For Jake
ArchPundit
Kosel beat McNeil in the Republican primary for State House in District 81 . Roeser loses again.
Probably Stroger
Given the breakdown of votes left, Forrest would have to outperform even what he did in the suburbs to overtake Stroger.
So, now the question is, who will be the next Cook County Board President?
If People Only Read Newspapers They’d Be Better Informed
Georgie Ann Geyer seemingly attempts to blame blogs for people having limited knowledge of the world because it causes people to pick and choose their news and it’s leading to the decline in that knowledge.
Think for a moment of what might have happened had we had better (really, any) coverage of Afghanistan during the 1990s, when the Taliban and Osama bin Laden were cooking up a second attack after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Could we then have been so amazed by 9/11? Wasn’t it criminally irresponsible to be so amazed?
Think a little further. If more Americans had had a comprehensive view of the world — the kind that is irrevocably blurred by the 80,000 new blogging sites launched every week — it would have been barely possible for the 30 people who in essence started the Iraq war to have acted without the accord of the American people.
Empirically, there is a big problem with this argument–largely people have always had little knowledge about the world and they even have less ability to fit that knowledge into a systemized understanding of the world. The data over time are consistent that the norm is a low level of knowledge about world affairs. This hasn’t changed since the beginnings of the research on public opinion in the 1950s–supposedly the hey day of great newspapers.
The dumbest thing to do is to blame blogs and blog reader who, by the very fact they read some news, are well ahead of the average person on the street.
Let me offer a different argument–news organizations drawing upon the tools of blogging are making themselves more accessible and improving access to news–Eric Zorn not only writes his column, but points people to stories around the web in other news sources. Lynn Sweet adds full text of briefings and interviews instead of synopses in columns. They do need to figure out a business model that works on the web, but that’s not the fault of bloggers.
Technology allows me to read far more papers every day than I could when I couldn’t access them online. I may not read every story, but I didn’t when I only had a dead tree version either. The larger problem is that people are happy and so many don’t read news because they have other options for their time.
Off to Bed
Clearly nothing else is going to happen tonight unless the Claypool and Stroger camps go to blows.
Congrats to Debra Shore, while everything isn’t in, she should win and may well be the top vote getter. Of my three top races, with her it’s one and one right now with Skeletor taking IL-03 and Claypool up in the air, but looking okay.
One last thing, Leo mentioned it.
Everyone who is a Claypool supporter owes Mike Quigley a huge thank you for not worrying about personal ambition and backing Forrest. He is a class act.
Off the Cuff Estimate
Cegelis would have to take about 1700 out of 2900 votes (all approximate back of the envelope type estimates). That would be 58.6% of the remaining vote. While possible, I don’t see much chance the geography in Cook is that much different from those areas already counted and DuPage.
Crocodile Tears
LOL–The Stroger folks are trying to claim their votes aren’t being counted. Certainly true, but awfully convenient that all the problems occurred down there and now the ballots are floating around. What a coincidence.
There’s a level of cynicism that’s just amazing to watch.
Well, I guess we should have known
The remnants of the Machine wouldn’t go quietly.
Axelrod Calling for Ballot Integrity
Friggen idiots. Axelrod is pointing out that the chain of ballot security is broken. The damn system isn’t at fault in a case like this–it’s damn basic security procedure.
200 Precincts sealed and in a holding location–no knowledge who controls them.
Don’t even know in the other precincts.
Preponderance on the South Side. Bloom Township.
I’m shocked I tell you, shocked.
DuPage–Duckworth ahead, but the rest won’t come in until tomorrow probably
UPDATE: Dammit–chatting with Rick I missed the Cook County precinct list–probably won’t be done until tomorrow. Still about 2500 votes in Cook and less than 400 in DuPage.
Christine Cegelis DEM 10369 41.46%
Lindy Scott DEM 4106 16.42%
L. Tammy Duckworth DEM 10511 42.03%
Write-in Votes 22 0.09%
393 precincts 98.5 %
2006-03-21 23:40:30
Cook
Duckworth comes out of Cook with just about a 500 point margin.
Christine Cegelis 1534 37.49%
Lindy Scott 527 12.88%
L. Tammy Duckworth 2031 49.63%
Total 4092 100.00%