We're baaaaaaack! We missed you!

Sorry we've been gone from the scene for so long -- yes, we've been swamped at work, but honestly, we've been so dispirited with this particular election cycle lately, we figured we were going to boycott posting until it was OVER. Over over over.

So -- man, how irritating is this? It's never going to be over! Thanks to the city's questionable ballot-reading machines, it's going to take weeks to finish the count. So we're lifting our self-imposed embargo early and reporting in on the status of the results.

The hard-working folks at the Dept. of Elections are releasing numbers as they get them, and here's where we're at:

--Overall stats: 30 precincts left to report in (about 5% to go, at least on the initiatives -- see note below re mayor's race status), and turnout so far is an anemic 16%.

--Mayoral race. Newsom: down from 75% in the absentees to 68%. Quintin Mecke is now in second with 8%. Chicken John at 2.25%, h. brown at .84% (552 votes). These are first-choice picks only, we think, and a sizable shift from the initial absentee count, where Hoogasian was in second and Pang in third. (Hoogasian is now in third, and Pang at fourth.)

Also, don't forget that the mayor's race is going to take longer to count because they've gotta count every single ballot that didn't vote for three candidates by hand, and not that many people ranked three separate choices, so it's slow going and these numbers are definitely likely to change. It looks like they're only about halfway through the mayoral ballots.

Along with the last 5% of the precincts, there's also still 25,000 absentees and 5000 provisionals to count. They're projecting to finish up by next week.

Ballot initiatives after the jump!

So did we mention we were really dispirited by the election cycle this go-around? Enough so that we didn't actually do any research at all on the ballot initiatives, and we free-balled it on election day. You know, it was kind of liberating! (Also, we spoiled a ballot -- those election day workers did not look pleased with us.)

So..... how's the initiatives going? Beats us, we didn't have any idea what we were actually voting for!

Well, the Yes on A/No on H folks are leading (but victory has not yet been declared on A. H is going down in flames). So more power to MUNI, and fewer parking lots in SF.

Mandatory Question Time (Prop E)-- still too close to call, but it's losing by 1.51% as of right now (51.51% to 48.49%.) That's close enough for a recount, isn't it? Question TIME! Question TIME!

Approval for Initiatives before putting them on the ballot (Prop C) -- Okay, we're going to incur the wrath of the progressives on this one, but we voted yes on this, because 1) we hate initiatives as a matter of principle, and 2) anything that encourages more confrontation between the mayor and Chris Daly is something that we are emphatically FOR! That'll shake us out of our recent non-posting local news bloggery malaise! Anyways, it won, they've called it for the Yes side.

Wifi (J): Getting someone in private industry to fund citywide wifi won. (it's non-binding, though.) Why don't we just start renting out the City Hall dome for advertisers now and get it over with?

Horses in Golden Gate Park (G): It won. Neigh!

Basically, everything got a yes vote, except for H (more parking lots). So that's library bonds, not letting people stay past 30 days if their commissioner position has expired, and a new small business office, among others. Police pensions (F) and Question Time (E) are the only ones that are really still up in the air.