Memo for 2008: A few votes can move mountains

If you needed any more evidence that every vote counts, just ask Sedgwick County Commission Chairman Ben Sciortino: He’s trailing District 5 challenger Gwen Welshimer by 36 votes and has to wait until provisional ballots are counted Monday to find out if he still has a job.
In the District 96 Kansas House race, Republican incumbent Willa DeCastro (in photo) appears to have lost to Democrat Terry L. McLachlan by an even narrower margin: 26 votes. I’m guessing both Sciortino and DeCastro personally know enough people who didn’t vote who might have made the difference.
Then there were the Senate races in Virginia and Montana, both of which Democrats won with razor thin margins. Think of that: You could say that Democratic control of the U.S. Senate was decided by fewer Montanans than it takes to fill a high-school gym.
Posted by Dave Knadler

4 Comments

  1. Steven Davis
    Posted November 9, 2006 at 7:48 am | Permalink

    I asked this on a different thread, isn’t it the County Commission who decide which provisional ballots count? If true, doesn’t Sorention have to recuse himself from deciding on ballots that would effect him?

    When it comes to County government, the above is not really a stupid question.

  2. hmmm ...
    Posted November 9, 2006 at 8:54 am | Permalink

    Good question. This is an inherent problem in any sort of vote-counting. Everyone knows each other down there. We have to be able to trust the judgment of those running the show. From what I have seen – both with gale and with Chapman before him – these guys are good technicians.

  3. Steven Davis
    Posted November 9, 2006 at 8:18 pm | Permalink

    Agree with the assessment of Gale and Chapman. They are good people.

  4. Joe Williams
    Posted November 10, 2006 at 12:09 pm | Permalink

    I love it that Libertarians were the ones that swinged the vote away from Republican. What a lesson.