Live All Day Election Reporting

Late report: Precincts 5 and 6 (council District 3) vote at S. Ellen Jones School and are reporting a combined total of about 270 voters. Precincts 9 and 10 (council District 5) vote at Ekin Avenue Recreation Center and are reporting 335 voters combined. Each of these precincts contains about 1,000 residents.

We'll be shutting down at about 5:15 to prepare for rapid election returns. Not that it's a race, but The Tribune is promising a 6:30 report that will probably only give you the winners. I guess that's what counts, but we want the precinct numbers, too, for analysis.

4:13 p.m. These hour-old reports seem to confirm our expectations on raw vote totals and on trends vis-a-vis who is voting and who is not. A combined vote total, including absentee and early voting for 19A and 19B, which vote at the 4-H center, is 775 voters. That corresponds pretty well with our projections. Precinct 2 (Scribner Middle School) reports 104 voters, again in line with our overall vote total projection.

For the record, here are shadow5's endorsements, issued earlier this week.

For Mayor and City Council

For City Clerk

3:10 p.m. We'll be happy to eat our words later, but here's your T-3 hours prediction. It's based on statistical modeling and a surely faulty data set, but what should have been a blowout is turning into an extremely tight race for mayor. That won't help vulnerable incumbents like Jeff Gahan in District 6, either. The incumbent city clerk and the Democrats running at-large will be affected, too. As of this hour, we're predicting a victory by Republican Randy Hubbard by fewer than 100 votes. Unless the weekend anti-Hubbard literature dump demoralized natural Hubbard voters (or anti-England voters), GOP turnout should be "normal" and Democratic turnout severely depressed. We're eager for more information to refine this prediction, but we see it as 4,425 for Hubbard, 4,375 for England. That's 50.28% Red, 49.72% Blue. Getting out the vote in the next two hours is now a Democratic Party imperative.

3:05 p.m. Although it's just a stab in the dark, we're projecting a total vote in the neighborhood of 7,950 [Ed. that's live voting. Add 850 for early voting and absentees for a total of 8,800]. Not as bad as indicated a few moments ago, but still remarkably low. The voters are really turned off is the consensus opinion. Many people sitting this one out.

3 p.m. It's purely anecdotal, but it's starting to look like a record low turnout. That's a recipe for the bad guys to win. That's not to cast aspersions on anyone who wins, but the city is not served well by low turnouts. As we parse the numbers here at election central, it's starting to seem that the raw number of general election voters will be pretty close to the number of voters in the primaries. If that's true, the final tally is going to be embarrassingly low. In District 3, that bodes ill for the incumbent, who would ordinarily rely on straight-party voters to put him over the top. With a competitive race at the top of the ticket, a the barest beginnings of a Scharlow upset are in the making. That same low turnout works against Doug England and the other Democrats running citywide. The core Democratic precincts are staying home while the suburb-style parts of New Albany are voting at about twice the level. Could we be seeing a major restructuring of the party landscape?

2:36 p.m. Less than four hours of voting left and this just in: Precinct 6 (in the District 3 race between Scharlow and Price (and Keister)), a 1:30 report says 118 had voted. That precinct contains just under a thousand people, pegging the voting in the mid teens, by our guess. Again, you would think that a low turnout would favor the incumbent Democrat.

In related news from Jeffersonville, council members in that third class city (that's a legal designation) voted to raise the pay of elected officials just before election day. Here's an excerpt from Larry Thomas's report from the Evening News. "If ultimately enacted, the ordinance would up the mayor’s annual salary from $62,481 to $84,000, an increase of $21,519, or 34.4 percent. The clerk-treasurer’s salary would increase $8,956, or 15.4 percent, from $58,244 to $67,200. The City Court judge’s salary would increase 10.4 percent, or $5,674, from $54,326 to $60,000. Council salaries would increase from $9,762 to $13,350, an increase of $3,588, or 26.9 percent." Hmmmm.

1:05 p.m. With much more reliable reporting by this time of day, one of today's contributors was able to predict the total Democratic vote for mayor in the spring primary within just a couple of votes. It doesn't look like we'll have that kind of reliability today without a formal canvass of the voting places. Keep sending those reports in.

1 p.m. The Tribune reported online at http://www.newsandtribune.com/ that 42 votes had been recorded at precint 28A in District 6 (Jeff Gahan defends his seat against late entry Sam Anderson). And that was at 7:30 a.m. On that sketchy evidence, let's assume a heavy turnout at the margins of the city; I believe that is Gahan's home precinct, but also home to a slightly more affluent crowd that by conventional wisdom would be expected to vote for Republicans.

12:30 p.m. The Ekin Avenue Recreation Center is the polling place for precincts 9 and 10. Both were in District 5, where Dick Bliss contends with Diane McCartin-Benedetti for the open seat. P10 has been moved into District 3, however, if the recent city council ordinance is valid. Canvassing and campaigning is prohibited within 50 feet of the polling place, but the interpretation of the county clerk of that prohibition is that the measurement starts from the actual polling booth, permitting campaigners to work the steps and doorway. At least one reporter says that this exercise of free speech was harassing and intimidating and that the McCartin-Benedetti poll workers were aggressively hawking their candidate.

Noon
Report of light voting in precinct 5. At 11:30, 50 voters had passed through the polling place at S. Ellen Jones Elementary School. P5 is loaded with Scharlow voters, but the interesting thing is that we can probably personally name 50 people who will definitely vote and will definitely vote for Scharlow. It's counterintuitive, of course, but the low turnout might just mean that Price voters are staying home this time around. P5 contains 1,049 residents, so let's call it a 10% turnout so far.

11:42 a.m.
P16 - heavy turnout in District 2 (Caesar v. Harbison)
P3 - light turnout in District 3 (Price v. Scharlow v. Keister)

11:41 a.m. Call 'em in when you vote. or e-mail us your reports.

11:40 a.m. Since we don't have the registered voter numbers, we'll be going with residential population numbers from the 2000 census.

11:30 a.m. Harvesting from various sources, precinct 3 had recorded at least 56 voters by 10 a.m. P3 contains 1,500 residents. That's a light turnout in one of the Price v. Scharlow key precincts, the largest in District 3 and heavily Democratic. Light turnout would presumably favor Price.

9:45 a.m. Early indications are that turnout will be heavy in the New Albany Municipal elections today. We'll be passing on the tidbits of news we receive here at election central throughout the day and are planning to report election returns and commentary throughout the evening.

Send us your precinct voting totals during the day as you vote. Also, please feel free to report election irregularities to the precinct judge, the county clerk, and to us.

Precinct 16 reports more than 100 voters through the polling place as of 9:30. That indicates a surprisingly heavy turnout. According to the 2000 census, there are 1,184 residents in 16. We don't have the registered voter count, but let's assume it's 600 voters. That would mean that with more than 8 hours of voting time remaining, 16% of registered voters have turned out. That would not count early and absentee votes. Pretty impressive. Congratulations to the residents of precinct 16.