The FlashReport is on location at the Registrar of Voters in Orange County – the last place where the sun has not set election day.
The 34th State Senate District has been represented by Democrat State Senator Joe Dunn. Term limits have come along and it is now an open seat. The Democrat: Lou Correa, The Republican: Lynn Daucher. If you need more info on the candidates, you are failing CA politics 201. Currently Daucher is sitting on a 138 vote lead – it had been a mere thirteen votes on election night, but they’ve had one run of uncounted ballots that boosted Daucher’s number.
Speaking of uncounted ballots, I spoke with County Registrar Neil Kelley who said that there are likely 20,000 or so uncounted absentee ballots to be counted (the number isn’t clear, it’s based on division using the outstanding number countywide). In addition there are an estimated 3400 uncounted provisional ballots outstanding.
Representing “Team Daucher” are Bryan Lanza, Daucher’s CM, Joel Yang – here for Ackerman as the “numbers guy” – and batting cleanup is former FPPC Chairman Ben Davidian, looking out for the legal end of things.
Supervisor Lou Correa has Democrat uber-attorney Lance Olsen, legal counsel for the CDP and hand with a group of Dem hacks.
Given that Daucher signifantly out-performed Correa on absentee ballots already counted, one would think that Correa’s strategy would to figure out how to maximize potential from parts of the 34th friendly to him. That said, they seem to think that they will outperform Daucher on the remaining ballots.
“They’re dreaming,” says Ben Davidian. “We expect that our lead will ultimately result in a strong finish for Daucher.”
Predictably, the Daucher strategy is simple – count them all!
Registrar Kelley said it will likely be until Tuesday before this is finished up, and that is will folks working through the weekend.
For those that want to follow the count from home, you can go to the Orange County Registrar’s website at www.ocvote.com – they are updating the count once a day, just after 5 p.m.