Election 2010
In one of the most expensive local mayoral campaigns in recent memory, you get what you pay for—at least when it comes to first-choice votes. According to voting and campaign finance data compiled by Oakland North, the distribution of Oakland residents’ first-choice votes in this year’s still-undecided Oakland mayoral race directly reflects the spending by each of the candidates.
One week after Oakland voters defeated Measure L, a parcel tax that would have boosted city public teacher salaries, members of the city’s public education community are frustrated and disheartened. “I’m pretty disappointed, because it almost made it,” said Sam Davis, an adult education teacher at Manzanita SEED Academy in East Oakland. “It was so close.”
As of Wednesday morning, eight days after Oakland voters went to the polls to select their new mayor from among a field of ten candidates, there is still no new information about the outcome of the city’s first-ranked choice election, according to officials at the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. The final tally remains unknown with no indication of when the results will be certified.
Staff from the Alameda Registrar of Voters office announced that they would not declare an official winner in Oakland’s mayoral race today, as a “few thousand” provisional ballots have yet to be counted.
By 4:00 pm today, the Registrar of Voters expects to announce the complete results and winner of Oakland’s first ranked-choice mayoral election. Registrar of Voters Dave Macdonald said on Friday that the final tally, including the previously uncounted 15,000 mail-in ballots, will likely be released this afternoon. “Who knows what could happen?” Macdonald said.
After an election season filled with debate over Oakland’s public safety funding woes, voters passed Measure BB Tuesday by a two-thirds majority. The measure’s approval means the city will continue collecting parking and property taxes for police, fire and violence prevention programs.
Oakland mayoral candidate Jean Quan overtook fellow candidate Don Perata this afternoon in the computer-run calculation of second and third-choice votes in Oakland’s new ranked-choice voting system. Although several thousand votes remain uncounted, Quan said she’s “feeling very good” about the latest results.
At 4 p.m. Friday afternoon, the vote for Oakland’s mayor will head to a runoff vote count, determining whether front-runner Don Perata will maintain his lead, or if trailing contenders Jean Quan, Rebecca Kaplan or Joe Tuman will be able to catch up.
Amid a wave of Democratic victories in California that defied major gains for Republicans in the rest of the nation, the race to become the state’s next attorney general is so evenly split—between Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Steve Cooley—that its winner may not be known for weeks.