Two things separated this party from most of the election night partys around us. One was that we would have the Green Party results announced as soon as it was known. The other was that Carol would make a pitch explaining why we should help her get on the ballot as a Green Party Candidate for Congress in California's 14th District.

         

The crowd listened attentively while she spoke. She explained that her goal was to use the tools of the political system to help get out her activist message. She reminded us that she has been working for impeachment for many years at this point.

           


    

Carol ended up getting several people to volunteer to gather signatures for her campaign. Also, something like twenty people signed her papers there.

Not so long after Carol finished her speech I announced the results that we downloaded from the Registrar of Voters website. They looked a lot like these more recent numbers:


 Kent Mesplay (Grn) 37 3.2 % 570 2.0 %
  Jared Ball (Grn) 29 2.5 % 453 1.6 %
  Jesse Johnson (Grn) 24 2.0 % 517 1.8 %
  Kat Swift (Grn) 53 4.7 % 863 3.1 %
  Ralph Nader (Grn) 651 57.0 % 17,198 61.2 %
  Elaine Brown (Grn) 58 5.1 % 1,285 4.6 %
  Cynthia McKinney (Grn) 291 25.5 % 7,224 25.7 %
 

Looking at the results, I was surprised by how close to the Statewide average we fell. Maybe we like the little guy a little more than most, but our tendencies are the same. The only County Cynthia took was San Francisco. The pattern reminded me of 1994, when the only County that voted for the Statewide gas tax was San Francisco. Seems like the voters there are simply ahead of the rest of us...

A week later the numbers had changed a little bit:

Candidate SCC Votes % CA Votes %
Kent Mesplay 49 3.1% 634 2.0%
Jared Ball 34 2.2% 485 1.5%
Jesse Johnson 31 2.0% 550 1.7%
Kat Swift 72 4.7% 958 3.0%
Ralph Nader 857 56.0% 18,898 60.7%
Elaine Brown 75 4.9% 1,411 4.6%
Cynthia McKinney 414 27.1% 8,248 26.5%