You know this correspondent doesn't know much about Oakland city politics, but we're trying to get up to speed so we can fully relish the exciting Florida-like state of affairs over there in their mayoral election! So Ron Dellums, the venerated Oakland politician running on the anti-Jerry Brown-style development platform, is in a nail-biter with second runner-up Ignacio de la Fuente, who supports Jerry Brown's pro-development positions. (We . Oakland politicos, please correct us in the comments. What was third-placer Nancy Nadel running about, then?)

Oakland, which doesn't have RCV like the West Bayers, is trying to find out if Dellums got 50% + 1 vote of the ballots cast, so they can find out if they need to have a runoff election in six months or not. So Dellums currently has 50.2% (32,729) of the vote (to de la Fuente's 33% (21,541)) -- BUT, because of all these problems with the electronic voting machines in Alameda County, Oakland had to vote on paper, and a bunch of people voted absentee. So no one knows if Dellums is going to win or not.

They counted around 5000 ballots yesterday, and people estimate that there's maybe 12,700 Oakland ballots left to go in the absentees. (All the absentees are divided up by county, so they've gotta go through all the Alameda ones to find the Oakland ones.) Dellums got 1041 votes yesterday, and de la Fuente 630. De la Fuente is refusing to concede, but Dellums is optimistic.

(N.B.: further confusing matters, if you're looking any of this up online, you'll also see a number of articles about de la Fuente's son, Ignacio Jr., who's currently on trial for rape. de la Fuente Sr., who is attending that trial, is certainly having a busy week.)

Picture of Oakland ballots to be counted from KTVU.

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