UFT Retiree Chapter Election Vote Count 11 AM Update - Over 28k ballot returns, Count Won't actually start until 1 PM - Why I left

12 PM Sampling UPDATE: It's going to be close.

Looks like they started counting already so discount my complaints below.

Counting ballots flying across screen: looking good for RA

RA  Unity

34    25

22    13

17      8

23    16

19     12

The major news is that the vote count jumped from 23,034 to 28,098 with today's returns to be counted even if past 8AM plus anyone who brings in a ballot today will be counted. Jonathan will do a deeper analysis later so mine will be some quick speculation. For me the numbers are too low to win. I felt we needed to bump to 32K or more to make it close. Others in the oppo don't agree and think this number puts us in contention. 

Here's the issue. Two years ago 27k retirees voted in the general election with 19k for Unity and 23k voted in the RTC election 3 years ago with 16k for Unity. 70% both times.

Two views

So the pessimist like me looks at the 27k and sees only a 1k increase from the general election.

The optimists in RA see a 5k increase from the RTC election 3 years ago and sees those votes as mostly RA. And they count on some erosion in the 16k Unity vote. So they are putting RA in the over 40% while my pessimism keeps us in the 30's.

 I've been reporting my concerns about the vote counting process and did some handicapping. The latest was last night: 

• Norm Handicaps the 2024 Retiree Chapter Election - 35% is bad, 45% and above is a winning formula going forward

So I did get there (AAA 120 Broadway) at 8AM with Bobby Greenberg, RA's lone rep on the UFT election committee and Yasmin and her assistant were there along with Nina Bishop, Unity chair of the election committee. A while later UFT Manhattan Born head Carl Cambria showed up but his day starts at 10.  Then another Unity election committee rep, known as the farbissiner in a certain dialect - showed up with a third Unity caucus member, John Soldini due. So what did I do? I left Bobby alone with this pack and went back to my apartment.

Why? Let me tell you.

Like I expected they didn't start slitting the outer envelopes until after 8AM using one machine to open 28k and then they have to open the 28k secret ballot envelopes. And they won't start running the ballots until at least 1 PM. Why can't they have a few machines slicing envelopes? And start counting

Then there is the observing aspect. I began the day objecting to Yasmin over the process where we can't go in and look at the 4 scanners and she said we can see two scanners on a screen. 

Well, I did leave Bobby alone with the Unity pack so I am heading back down with my sleeping bag because we are not leaving till we have a slate count -- they will take more time to count the split votes from the booklet. Last time there were 500 of those. I think a batch of Unity people are splitting the vote so I think we will see that number go up -- some Unity hack sent out a memo pleading with their core not to split the ballot. I hope Unity people did split -- better for us.

See you later.