2008 Unofficial Michigan Primary Election Results from http://miboecfr.nicusa.com - who are these people, are they really part of michigan.gov ? Something is being outsourced, very badly.
The short story:
Dem: Clinton 55, Uncommitted 40, Kucinich 4
Rep: Romney 39, McCain 30, Huckabee 16, Paul 6, Thompson 4, Guiliani 3
Best counties (overnight approx, data from NY Times, where is my spreadsheet full of numbers?)
Democrats:
Kucinich: 9% in Washtenaw
Clinton: 88% in Houghton, 64% in Macomb, 66% in Chippewa
Uncommitted: 49% in Emmet, 46% in Washtenaw
Republicans:
Romney: 47% Oakland, 44% Leelenau
McCain: 40-42% Van Buren, Crawford, Marquette, Keewenaw, Kalamazoo
SOS - Elections in Michigan SOS stands for "Secretary of State", and the crummy TITLE tag is one reason why this page is hard to find. You'd think, with Google in Ann Arbor, that the state of Michigan would have better search engine friendliness for the state government site.
The best overall politics tracker is memorandum's political web; here's a snapshot of the overnight results at 1am.
Best Michigan 2008 primary map is from the New York Times, showing leaders by county. They picked a weird color choice for the Democrats, leaving Clinton and Uncommitted almost the same color.
The Democratic party pull quotes:
Hillary Clinton won a largely uncontested Michigan Democratic primary - Boston Globe
The Obama Campaign is not participating in the Primary and has not instructed supporters in Michigan whether or how to vote - National Journal, Hotline Blog
Because of the hopelessly messed-up nature of this year's Democratic primary, this is a perfect opportunity for progressives in Michigan to make a statement without taking any risk. And the way to do that is to vote for Dennis Kucinich. Detroit Metro Times editorial
The Republican party pull quotes:
Romney is the son of former Michigan Governor and 1968 presidential candidate George W. Romney (Wikipedia)
Ambassador Weiser, an Ann Arbor resident and chairman of McCain's Michigan campaign, said Lieberman will join McCain at a joint town hall meeting on Election Day (Ann Arbor News)
My personal election story was not as good as it could be. I tried at the last moment to figure out what the status was of the ACLU Michigan Primary Election law lawsuit, where the Green Party and a political consulting firm among others are suing for the right to have access to primary voter lists. If they win, I'm going to buy me a list; even if they don't, you can get voter lists (city of Ann Arbor through the Ann Arbor City Clerk, $5). Hm, time to put that online too.
The technological snafu was voting as though I was a vision-impaired voter and trying to use the AutoMARK machines provided for that purpose. (press release from SOS) The machine marks ballots with audio prompting; it has awful industrial design, a very clumsy ballot shield, the poll workers had not run a real ballot through it all day (just a sample ballot), and when it spat back my ballot a half dozen times they directed me to the hand marked ballot booth rather than spoiling the ballot and starting with a new piece of paper.
The other technological snafu (again from the perspective of the vision impaired) was that the ballot eating machine has no audio or tactile feedback that a ballot was successfully accepted, and even its visual feedback is really bad (a tiny lcd display hard to read in dim light). I had really no way of knowing that the ballot eating machine really took my ballot, not even a reassurance that some bell dinged. Had I had no sight at all, some poll worker could have taken my ballot and disposed of it or remarked it and I'd be no wiser.
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