State Legislature Special Election Megathread v2

[Virginiá]

Next moderated post from you Limo and I'm banning you from this board.

[GeorgiaModerate]

There will be a new special in GA HD-28 on December 4 to replace a previous result that has been invalidated due to many voters receiving the wrong ballots (more than enough to overcome the razor-thin margin in the original election).  This is a Republican primary, but effectively a general election because no Democrat was running in this very conservative district.

https://politics.myajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/redo-georgia-house-election-ordered-after-voters-cast-wrong-ballots/P3r7UmYVpsOAZMQoBin9vI/

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Next moderated post from you Limo and I'm banning you from this board.

Do what you want with Limo, I could care less, but don't pretend that this special wasn't a horrible result for Dems, especially considering the YUGE drop from the equally obscure jungle primary.

[Virginiá]

Next moderated post from you Limo and I'm banning you from this board.

Do what you want with Limo, I could care less, but don't pretend that this special wasn't a horrible result for Dems, especially considering the YUGE drop from the equally obscure jungle primary.

lol it was terrible. There is no disagreement from me. But I do understand in part why it happened.

My post wasn't really about that. Limo just used it to go into a tangent rife with hyperbole and krazen-like commentary, reminiscent of the posting that got him banned from the Congressional board. In discussion about this in the cave, the type of behavior that got him banned in the first place happened on both boards, but for whatever reason, he was only booted from Congressional. I don't know why that was, but if he keeps it up, I'm just going to finish the job. The gist is that I am not going through this bs for months more with him. I'm sick of it.

And gj with that straw man Wulfric.

[IceSpear]

The evidence is mounting, and it ain't pretty:


1. TX-23 polls show Hurd easily winning and Latino turnout weak.
2. SD-19 special elections shows massive swings to Republicans in heavily Latino areas.
3. Polls/primaries in CA-21, CA-39, CA-25, FL-26, and FL-27 all show Democrats disastrously and devastatingly underperforming Hillary numbers - by a lot.
4. New Nevada polls show Democrats collapsing, Arizona Senate race has become very tight after Sinema seemed to have a clear lead for months.
5. Ted Cruz is surging in Texas.

The blue wave will be irrelevant in Hispanic heavy areas. Thus, I am changing my rating of the House from Lean D (where I have had it for about a month) to Lean R. Once sure pickups, like TX-23, CA-25, CA-39, and FL-27 look drastically different and democratic candidates are even struggling in sunbelt districts with a small minority population like TX-07 and AR-02.

The blue wave is over.

Let me break down this trainwreck of a post one step at a time, even though it's not going to convince concern trolls like you about anything:

1. Polls can't tell you about Latino turnout at all. I hate when people explain poll results by saying "THERE'S LOW LATINO/(insert whatever subgroup) TURNOUT IN THIS AREA IN MIDTERMS" because polls can't predict turnout.

2. How much of that SD-19 swing was because turnout dropped hard for an obscure special election, thus meaning the electorate could've been much whiter than the actual demographics? It'll probably be a significantly more Hispanic electorate in 2018, let alone 2020 when this seat comes back up again.

3. CA-21 was never on the board at all because that area has laughable turnout AND a strong incumbent. The CA-39 poll had Trump approval at even in a Clinton +9 seat which isn't believable at all. That was also probably our toughest of the OC seats. CA-25 is still a tossup, given that Knight is only up 3 and he's under 50 in a 42-52 Trump approval seat.

FL-26 was always going to be tough because the GOP incumbent is really well liked (and even that isn't preventing his race from being within 3 points AND below 50 against an opponent with 32% name recognition LOL), and the two FL-27 polls are internals. One of those internals is from McLaughlin, which is a notoriously terrible firm that's missed races by 30+ points consistently. The other is from a random firm I've never heard of, and it could very well be just being pushed out to tell people "DONATE TO ME!!!!!"

4. The Nevada polls are in line with what we've seen in other Nevada polls, and Nevada polls have a LONG history of underestimating Democrats, as this post by IceSpear shows: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=301205.msg6407307#msg6407307

5. What surge? We have two outlier polls with Cruz +9 and O'Rourke +2, which cancel out largely to be a Cruz +4-5 race. Cruz +4 or Cruz +5 would be very much in line with what the race has been stuck at for months.

There's no point in posts like this, they only encourage him.

[OSR stands with Israel]

If Flores actually wins, then it means that Russians hacked the election totals to rig the results. No other rational explanation exists.

[snark]Of course - we did. We are SO interested in Texas state Senate race......[/snark]

I thought it was diebold lmao (Jfern believed diebold stole the election in 04 lmao)

[Badger]

Who had the bright idea to unban Andrew after like 2 seconds just so he could start up the same schtick for the 47th time? The mods are starting to make Charlie Brown look distrustful and skeptical of Lucy by comparison.

[Badger]

Next moderated post from you Limo and I'm banning you from this board.

(pleaseletithappenpleaseletithappenpleaseletithappenpleaseletithappenpleaselet....)

[CatoMinor]

In other news it appears the Spanish translation for the ballots in TX Senate District 19  (a very hispanic district) were translated with Google Translate, giving the wrong translation for the word "run-off" as "drainage". So for many Spanish speakers the ballots informed them that there was an election drainage.

[ON Progressive]

In other news it appears the Spanish translation for the ballots in TX Senate District 19  (a very hispanic district) were translated with Google Translate, giving the wrong translation for the word "run-off" as "drainage". So for many Spanish speakers the ballots informed them that there was an election drainage.

Why in God's name are they google translating ballots in TEXAS of all places? There's literally millions of Spanish speakers in Texas.

[NOVA Green]

In other news it appears the Spanish translation for the ballots in TX Senate District 19  (a very hispanic district) were translated with Google Translate, giving the wrong translation for the word "run-off" as "drainage". So for many Spanish speakers the ballots informed them that there was an election drainage.

Why in God's name are they google translating ballots in TEXAS of all places? There's literally millions of Spanish speakers in Texas.

Well to paraphrase Joe Stalin: "It's not the people that cast the votes that count, it's the people who count the votes"....

Perhaps in Tejas it might read more like this: "It's not those who vote or count the ballots, but rather those who Google Translate the ballots".

Biggest likelihood en realidad would be that Public Sector workers in local and statewide Texas election departments are much more likely to be Anglo because of the Seniority based system, and that overall it's probably a lot easier to get a decent paying job as a Bi-Lingual (English-Spanish) in the Private Sector, than the State Public Sector.

Obvious local Gvt jobs such as Teachers, Cops, etc being bilingual would be a plus, since these are perceived as tangible services that impact all residents and citizens of the Lone Star State.

I suspect that State and Local Election Departments, this is not a high priority when it comes to hiring, and job roles and responsibilities.

Additionally, in all fairness to the Great State of Texas, State and local GVTs have been squeezed dry of funding for many citizen services over the past few decades as a result of political decisions, and this means that corners get cut, especially for items viewed as net EXP vs REV, where you might have an individual who gets something added to their "job responsibilities" who takes a short-cut via Google Translate, just to check the box off their list, to get back to their "core" job duties.

Or it could just be a lazy employee, etc...

Obviously we need a more extensive Root Cause Analysis (RCA) on this, since essentially it's a "near miss" that exposes the fundamental gaps when it comes to fundamental Government services provided to the Citizens of Texas.

[CatoMinor]

Keep an eye on TX Sen District 5. Sexual harassment allegations have surfaced.

[jimrtex]

In other news it appears the Spanish translation for the ballots in TX Senate District 19  (a very hispanic district) were translated with Google Translate, giving the wrong translation for the word "run-off" as "drainage". So for many Spanish speakers the ballots informed them that there was an election drainage.

Here is a story about the mixup.

ACLU says Bexar County inaccurately translated ‘election runoff’ as ‘election drainage’

Here is the Bexar County elections website.

Bexar County Elections

Down at the lower right, there is an item to select a language. Select 'Spanish' or any other language and see what happens. It appears that Bexar  County learned from the special runoff and included the Spanish version of the election description. But if you translate to Spanish and then to English you will see that the election is

"November 6, 2018 - GENERAL, SPECIAL ELECTION, AND BONDS SET LETTER"

There is no evidence that any actual election materials such as ballots were mistranslated. These are usually translated by the SOS office, because there is a concern that an election, particularly referendums, could be overturned if different counties used different translations.

Harris County is required to provide Vietnamese translations, and there was concern that Fort Bend might have to also do so. There was a proposal to have the SOS provide standardized translations. The county election people one time asked the USDOJ what they did with the translations (submitted with a VRA Sectiom 5 preclearance). The USDOJ guy replied that they put them in a filing cabinet - "we don't have anyone who can read Vietnamese").

For example here is the election notice from Val Verde County.

Notice of special election (runoff)

"eleccion especial decisiva" translates to "decisive special election".

Atascosa County uses Microsoft translator, and translated

"Texas Senate District 19 Unexpired Term Special Election Run Off - September 18th" to

Senado de Texas distrito 19 expirado elección especial escurr - 18 de septiembre"

If Runoff had been used, it would have been translated as "la segunda vuelta" (second bike race around Spain).

A problem with the Atascosa website is I couldn't find a way to turn off the translation.

There is an underlying assumption that persons who are Hispanic (1) speak Spanish; and (2) are literate in Spanish. Someone with a minimal education in Spanish might be able to read Spanish because spellings are more regular, but might be limited if they only had a spoken vocabulary. Someone who was raised in the US and was educated in the US are likely to be able to read English better than they read Spanish. Naturalization requires some proficiency in English (there is an exception for the elderly).

There may be some US citizens who don't read English or Spanish. This might be true of migrant workers, whose education if any was hit and miss. But how many of these voters are going to log on to the Internet and navigate to a county election web site, and then figure out how to turn translation on.  They are either going to have their grandson figure out where the polling place is. Perhaps they would try to use the automatic translation. The number of persons perusing an election website to determine if their happened to be a special election is approximately zero. Someone who knew there was a special election is unlikely to have been confused by the translation. They just wanted to know when the election would be held and where early voting would occur (for a special election in a district, typically only the early voting elections in or near to the district are used).

If you are told that you have to provide all information in Spanish, it would seem like a pragmatic decision to use a tool that provides translation into Hindi and Russian etc.

It is hard to maintain a website. If you look at smaller county websites if they exist at all, this is quite obvious. Perhaps they had a high school student put some content up, but he didn't understand how to make the site maintainable. If someone else added some content later, they probably didn't understand the original scheme, so just edited the page source enough to make it work.

Some smaller counties.

Brewster County

Election web page is links to official documents all which include translated (and appear to use wording provided by SOS). Brewster County hired a new elections commissioner in 2017. Bilingual was not a requirement, but a plus.

Crockett County

No county web site. I did find links to county offices on the Ozona COC web site. County does appear to have email. 87% of the population lives in Ozona, so probably everyone knows the county cleark personally.

Dimmitt County

Very basic web site. Coverage of general election is sparse.

Edwards County

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

The Special State Legislative Elections across the country weren't even remotely on the networks radars for understandable reasons, but let's run down what happened, state by state.

Source, unless otherwise noted: https://ballotpedia.org/State_legislative_special_elections,_2018

Arkansas: Coming into the election, the GOP controlled the seats up for special election by a margin of 1-0. They maintained their 1-0 majority as a republican candidate ran unopposed.

Florida: Coming into the election, the GOP controlled the seats up for special election by a margin of 2-0. As one would expect given the sorry state of the Florida Democratic Party, this 2-0 GOP majority was comfortably maintained: https://floridaelectionwatch.gov/DistrictOffices/StateSenator (District 23 & 25)

Kansas: Coming into the election, the GOP controlled the seats up for special election by a margin of 1-0. According to the winning candidate's twitter page, they maintained that 1-0 majority:

Louisiana: Coming into the election, there was a 2-2 tie among the seats up for Special Election. The GOP easily held the 26th Senate District and picked up House District 33. They also picked up House District 10 by default because no democratic candidate filed. House District 90 will proceed to a December 8 runoff, likely between two Republicans. So the GOP expanded their control of these seats from 2-2 to (likely) 4-0.

Michigan: Coming into the election, the Dems controlled the seats up for special election by a margin of 2-0. They maintained one of these seats by default as no GOP candidate ran, and also held the other according to a local newspaper: https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2018/11/07/how-women-fared-2018-michigan-november-general-election/1836844002/

Minnesota: Coming into the election, the GOP controlled the seats up for special election by a margin of 1-0. In a crucial victory for the GOP, as losing this seat would have flipped control of the state Senate to Dems, they easily maintained their hold on this seat.

In Mississippi, two nonpartisan special elections were held. Both races will proceed to a November 27 runoff, according to U.S. News. Both of these seats were previously held by regularly elected Democrats.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/mississippi/articles/2018-11-07/the-latest-candidates-move-to-runoff-in-state-house-race

New Jersey: Coming into the election, the Dems controlled the seats up for special election by a margin of 10-0. In a big success for the party, they maintained their 10-0 majority, and had a double digit margin of victory in all races except for Assembly District 38.

South Carolina: Coming into the election, the GOP controlled the seats up for special election by a margin of 1-0. The Democrats picked up the seat by a margin of 52%-48%!

Texas: Coming into the election, the GOP controlled the seats up for special election by a margin of 2-0. They maintained one by default as no Dem filed, but the Dems picked up the other seat by a margin of 51%-49%!

Virginia: Coming into the election, the GOP controlled the seats up for special election by a margin of 1-0, which they easily maintained.


Big Picture: Coming into these elections, The Democrats controlled these seats by a margin of 16-11. With three seats proceeding to runoffs, the Democrats maintained their majority at a current size of 14-10.

Schedule for the rest of the year

November 27 - Mississippi Runoffs (House 31 & 85)
December 4 - GA HD 28 (R v. R race)/ SOS
December 8 - LA HD 90 (likely R v. R) and SOS
December 11 - TX SD 6

[alomas]

This is not covered a lot because federal level is more interesting for national TV of course, but Republicans scored many important narrow victories last night.

Why important? Because the states are responsible for running the elections and they *just* maintained full control of Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Iowa, all likely battleground states in 2020 and impacting presidential race as well as congressional ones.

[rbt48]

So true and great news!

Ohio from the governorship race on down ballot kept the legislature and the congressional delegation strongly R.

[NOVA Green]

Not sure if this is the correct place for the post, but DEMs, now have a Super-Majority in the OR-SEN and OR-REP, plus a DEM GOV....

OR SD-03 flipped in an open Seat in Jackson County...

Good chance DEMs will add OR-SEN 26 to the number for an additional +1 D OR-SEN pickup....

Maybe a few House Seats flip DEM as well....

Haven't spent too much time looking at the OR House numbers yet.

https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/politics/2018/11/06/oregon-democrats-secure-supermajority-oregon-legislature-senate-house-election-results/1916885002/

[jimrtex]

The Special State Legislative Elections across the country weren't even remotely on the networks radars for understandable reasons, but let's run down what happened, state by state.
Texas: Coming into the election, the GOP controlled the seats up for special election by a margin of 2-0. They maintained one by default as no Dem filed, but the Dems picked up the other seat by a margin of 51%-49%!

The special elections were for the remaining two months of the regular terms. In both cases, the candidate had announced they were not running for re-election, and then resigned. Under Texas law, special elections are held at the next uniform election date (there is one in April and the November election). There can be an earlier election, but typically this only happens when the legislature is in session. The Texas legislature only meets in regular session in odd years, so there is nothing for a legislator to do other than attend some interim committee hearings. The office can probably handle any constituency matters, and there aren't too many of those.

In HD-62 in North Texas the representative for the regular session was determined in the Republican primary and runoff last spring. There was a Democrat and Libertarian candidate for the regular election. The Democrat and Libertarian candidate probably decided to save the filing fees for the special election (the Libertarian did not pay a filing fee, since that is for the primary, and he wasn't nominated by primary. In the regular election for the full term it was R 76%, D 22%, and L 3%. It was somewhat unusual to have a Democrat running in the race. Perhaps someone ran because it was an open seat, or the Democrats appear to have been running more candidates. In an ordinary election, a candidate might have had to pay the filing fee out of their own pocket.

Special elections in Texas are open primaries (like Louisiana) but with partisan labels. There are no nominations, and party labels are self-ascribed, there are no qualified parties. If no candidate wins a majority a runoff is held. Since there are not party nominations, the straight ticket device does not apply.

In HD-52 the two nominees for the general election also filed for the special election. The regular election for the full term was the 18th race, but was at least on the first page. The special election was 31st, on the second page, just before the school board races. There was about a 10% rolloff for the special election.

There is a possibility of a special election for SD-6 late this year. Sylvia Garcia was elected to Congress and will be forced to resign by January 3 (unless she delays taking the Congressional oath). It is likely that the special election will happen in the new year.

[jimrtex]

A special election has been called for December 11, for Texas SD-6 after Sylvia Garcia resigned. Texas statute permits special elections to occur on an expedited fashion if a vacancy occurs during a legislative session or proximate to it. A majority is required for an election so a runoff is a possibility. It could also trigger a special election for a House district since two contenders are currently representatives.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Ted Gaines is still in the lead for District 1 of the Board of Equalization in California. He currently represents the first senate district (rural Northeastern CA and Sacramento Suburbs) and as such, him winning the BoE election would mean that he would have to resign from the state senate and cause a special election. I’m in Gaines’s district, so I’ll try to keep you guys up to date.

[Strong Candidate]

Lots of Democratic special election victors lost reelection in November. Linda Belcher (KY), Christine Pellegrino (NY), Caleb Frostman (WI), Helen Tai (PA) and Mike Revis (MO) are among the most notable losses.

[Skunk]

Lots of Democratic special election victors lost reelection in November. Linda Belcher (KY), Christine Pellegrino (NY), Caleb Frostman (WI), Helen Tai (PA) and Mike Revis (MO) are among the most notable losses.

Add Karen Gaddis (my state representative back home) to this too.

[lfromnj]

Would conor Lamb have lost in the old district?
I think so.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Would conor Lamb have lost in the old district?
I think so.

He would beat Saccone again, but lose if the nominee was Reschenthaler.

[Frodo]

Based on retirements alone, how many seats can Republicans expect to gain in the Louisiana legislature in 2019?  

Here are the current numbers:

Louisiana House (105 total members)

Republicans: 60
Democrats: 39
independents: 3
vacancies: 3

Louisiana Senate (39 total members)

Republicans: 25
Democrats: 14