Political junkies may be wondering: With this new vote-by-mail system, what’s up with next Tuesday’s election results? When will we know if Republican Tyler Vogt’s aggressive TV—and-mail campaign can overcome four-term City Councilwoman Shirley Scott’s strategy of attacking Tyler Vogt’s Tea Party flavor via mailboxes and Spanish-language radio? No se, amigos.
Here’s the deal: We’ll get one set—and one set only—of election results shortly after 8 p.m.
Assistant City Clerk Suzanne Mesich tells The Range that the 8 p.m. release will include the results of the ballots the city's election staff has counted.
Left uncounted will be the ballots that got in too late for processing by the Pima County Recorder’s Office, which has to check signatures on the envelopes against voter records.
Since this the first year that the city has moved to an all-mail ballot, so it’s anybody’s guess how many ballots will actually get dropped off at any of the city’s polling places. So it’s hard to say how long it will take to count what remains.
Speaking of turnout: As of this morning, just over 29 percent of voters had returned their ballot. That’s above the average of roughly one in four in a bad year, but below the one in three that turned out in 2009 and the 40 percent that we see in competitive mayoral races.
For those who want to know about numbers, here’s the breakdown:
• 28,716 Democrats
• 18,662 Republicans
• 197 Greens
• 337 Libertarians
• 12,175 independents
Your math problem for the day, based on these numbers: Assume that Democrat Jonathan Rothschild gets 90 percent of the Democratic vote and Rick Grinnell gets 100 percent of the Republican vote. What percentage of independent voters does Grinnell need to get to win the race?
