It's a wrap! With rum.

As promised, here is a brief election wrap up for 2015. In San Francisco, two stalwart progressive GreenDog candidates who unfortunately ran into turbulent waters, were defeated. Wendy Aragon, who would have been a great addition to the City College board, and Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. They both worked hard, but their better funded (and connected, in an establishment way) opponents were able to win. A loss for SF.

We were glad to see the return of Aaron Peskin to the Board of Supervisors, and only wish someone had challenged Ed Lee for Mayor. Next time we all hope.

In Marin, we had a big win with Gregory Mack for Novato School Board. He ran a great race, with lots of grassroots outreach and came in second place. Congrats Greg!

In other races, incumbents lost several seats on City Councils and special districts, signaling dissatisfaction. This malaise seems a general discontent, and distrust of elected officials, echoed throughout the land. We fear a rising conservatism (we hope it is a passing fever), and Yes, we are cheering on Bernie Sanders. And putting pins in voodoo dolls of Donald Trump and all the Republican scary clowns. Nothing to laugh at here.

Sorry to be a downer, but 2016 will be exciting and we are hoping for good things in the Bay Area and for Democrats everywhere. What do you all think? Comments accepted, rants encouraged, advice welcomed.

And recipes will be tried out. For now, I think a hot buttered rum is in order. Here's what the GreenDogs do on cold winter days.

Dotty's Hot Buttered Rum:

Boil water
Shot of rum mixed with brown sugar.
Pour in the water, mix lightly
Pat of unsalted (organic preferably) butter floated on top
Fresh grated nutmeg sprinkled overall
Drink, you'll feel better

Close Votes - Sweating it out way past Election Day

In California, the Registrars of Voters don't have to report their final vote tallies until December 2. More and more voters are choosing to vote by mail, becoming permanent absentee voters, and more and more of these are not sent in early, but walked into the County Elections office or a polling place on Election Day.

This means, in some close races, we won't know the outcome for weeks. And it seems every County does it differently. In Santa Clara, for instance, where I had a candidate this year, the late absentee ballots were posted as they were counted each day, including on the weekends. My candidate appears to be winning as the vote totals are holding pretty steady day by day, but it is close.

They have, as of this writing, finished all late absentee ballots or vote-by-mail (those tuned in at the polls and so not counted with the others and not available on election night) and are working on provisional ballots. Those are the ones where there is some question about the voter's eligibility to vote, or whether they are voting in the right precinct. For those who vote in the wrong precinct, the Registrar must go through the ballot carefully, so that the votes cast for some races (like State or Countywide ones, for instance) are counted, and those that may have been erroneously cast for local races in a District in which the voter is not eligible to vote, discarded. See how complex this is?

In Marin, they expect to finish the counting of all late absentee ballots by Wednesday of this week, but not release the numbers until Friday. In a close race hanging in the balance, this can be agonizing. Two such races seem to be affected in Marin. There are two of these biting their nails as we speak.

In Sonoma, there don't seem to be any cliff-hangers, but it has been the practice there, not to release any of the counts until the last day.

Clearly some uniformity is needed. Just like I said about the way ballot statements are published in the voters pamphlets, which also vary county by County.

I wrote about that one in this Blog a while back, when the ballot statements came out. Let's see what happens with our new Secretary of State, Alex Padilla.