By Robert Haugh
Tonight newly elected Santa Clara election officials will be sworn into office.
Congratulations to the newly elected Police Chief Cory Morgan, City Clerk Bob O’Keefe, and City Councilmembers Kelly Cox and Albert Gonzalez.
Congratulations also to re-elected incumbents Suds Jain and Kevin Park.
Finally, congratulations to Mayor Lisa Gillmor and former Councilmember Kathy Watanabe who were the authors of the winning infrastructure bond measure. Watanabe also deserves congratulations for winning a seat on the Santa Clara Unified District Board of Trustees.
Here are the official and final vote counts for Santa Clara elections:
Way to go, Neighbor Bob! And best of luck, Kelly Cox! I worked on the “awareness campaign” for Measure I and am very happy the townspeople voted for it. Mayor Gillmor and Council person Kathy Watanabe put a lot of tireless effort into that! Let’s fix this place up!
Hey Robert, who created the fuzzy math?
For those unfamiliar what an overvote and undervote are…
•Overvote: some voters make more choices than are permitted in a contest, which creates what are called overvotes. When overvotes occur—such as voting for two candidates for President or the U.S. Senate where only one choice is allowed—the vote is not counted for that office. https://ballotpedia.org/Overvote
•Undervote: Those who record fewer choices than are permitted create what are called undervotes, or sometimes “blank” votes or ballots. Examples of this are Saratoga Union School District Governing Board where voters were asked to vote for 2 of the 4 candidates and in Mountain View voters were asked to vote for 3 of the 8 candidates for Whisman School District’s Governing Board. In either of those contests, a lower amount than permitted would be counted whereas an excessive amount would not be counted. https://ballotpedia.org/Undervote
In each of the four City Council seats, the Police Chief and City Clerk contests voters were asked to choose only one candidate. Same for the Infrastructure Bond, either yes or no. The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters is not tallying up overcounts. https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CA/Santa_Clara/122582/web.345435/#/summary?category=C_3&subcategory=C_3_1
While Haugh’s vote numbers above align with the County Registrar of Voter’s count, the percentage has been unnecessarily diluted with overcount fuzzy math. In a previous post he described Cox’s win as a landslide, I guess Park’s win at 59.19%, Jain 54.04%, Morgan 65.92% would also be considered landslide victories. O’Keefe won with 29.46% of the vote, Gonzalez 42.73% and Cox 53.4%.