[EL] Re “Voter turnout disparity was key in razor-thin O.C. supervisor race”

[David A. Holtzman]

Even if you treat elections as Sharks-Jets battles for racial interests 
(as the LAT seems to),
don't you think it would have been a real travesty if Do had *lost *by a 
few votes,
having, as the LAT put it, "split the Asian vote with two rival Asian 
candidates"?

The results from the OC:
ANDREW DO18,90539.1%
LOU CORREA18,86239.0%
CHRIS PHAN7,85716.3%
CHUYEN VAN NGUYEN1,8793.9%
LUPE MORFIN-MORENO8341.7%
MARK I. LOPEZ (W)20.0%

Think #RankedChoiceVoting for #InstantRunoff elections.  :-) d


p.s. also note: this was a nonpartisan election
                      so the LAT's "how Republicans can still win" angle 
is a bit misaligned.
p.p.s. this was a special election,
                      so the paper's referencing a "return rate for 
absentee ballots in the 2014 general election" shows more misalignment.


On 3/28/2015 9:49 AM, Rick Hasen wrote:
>
>
>     “Voter turnout disparity was key in razor-thin O.C. supervisor
>     race” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71356>
>
> Posted onMarch 28, 2015 7:24 am 
> <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71356>byRick Hasen 
> <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> LAT 
> <http://www.latimes.com/local/orangecounty/la-me-lost-election-20150328-story.html#page=1>:
>
>     The upset marked a political earthquake in central Orange County,
>     an ethnically diverse area dominated by Latinos in Santa Ana and
>     Asian Americans in the Little Saigon area. It’s the only part of
>     Orange County where Democrats hold a voter registration advantage
>     over Republicans.
>
>     But a Los Angeles Times analysis of election results shows how
>     Republicans can still win because Asian American voter turnout is
>     so much higher than Latino turnout.
>
>     The close election loss
>
>     The close election loss
>     <http://www.latimes.com/visuals/graphics/la-me-g-lost-election-20150326-htmlstory.html>
>
>     The outcome, the analysis found, turned on the high number of
>     Santa Ana voters who failed to return the absentee ballots that
>     had been mailed to them.
>
>     In the core of Santa Ana, where voting heavily favored Correa,
>     only 22% of the absentee voters got around to returning their
>     ballots, far below the state and county’s 50% return rate for
>     absentee ballots in the 2014 general election. The unreturned
>     ballots represented tens of thousands of votes.
>
>     Andrew Do, by contrast, got a big boost because more than 40% of
>     the absentee voters in Little Saigon returned their ballots.
>

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