Despite the “recount rooting” by the Los Angeles Times over the past three weeks for Measure J to stage a miraculous come from way, way, way, behind photo finish victory, MTA has lost.
David has slain Goliath …to employ the Times’s own metaphor. Millions of special interest dollars failed to buy two-thirds of Measure J voters for Mayor Villaraigosa's Subway to the Sea.
Measure J is stone cold dead.
The L.A. Times and LA Observed are feeding their readers false information mixed with false hope.
If every remaining unprocessed ballot contained a Measure R “yes” vote , J still would still fail. “Yes” would need more than 99.999% of the 82,580 ballots that have yet to be processed in order for the “Yes” Measure J votes to reach twice the number of the “no” Measure J votes.
How did hollywoodhighlands.org ascertain that the number of remaining unprocessed votes is 82,580? No secret. LAT reporter Ari Bloomekatz yesterday described the remaining unprocessed ballots inexactly as “tens of thousands.”
I used simple addition and subtraction. Do it yourself. Google www.la vote.net/media information. Access the fourth, fifth and six voter update press releases from County Registrar Logan.
The fourth update states there are 215,991 ballots remaining to be processed. The fifth and sixth updates indicate a total of 133,411 ballots were subsequently processed. The remaining 82,580 are to be processed after the sixth update.
The number of valid votes counted as of the sixth update is 2,729,382. For the “yes” vote to reach twice the “no” vote, it would take an additional 82,263 “yes” votes.
Only 82,580 unprocessed votes are left to count. That would leave a “no” vote margin of 317.
In fact, it is reasonable to expect several thousand of the unprocessed ballots since the most recent Monday update to be disqualified. Also, hundreds of valid ballots can be expected where Measure J was not voted on either way.
Fifth grade level math was employed here by yours truly. Perhaps the mathematical boners by Kevin Roderick at LA Observed and Ari Bloomekatz in the Times are due to a lazy union math fifth grade math teacher when they were kids
I am John Walsh, LAUSD/UTLA teacher.
Mr. Walsh may be contacted at hollywooddems@gmail.com
