
"If the final outcome is similar to the current vote, Colyer’s
defeat would make history: His present margin of defeat stands as the
narrowest ever for an incumbent governor in a primary. Conversely, if
Colyer wins based on the counting of outstanding votes and/or a recount,
he could claim the record for narrowest primary win among incumbent
governors."
I don't think I've ever read a good thing about Kobach. Even some younger friends who went to college with him have never said a good thing; in fact, some pretty critical things.
He headed Trump's "Illegal Voting Commission"; which it blew up in his face.
Question: How come he [Kobach] did so well? Even if he's not the winner?
I don't claim to know a thing about Kansas politics, nor either of the candidates, but my initial take is that this is the internal conservative civil war between the Establishment and the Trumpistas.
ReplyDeleteYour description of Kobach's near-universal revilement - by everyone except a big chunk of conservative voters - sounds pretty much identical to Ted Cruz. FWIW.
The Kansas Ds are slobbering all over themselves to run against Kobach, especially now that the word is out about his moonlighting work while he was Kansas Secy of State. (Moonlighting by public officials is legal in Kansas.) He sold a bunch of little towns on passing his ordinance to "fight" illegal immigrants, and then defended the towns against the lawsuits. Made $800,000 that way while losing most of the cases. While allegedly serving the voters of Kansas. If the election goes to a recount -- as it sure looks like doing -- guess who presides over the recount? The Kansas Secretary of State. And look who that is. As Trumpians go, this one is a candidate for the Fourflusher Hall of Fame. Who wouldn't want to run against him?
ReplyDeleteSecretary of State! Would that be collusion?
ReplyDeleteAccording to a Kansas City Star report, unless he recuses himself, Kobach’s position as Kansas secretary of state dictates that he would decide the price his opponent would have to pay for a recount, if Colyer decides to request one. This presents an ethical quandary, if not a legal one.
ReplyDelete“He could set the bond so high that no one could afford that,” Kansas City attorney Mark Johnson told the Star.
"He could set the bond so high that no one could afford that,”
ReplyDeleteIf we were talking about somebody else, I'd say, "Oh, he would never do that."
Seems the Kobach/Colyer results in Kansas are amazingly close. CNN is reporting that with 311,000 votes tallied, Kobach's lead is .004%. If that's accurate, it's a difference of something like 12 or 13 votes. There are still absentee and provisional ballots to count. And reports of inaccurate counting are starting to emerge.
ReplyDeleteKobach has announced he'll recuse himself from involvement in determining the winner.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/09/politics/kris-kobach-kansas-republican-governor-primary/index.html
Btw, I know what an absentee ballot is, but I confess I wasn't sure what a provisional ballot is. According to Google, "In elections in the United States, a provisional ballot is used to record a vote when there are questions about a given voter's eligibility. The guarantee that a voter could cast a provisional ballot if the voters states that he or she is entitled to vote is required by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002."
Sorry, seems my decimal point was off by one place value. Kobach's lead is .04%. I guess that makes it something like 124 votes.
DeleteJim, When we were tots nobody needed provisional ballots because all the poll helpers knew everyone in the polling district. Too much moving around, too many voters of color and too much reliance on electronics instead of neighbors' eyes led to all sorts of tripwires being put in the law. And then came the whack-a-doodles like Kobach hollering "the illegals are coming, the illegals are coming," and sanity will never reign again.
DeleteIn 2000 I became something of an expert on counting votes, and I can say without fear of contradiction: Mechanical machines (the ones where the voter physically moves levers) cannot be rigged if representatives of both parties look at the numbers before the voting begins. This involves opening up the back and looking for 0's across the dials. Louis Gohmert could even do it. The ONLY way to rig the machine is to put votes on one dial -- and remove an equal number of votes from the opponent on another dial -- before the voting begins. If the dials all start at 0, rigging is impossible. (Of course, chicanery can still be worked through absentee ballots.)
Well, you say, if the machines are so good, why did so many states give them up? Because they are expensive to store (the states never thought they'd have to replace their electronics at the same rate idiots replace their Iphones). And there was money to be made selling new systems.
Until recently...2016? New York City used mechanical machines. I was never a poll watcher, but the usual complaints were canvassing voters near the polling place despite signs forbidding it. And then too, in my district the votes were so overwhelming Democratic in most election that there no close calls.
DeleteBut the machines were huge...the size of a typical NYC apartment closet. They were delivered by equally huge trucks and hauled away after to be stored in (who knows where). So there were a lot of logistics.
We now have a system of paper ballots (fill in the squares) that are scanned. Presumably the paper ballots are tallied against the computerized scan.
Of course, when Tammany ran things, voters were escorted to and from the bar on voting day. Probably didn't add up to many miscounts or close calls. So, I guess, that worked too.
Tom, were you personally scrutinizing hanging chads in 2000?
DeleteI stood behind the counters for awhile, among other things. I also had a source in the MIT-Princeton study of voting methods that ensued.
DeleteMy first experience with chads was with an election in Miami that turned into a riot of confusion. The elections supervisor went before a microphone to explain what was happening and passed out cold. I heard his thud on my car radio en route to the Miami News from the apparent loser's victory party. One does not forget such an experience. When the dust cleared, it was carefully explained to one and all how chads happen to get hung up and how to run your hand over the back of the card to make sure your chads don't go into the counter.
That election was settled the way we TRIED (before the Supreme Court decided it could decide the voters' will better than the voters) in 2000. In 2000, a variety of voting methods were employed in Florida. Martin County was the only one with machines. When they counted their votes, the number of votes matched the number of voters (among other things that seem to be difficult for Kansas to achieve this week). And when the re-count was ordered, it took Martin County less than a day to report that, yup, its totals matched the first count exactly. All the high-electronic counties kept getting different results.
Looks like they're still counting. As of earlier today, Kobach's margin had grown to about 300 votes.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/election/article216653870.html