Vote for Alison!

In the end I walked two precincts for her. Reading the following article the morning after the election knocked my sox off. Go Mountain View!

Update, Friday November 23rd: Counting the absentee ballots, Alison Hicks fell behind Pat Showalter. The race is still too close to call, but final results are due next week sometime. Also, I'm expecting a recount after that. Looks like this is the most gripping post election day horse race in Mountain View's living memory. Wow.

This is so exciting I'm doing the math to figure out if Alison has an insurmountable lead. Let's say ten percent of those 12,000 uncounted ballots are from Mountain View. That would be about 1200 votes. Lets say the average from the previous count holds exactly. That would mean Hicks gets 212 more votes and so does Showalter. So for the lead to shift again 45 more of the remaining votes would have to go to Showalter than go to Hicks. That seams unlikely but it is mathematically possible.

Nov. 29: The counting continues. Looks like Alison is holding onto that lead and even extend it just a little bit.

Nov. 29, late in the PM: Found this tidbit at the end of the "continued on page 34" for a front page ballot access news story in the paper. So thrilled that the voters seem likely to have picked Alison Hicks, whom I also voted for. 98 votes is an incredibly thin margin, but it is starting to look like enough. After I saw this story I called up Virginia who looked it up on the web and said "Now Alison leads by 100 votes."

Dec. 10th: Alison said that the County had already certified the election with her in third place. When the margin had been 17 votes or so there had been talk of a recount, but that had gone away. She expects the City Council to certify the results at the meeting tomorrow evening, and then the race will really be over. She also said "With the margin of victory as thin as it was, your efforts probably were what put me over the top." Probably she can also truly say that to at least a half a dozen other people.

Dec 11th: Did her opponent really agree with that? I wanted some sort of closure on the matter. Went to City Hall to see them vote on the issue. Figured that if she voted to accept the results that would be the end of the story.

There was a huge turnout waiting for the meeting to begin when it finally got under way. Turns out they weren't there for the election results. It was the 2005 Rock Street matter, but that's another story.

Among the crowd were two of the council members that had been elected last month. Probably they were mainly there because attending the city council meeting is the best way to put your finger on our city's pulse.

The first order of business was a presentation by this woman from the Santa Clara County Health Department. She was presenting an award to Mountain View for making it easier to be a bicyclist and/or a pedestrian in the city. She listed off a number of specific improvements we'd made recently. She also congratulated the citizens of Mountain View for taking advantage of them, because we were making ourselves a healthier city by doing so.

Mayor Siegel said something like "I didn't even know we were doing all that stuff." when he accepted the award on our behalf. The ceremony came and went so quickly I didn't have time to turn on my camera and get a good shot before it was over.

Then former Mayor Mike Kasperzak, our representative on the water board or some such agency, gave a report on water infrastructure updates and contract obligations. The gist of it was that likely we have more water rights than we really need at the moment, and bay area governments are looking into structural changes that will add to our water storage capabilities. They are also looking into ways the cities and counties of the area can trade water and water rights in ways that optimize the efficiency of the ways we use our available resources.

There were some items pulled from the consent calendar, but accepting the election results was not one of them. The motion to accept the uncontested consent calendar items passed with flying colors. All my doubts about the finality of the election results were laid to rest.