I just woke up and found out Francine Busby lost...

[oldtime dfl_er]

...so were the machines "fixed"?

www.ThankYouRFK.com

[slackmaster]

1. Maybe coffee can help you with your siege mentality

I haven't seen any concrete evidence that the machines were tampered with.

[ShaneGR]

2. No, it was a 5% race.....

Two years ago it was a 20% race, not even close. This was a heavilly conservative District. A 5% vote gap is actually a REALLY good sign for Democrats nationwide. I enjoy the "Oh my god the sky is falling!" threads about that race, but the fact is just because the Republicans are sinking doesn't mean we are going to take every single seat.

[wryter2000]

11. I'm wondering

Is the corporate media going to spin what's really a victory for our side as a victory for them? I can just hear, "Republicans dodged a bullet..." "Republicans got a boost yesterday..." "Republican leaders are saying that Bilbry's victory is a good sign that they'll maintain control of Congress."

[skipos]

3. FWIW, SurveyUSA last poll showed a loss.

She lost in 2004 by over 20%, so she had a serious uphill battle and did well all things considered.

[Justitia]

4. I never disregard the possiblity of such things, but sometimes voters

are just hateful, brain-dead, corrupt or combination of all 3.

And sometimes it is a combination of all of those things that decide an election such as this.

[slackmaster]

5. How would you classify voters who don't even bother to vote?

Like almost 72% of registered voters in San Diego County?

Brain-dead, or just apathetic?

Deserving of what they get, perhaps?

[Justitia]

10. Yes, all of those things & it absolutely drives us (those who care) insane

Unfortunately, often people DO get the gov't they deserve, and they drag the rest of us down with them!

You want to shake them silly and ask "How much crap will it take?????"

I have no answer, and it is incredibly frustrating and demoralizing.

[LeftyMom]

6. She did astonishingly well considering the makeup of her district

It really de-legitimizes the election reform issue to raise the possibility of fraud without very good reason. By all means, if you have reason for concern spread it far and wide, but please don't get in the habit of crying wolf, it makes it harder to draw attention to the races where there is good reason to question the legitimacy of results.

[high density]

7. Probably the machines were fine

The red voters were the problem, but from what I've read she did quite well as a Democrat in this district.

[tjwash]

8. If cunningham could have ran for election from his prison cell...

...the people in the 50th would have voted for him.

It's just that sort of district, that is full of old-money defense contractor-real estate development-mortgage banker-millionaires. In short the Bush base of "haves and have-mores." Unlike other repugs, these guys actually do vote their interests.

[bluestateguy]

9. There are still 2 precincts out

I'm not conceeding.

[Misskittycat]

12. S.D. County used paper ballots with Diebold optical scanners.

Although I believe optical scanners can be tampered with, the use of paper ballots is better than touchscreens. Unfortunately, if we don't stop it, we will have Diebold touchscreens in November. I agree that the election reform movement is diminished if we throw the allegation around carelessly.

We did really well here in CA-50. I was very disappointed, but not surprised, particularly when I saw the absentee ballot results coming in immediately after the 8 pm close. At that point, based on absentee ballots, it was 50% to about 42%. Here, the absentee ballots always skew heavily Republican, so this was an improvement over prior races, but not quite enough. Enough hard-core Repubs were still voting Republican (although far fewer than before). Also, I knew that the Busby campaign had encouraged its core supporters to vote by absentee ballot. But I was hoping that the absentee ballot spread would have been a bit tighter. In fact, when I saw that result, I got a bit discouraged and didn't really want to have a nail-biter of a night, so I closed down my computer and switched over to BBC America for the rest of the evening, then went to bed, without knowing.

There's a lot more to say about the post-mortem, including some good news about what to do for the November election. The final results are not yet in, but it was about a 4 point spread. However, judging from the hard numbers, it was only about 5,000 votes' difference. It was a low turnout, so we have a lot of room to gain more voters for November.

Apparently, a key element here was the immigration issue, which of course is not necessarily going to be the hot button issue in other districts around the U.S. that it is here. We are a border town, so immigration is a BIG deal. Particularly in the last week or so, the Republican National Committee ads have hit hard against Busby, accusing her of supporting a plan that "some call amnesty" and that would probably eventually legalize some 11 million immigrants.

The issue of corruption was raised by Busby, and the DNCC -- I mean what kind of moron votes for a former lobbyist to Congress in this political climate: apparently many hard core Repubs care more about excluding aliens than they are disgusted by corruption.