Let the counting begin
Polls just closed in Wisconsin. Just the recalled Republican seats up today with the two recalled Dems up next Tuesday (buddy Jon voted absentee in one of those races today). TPM has an election scoreboard up and should have some results fairly soon but give the numbers a while to warm up because no one turns in results faster than conservative rural polling places.
Here are some WI-related links while you wait:
Greg Sargent on the GOP’s big lies [Sargent also says turnout is highest in the districts Democrats targeted]
C&L with notes on GOTV
Right wastes no time, gets right into illegal electioneering
Walker signs redistricting bill (if Pasch beats Darling, he’ll be in a different district next year)
Getting election results online can be frustrating, but nowhere near as bad as the old system where you had to listen to despicable network gasbags bloviate endlessly while waiting for results to trickle in.
UPDATE: Bummer. Just tried to listen to Netroots Radio’s coverage and found out that, like Netflix, you have to reboot in 32-bit mode to use their radio player.
So far two of the safe Republicans look quite safe but the three most interesting races have the lowest numbers reported. Shilling’s leading Kapanke, but only a quarter of the vote has been counted. The Randy Hopper and Albert Darling races both show only 7% of the votes counted a full hour after the polls closed. Don’t be surprised if things get nasty later tonight if those races are close.
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Via Dave Weigel, AP has county by county results. Not one vote reported from Milwaukee yet, ditto La Crosse.
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The AP results show Pasch pulling away from Darling with a lot of Milwaukee yet to be counted. Hopper is holding on 53-47 but most of that one hasn’t been counted yet, and Shilling has Kapanke down 53-47 with plenty of votes left in that one. We need Pasch, King and Shilling to beat Darling, Hopper and Kapanke to take back the state senate, assuming the Dems hold on to their two seats that are up next week.
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Now King has a 100 vote lead on Hopper, Shilling is still leading Kapanke and Pasch is holding her lead over Darling. Lots of votes to be counted.
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Milwaukee’s coming in and Pasch is pulling away. King still tied with Hopper but no Fond du Lac precincts reporting yet! Shilling should beat Kapanke and that makes three if King can pull it off.
Just saw that C&L’s election thread reported this half an hour ago:
The Ed Show is saying that most of the votes in so far are from rural areas and that many of the bigger cities had polls stay open for more than an hour after closing to complete the lines.
Cool. Explains why the cities are so slow to report and gives hope for good news when they do.
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Odd they haven’t called SS14 for Olsen yet. He’s up 54-46 with 95% of the vote reported but apparently those last precincts are going heavily for Clark. ??
SHIT. Fond du Lac came in all at once and for Hopper who now leads 51-49 with twenty some precincts left to report, all from Winnebago where King’s beating Hopper 53-47. Sit tight, this may take a while.
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SS14 called for Olsen so it’s up to Pasch and Shilling to hang on and for King to catch up.
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Winnebago keeps comiing in (37/51 pcts) and King’s back in a hundred-vote lead over the notoriously Randy Sen. Hopper. Shilling looks like a lock but there’s lots of votes out in the Pasch-Darling race yet.
Shit. Isn’t Waukesha where the Republicans pulled all their Supreme Court tricks? Only one of eleven precincts have reported in so far but it went huge for Darling. Half of Milwaukee’s in and so far breaking 63-37 for Pasch.
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They just called SS32 for Shilling, so that’s one of the three in the bag. With 94 out of 108 pcts in, King and Hopper are tied. Pasch up 56-44 but only 33/82 pcts reporting with most of Waukesha out.
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Most of the missing votes in the King-Hopper race are in Oshkosh, b’gosh.
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Shit. Pasch-Darling just tightened up to 51-49 and Waukesha has still only reported 1 precinct with the very odd Pasch tally of 200 exactly to Darling’s 397. 36/51 Milwaukee precincts reported but I think some of the ones still out might be in the burbs. Darling’s numbers in the rural areas are ridiculous with 73% of the vote in Washington county. This could be a real stinker in the making. If it’s tight and only Waukesha is out, they should send in international teams of observers to re-count the Waukesha ballots.
King-Hopper is stuck with 94/108 precincts in and King up 147 votes.
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The University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh is the third largest university in the state. Those are the precincts the King-Hopper race is waiting on.
But Waukesha is still bugging the hell out of me. The shit they pulled in the Prosser election was insanely criminal.
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A few more MIlwaukee precincts in and Pasch is back up 52-48, but those ten missing Waukesha precincts look huge.
Meanwhile, more of Winnebago came in and King is up 51-49 with only three precincts left to count, all in Winnebago. Whew!
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With 100% of the vote in King has beaten Hopper! That’s it for me as Milwaukee/Waukesha is going to go late and get nasty.
Not WI:
MO Lt Guv and his stripper obsession
AdWeek says the FBI is going RICO on News Corpse
3-day, 9% Dow drop not a crash so yeah, we’ve still got that to look forward to
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London:
Ian Welsh with #3 of his London Riots post
Burning and looting (which, really, is doing it backwards)
Also, the New York Review of Books on The New European Far Right.
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Etc.:
Debtor prisons alive and well in Michigan
Shocker: study shows upper class less empathic than the lower classes (dicks being less sensitive than the dickees)
Too busy responding to emails today to realize email is dead
Porn industry lawyers suing blind man for downloading porno movies
My cousin and uncle live in New Berlin, which is in Republican Mary Lazisch’s Senate District. A recall effort mounted against Lazisch failed for inability to get enough signatures. My uncle’s sole means of income is Social Security and my cousin has been unemployed for three years. My uncle and cousin are rabid right wing Republicans. They listen to a right wing carpet chewer named Charlie Sykes. I suspect my uncle and cousin are fairly typical right wingers. Except for my brother whose rent covers the mortgage on the house they live in, they live in poverty or about one or two days away from it when my brother moves out. I keep thinking a lot of this right wing shit is pure denial and false hope.