San Diego to Hold Mayoral Runoff in Nov.

[dusty64]

Damn, I would have like to have seen Frye win outright. The rethugs combined got slightly over 50%, unbelievable.



By ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press Writer
34 minutes ago



SAN DIEGO - This troubled seaside city has seen three mayors hold office in July alone, but it will have to wait until November to elect a fourth. Councilwoman and surf shop owner Donna Frye led a field of 11 candidates in Tuesday's mayoral election but fell short of the majority required to avoid a runoff. She will face former Police Chief Jerry Sanders on Nov. 8.


With all precincts reporting in the nonpartisan contest, unofficial returns showed Frye with 43 percent of the vote, while Sanders followed with 27 percent.

Earlier this month, former Mayor Dick Murphy resigned just seven months into his term amid a pension fund scandal that has left City Hall in shambles. Less than 72 hours later, his interim replacement lost the job when he was convicted of corruption for taking bribes from a strip club owner.

Frye, a 53-year-old Democrat who nearly defeated Murphy with a write-in campaign last year, urged her supporters to redouble campaign efforts in the months ahead as the city struggles on without an elected mayor. Councilwoman Toni Atkins is serving in the interim.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050727/ap_on_el_st_lo/san_diego_mayor

[skids]

1. Another article on same....

Sucks about the write-in thing last Nov. We have to get our voters educated.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a6HgkU0A0ejs&refer=us

[oioioi]

2. Can somebody explain...

Why there is a runoff election this time instead of "first past the post" as in the previous election which Republican Dick Murphy "won"?

Donna Frye received more votes than Murphy as a write in candidate in the previous election but 5500 votes were discounted because voters failed to fill in the oval bubble next to the line where they'd written "Donna Frye" :eyes:

Now the rules seem to have been changed so that Frye must win a clear majority in a run off election, even though she again won the most votes (43%) in yesterday's election.

November's runoff election will be Frye versus Republican Sanders. Sanders won only 27% of yesterday's vote, but will be the candidate that all of the big moneyed interests support. Frye is a very left wing candidate and there are sure to be a lot of vested interests who are prepared to pony up contributions to help Sanders defeat her.

Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with run-off elections, but who decided to change the rules between the previous election and this one, seeing as it obviously helps the Republicans in this case?

[JoeMemphis]

3. That last election was a Runoff election

Donna Frye had run as a write-in candidate during the Murphy-Roberts runoff (Murphy and Roberts had finished first and second in an open primary election earlier last year, neither having accomplished the required 50%).

That was the one of the legal issues surrounding her write-in candidacy -- whether write-in votes are valid in a runoff election. Since Roberts got the most votes in a runoff election, he was declared the winner overall without having achieved 50%.

[oioioi]

4. Okay that makes sense - kinda - thanks

It seemed clear that there had not been a 50% majority achieved within the last election.

I didn't realize that the last year's election was actually the runoff. This does seem like an interesting proposition - theoretically it would be possible to run a last minute "splitter" candidate as a write-in during the run-off, thus defeating the concept of the runoff election in the first place.

In fact, based on my understanding now, this is what Frye appears to have done - run as a Democrat in the runoff between two Republicans. It might have been legal, but it isn't exactly in the spirit of the concept of determining the will of an absolute majority via a runoff election.

Weird system.

[cascadiance]

5. The problem was, after the "initial" election for mayor happened last time

before the "runoff" last November, there were hints of scandalous stuff in the works (ballpark funding, etc.) that were going to taint Murphy against Roberts, and rumors that Murphy wasn't going to work hard at getting re-elected given that. It was at that time that many colleagues of Donna Frye urged her to run, to avoid the election in effect getting "tossed" to Ron Roberts, who is kind of scarey like Francis was in this election. Had that information come out prior to the first election, I'm sure that more folks would have talked Donna Frye into running in that one instead.

That's the problem with this sort of primary/runoff election where it is the individual (not a party) that gets decided on who should be elected in the second round. If there's too much time in between the first election and the subsequent runoff election, the voters are robbed of a choice to vote someone in that they feel meets their criteria for office, if only two are allowed in that second election and one has become "tainted". Fry's solution was to exploit using the write-in candidate method, which was legal according to Municipal Code.

If it were a primary where each party would provide a nominee for the next election, if something scandalous came out about their nominee, it would probably be a real problem for them to deal with, but at least they could substitute someone else if they needed to at the last minute.