After a drawn-out vote count that began after election night (November 8), earlier this week county supervisor Dave Roberts called Encinitas mayor Kristin Gaspar to concede the District 3 seat. It wasn't looking so good for Gaspar on election night.
“I stayed up all night watching the TV returns,” she says. At 3:00 a.m., losing by about 2300 votes, she and her family took off for a planned eight-day vacation in Sequoia National Park. After a yearlong campaign, she looked forward to no phone calls or emails, as there is little cell service in the backcountry of the Sierras.
While on vacation, believing she had lost, she thought, “I was proud of the team we put together over the last year. There’s nothing I could have, or would have done differently. I was in a good place,” she said.
About four days into their trip, she reached a higher elevation area, where she was able to get a cell signal.
“I saw it [the vote count] was heading in the right direction, but we knew that absentee and provisional ballots usually run Democratic.” (Although the supervisorial race is supposed to be non-partisan, Gaspar aligned herself with the conservative voter; Roberts appealed to the liberal bloc.)
After she returned to her home in Encinitas, each day the registrar released tallies of the 600,000 or so absentee and provisional ballots that were being counted since election night. As the daily totals were released, Gaspar would start getting texts at around 4:45 p.m.
“I wouldn’t look at the registrar’s website. I didn’t want to jinx it. It was like I was watching someone else’s campaign,” she said.
On Friday, November 17, she was in Phoenix for a competition with her daughter’s cheerleading squad.
“All of sudden my phone blew up.” In that day’s count, she pulled ahead of Roberts by 16 votes.
On December 2, the registrar’s office reported that Gasper was ahead by over 1200 votes. “There aren’t that many ballots left in our district,” Gaspar said.
The registrar of voters has until December 6 to count the remaining 5000 ballots and certify the election results with the secretary of state.
After a drawn-out vote count that began after election night (November 8), earlier this week county supervisor Dave Roberts called Encinitas mayor Kristin Gaspar to concede the District 3 seat. It wasn't looking so good for Gaspar on election night.
“I stayed up all night watching the TV returns,” she says. At 3:00 a.m., losing by about 2300 votes, she and her family took off for a planned eight-day vacation in Sequoia National Park. After a yearlong campaign, she looked forward to no phone calls or emails, as there is little cell service in the backcountry of the Sierras.
While on vacation, believing she had lost, she thought, “I was proud of the team we put together over the last year. There’s nothing I could have, or would have done differently. I was in a good place,” she said.
About four days into their trip, she reached a higher elevation area, where she was able to get a cell signal.
“I saw it [the vote count] was heading in the right direction, but we knew that absentee and provisional ballots usually run Democratic.” (Although the supervisorial race is supposed to be non-partisan, Gaspar aligned herself with the conservative voter; Roberts appealed to the liberal bloc.)
After she returned to her home in Encinitas, each day the registrar released tallies of the 600,000 or so absentee and provisional ballots that were being counted since election night. As the daily totals were released, Gaspar would start getting texts at around 4:45 p.m.
“I wouldn’t look at the registrar’s website. I didn’t want to jinx it. It was like I was watching someone else’s campaign,” she said.
On Friday, November 17, she was in Phoenix for a competition with her daughter’s cheerleading squad.
“All of sudden my phone blew up.” In that day’s count, she pulled ahead of Roberts by 16 votes.
On December 2, the registrar’s office reported that Gasper was ahead by over 1200 votes. “There aren’t that many ballots left in our district,” Gaspar said.
The registrar of voters has until December 6 to count the remaining 5000 ballots and certify the election results with the secretary of state.
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