[Editor’s Note: The outcome of Mayor Villaraigosa’s Measure J bid, a proposed 30-year extension (until 2069) of a half-cent sales tax increase to fund mass transportation, continued to lose this morning, still short of the required two-thirds voter approval. Counting, however, is incomplete, with 64.72 percent saying yes, 35.28 percent no. That is the subject of the following late night dialogue.]
Ballot counting behind closed doors…
The Los Angeles Times is envisioning a come-from-behind victory for Measure J out of the counting of the provisional and mail-in ballots.
Is this election about to be stolen?
Shouldn't we have observers at the County Registrar's HQ's to demonstrate our vigilance to MTA?
A message from Mr. Walsh to Tony Bell at 11:03 last evening:
Dear Mr. Bell: As Supervisor Antonovich's Communications Deputy, you may be interested in the following:
L.A. Times states today that Measure J is positioned for a come-from-behind victory at the County Registrar's office.
Nonsense!
Do you or Ridley-Thomas or Knabe have observers onsite?
There is no paranoia on our part over this matter!
There's $90 billion at stake in the same Los Angeles where two USC students from China were recently murdered over a cell phone with a street re-sale value of $15!!!
I refuse to rest easy until the County Registrar has certified the Measure J voting results.
Nobody at MTA has conceded.
The L.A. transit tax is “teetering between failure and approval,” according to Wednesday's L.A Times.
It sure as hell is an “epic defeat thanks to Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann raising the bar to 2/3.
I have never missed a monthly meeting of the MTA Board, and I can't wait till the next Board meeting to rub it in while facing the Mayor and Supe Zev.
Crenshaw Subway Coalition leader Damien Goodmon (damienwg@gmail.com), who spearheaded the No on J campaign, replies to Mr. Walsh at 11:50 last evening:
It is statistically impossible for Measure J to win. The County clerk has estimated that 793K ballots have yet to be counted. Yes on J would need to receive 71.8 percent of the remaining ballots, meaning it would have to outperform those already counted by over 7 points – something that's never happened before in an American election. Also, factor that no portion of the County with any significant population voted for it at that high a threshold (http://www.scribd.com/doc/112603618/Measure-J-results). So one can't argue that “they could all be from really strong Yes areas.”
The percentage required is actually higher than 71.8 percent because not all of the 793K ballots will have a vote on Measure J. Some will not be accepted by the clerk for a host of reasons (signatures don't match, spoiled ballots). For reasons that escape my ability to communicate at 10 mins to midnight, this percentage required for passage increases the fewer ballots that actually include a vote on Measure J that are accepted by the clerk. (i.e. 700K Measure J votes increases it to 72.5 percent, 650K Measure J votes increase it to 73 percent.)
It's over. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's MTA lost the first county-wide transportation tax measure in over 38 years (1974) to a 3-week, unfunded grassroots campaign that was outspent by over 125 to 1.
This is an epic defeat.
Mr. Walsh may be contacted at hollywooddems@gmail.com
