Watch your back - Governor Grabass is in town!

Well it appears the damage may have been done and Governor Grabass may soon be heading north for Sacramento. Unfortunately for him his wife says she wont be going with him because there aren't any houses nice enough, and there aren't any schools good enough for their kids. Before you ask, no, their kids don't even go to public schools. I guess its too risky for those representing "powerful interests" (not special interest mind you, that would be different altogether) to have their kids in a public school. But its a moot point, they can't even find a good enough private school. So I expect California will be paying for Arnold to fly back and forth to Sacramento on a very regular basis.

Anyway, I digress and maybe, just maybe there is still room for an error in the early calling of the election. From the figures so far its certainly interesting to see how the voting patterns of the state vary from county to county. Its easy to tell which counties voted for the recall - pretty much all those south of Montery and all those east of the Bay Area. Amusingly as I blog, Los Angeles is still showing as a lonely bastion of sanity with the majority against the recall.

However, even though the alleged win for Arnold is being reported as being by a big majority there's actually less than 10% in it. I always find that interesting, how the media interprets 10% as a big number without thought for what it really means. What it really means is that if 5% of voters changed their mind about the recall and voted the other way then there would be no recall at all. Of course even 5% is still a big number, right? Well not really. Do the math. That's one in twenty Californians. Think about it. If we all could name one out of our twently friends that voted for the recall but might have changed their vote, or might have voted mistakenly or based on false information, then the recall would be over - totally.

I don't know about you, but when the decision lies in the hand of one in twenty voters I would call California about evenly divided over the recall and its probably, within the margin of error (hey, not all voters are perfect, let alone the voting machines) a hung state. For me the recall is a big waste of time and money and will only do us harm. It would be nice to think we can all look back Governor Grabass's terrible record in two years and say "I told you so" and feel pretty smug. Anyone in the Bay Area is going to have that privilege being a complete blockade of "NO" voters, with San Francisco county the pinnacle of "NO" at 80% against. But the reality is, we'll all have to suffer for that period to feel smug at the end and just what price will our state pay during that time?

We could draw some comfort in thinking there is already a movement underway to recall Arnold. But I would say that for everyones sanity its essential someone steps up quickly and requires that any future recall should require a two-thirds majority to pass. Thats sufficient majority that it would take more than one in six people to change their vote before the result would change. Everything else is too close to call, or recall.

Just for balance I will report that so far the pinnacle of "YES" on the recall seems to be Stanislaus county that was over 99% in favour. That figure seems quite anomalous since the closest rival was around 75% in favour. Another voting machine problem perhaps???