Mary Benton has the release from the Borris Miles campaign:
Borris Miles’ victory in the March 2010 Democratic Primary for State House District 146 has been confirmed by an official recount. The recount, conducted today by the Harris County Democratic Party with assistance from the Harris County Clerk’s Office, upheld Miles’ victory by 8 votes out of 10,788 ballots cast.
“I am grateful that due process was followed, and that the election result has been finalized,” Miles said. “I thank those from the Harris County Democratic Party and County Clerk’s Office for their hard work and dedication during this recount. Most of all, I thank the people of District 146 for the opportunity to serve them in Austin. I look forward to getting to work on their behalf.”
From eleven to ten to eight. Have I mentioned lately that every vote matters? Congratulations to Rep. Borris Miles.
Well, congratulations for now, anyway. Al Edwards still isn’t going away. He’s now claiming there was fraud in the election.
Edwards boils down whose votes were wrongfully counted into five categories:
One, voters who live outside of his district; two, voters who were improperly registered or whose registration had been canceled; three, voters who were ineligible to vote because of a felony conviction, four, voters who did not properly fill out early mail voting applications, and lastly, that ballots were cast for Miles that were procured by fraud or without the knowledge of the actual voter.
In the petition, Edwards also claims that he believes that votes cast for him by legal voters were not counted because of fraud and that illegal conduct prevented legal voters from casting their ballots.
Way to parrot a whole bunch of GOP talking points there, Al. I wonder who’s bankrolling this effort, because between it and the recount, it’s going to cost him a fair bit of money. Will it be followed by an election contest in the House if he loses again? We’ll just have to see how it goes.
Is there precinct data for this election? I am interested in where the strongholds were for each candidate for when they meet again in two years.
By way of a narrative description, the three different results appear to be very different elections in each instance.
In 2006, Edwards was wildly unpopular in the Meyerland part of the district (about 20% of the votes), did poorly there in the first round and lost it just as bad to Miles in the runoff (with Miles getting 80-90% of the vote there). In the more African-American precincts (~80% of the vote share), Miles got around 45% of the vote in the runoff.
In 2008, the fake news that Edwards’ camp plugged to the media (and the far broader turnout within the district due to the Presidential race) led to Edwards winning pretty much every precinct. If I recall correctly, there wasn’t a huge variation in how Meyerland and south Houston voted that time around.
This time around, it looks like a more even race. Miles did better in Meyerland than in the A-A part of town, but the difference wasn’t as exaggerated as it was in 2006. There were a few Meyerland boxes that Miles won with 60-70%, but his overall showing on that side was around 58%. Meanwhile, on the A-A side, the boxes were also in the same range, with a few dipping in the low 40% and Miles getting a point or two below 50% on that side of the district. Overall, the fight was (as the overall totals suggest) a great deal more balanced across the district.
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