Final Update: I'm calling it a night. There's a tiny chance Becker & Cowles could flip, but we know which 5 people won. The giant news is that the freeze in amber crowd went down to a strong defeat with Macon barely retaining his seat – for 2 years. And what makes this even more interesting is this occurred in a low turnout election where voters were not that impassioned. No one can explain why two (and almost three) of the Sierra Club/PLAN Boulder candidates lost.
You can bet that this question is the number one thing on the minds of Macon, Crystal, Lisa, & Susan (ok, probably #2 for Crystal, after shopping). They all face an election in 2 years and if that election plays out like this one, they'll be fighting for 5th place. Make no mistake, the number one goal for any politician is getting re-elected.
Update 7: 9:37 – 59,072 votes updated Council results below – no change. And the Stan Garnett job security act is still losing – by 244 votes. I'd say this has lost.
Update 6: County Question 1D – the give Stan Garnett 4 more years proposal is losing – by 341 votes. Definitely going to be close.
Update 4: 8:48 – 58,281 votes and still no real change.
Update: 7:55 – 52,280 votes and no real change. We know who our new council is.
Wow, only 7:30 and we have most of the results. Maybe Hillary Hall is learning how to run the clerk's office.
Here's the results:
- Suzy Ageton – 15.12%
- Matt Applebaum – 11.94%
- George Karakehian – 10.35%
- K.C. Becker 10.26%
- Macon Cowles – 10.14%
- Barry Siff – 9.22%
- Tim Plass – 8.92%
- Jyotsna Raj – 8.71%
- Fenno Hoffman – 7.47%
- Valerie Mitchell – 3.28%
- Kevin Hotaling – 1.80%
- Rob Smoke – 1.76%
- Seth Brigham – 1.02%
Update 5: If I'm reading the ballot totals at the clerk & recorder correctly – turnout was much lower than normal – 50K actual vs. 63K expected (ballots, not total votes). If so this is a giant change for City of Boulder voting. The rule of thumb in the past has been low turnout lead to a slam-dunk for the Sierra Club/PLAN Boulder candidates – especially when they agreed. I think the change is a combination of some new groups becoming very effective endorsers (B.O.C. by far being the biggie) plus the impact of voters who decide via Google searches.
Update 2: Note on the vote "total." The total listed on the Clerk's page is the total votes for all candidates. So a single ballot with 5 candidates selected is listed as 5 votes. If the total is 50,000 votes, that is on the order of 12,000 ballots as the average ballot, IIRC, has slightly over 4 choices.
Update: If Macon Cowles did not have the advantage of incumbency I think Barry Siff would have easily beat him. This would have meant 4 from the evolve ticket and ½ for the freeze ticket. This election clearly was a repudiation of freezing Boulder in amber and shows clear support for moving intelligently into the future.
This is a very pleasant surprise. This gives us 3 candidates (a majority) from the let Boulder evolve ticket and 1½ for the freeze Boulder in amber ticket (Matt being the ½). In my guess I was wrong that I thought the vote would be more business as usual. These results are a wonderful surprise. Boulder is not going to be frozen in amber.
In my guess I also got one thing very wrong – how George Karakehian would do. This may be due to his campaign budget – I never saw anything from him other than one robo-call, but I don't read the print edition of any paper so if he spent money on ads I missed it. It could also be due to the fact that he has deep roots in the community here and while he's not a barn burner in his presentations, he is well respected. Or something else. Probably a combination of all of that. But I did misjudge how he would do – and I am thrilled that I blew it – because I think he'll be a great addition to the council.
The other interesting question is, has the internet changed how people get their information, and from that, how they vote. Looking at the stats for my blog, which is just a small part of what's out there, I'd say about 5,000 voters hit my site, coming to candidate pages mostly from Google searches. This means they were typing in the candidate names, reading independent posts on the web about them, and then voting.
I think it's safe to say that the web has a significant impact on the vote in Boulder. Looking at positions 1 – 9 (the two tickets running), you see the interleave of the tickets and realize that the domination of the Sierra Club/PLAN Boulder is gone. They matter, but so does B.O.C. & Company. And within each, people are going to the web because it is so quick & easy, people will now do more than just follow an endorsement list.
From K.C. Becker to Seth Brigham, you could pretty much predict that order by doing a Google search on each and looking at the first couple of independent sites that came up for each.
Update 3: If anyone running in 2011 wants to make effective use of the Internet, and is willing to put in the effort, contact me in May of 2011. Effective use of the net (none of the candidates did a good job) could easily add 1K – 2K in votes. And that would have moved any of the candidates in places 6 – 9 into the top 5.
