POLITICAL ARENA

Election counting resumes April 14

Posted

Absentee voters at risk of having their ballots rejected have just a couple more days to cure those ballots before the final count gets under way for last month’s city council special election.

The city’s election board decided Tuesday it would resume ranked-choice voting rounds April 14 in the race that will pick who will fill the final year of Andrew Cohen’s city council seat.

Early and live votes gave former school teacher Eric Dinowitz an early lead over his closest competitor, theatre non-profit executive director Mino Lora.

The elections board will count more than 2,600 absentee ballots, and then use ranked-choice to eliminate lowest vote-getters until just two of the five candidates remain. Whomever has 50 percent at that point would win.

Before absentee ballots, more than 1,100 votes separated Dinowitz and Lora. Even if absentee ballots trend the same as the live ballots, Lora would have to rank higher than Dinowitz on three of every four of the remaining ballots to win.

— Ethan Stark-Miller

 

Bowman takes side on comptroller

U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman wants to see University of California-Irvine law professor Mehrsa Baradaran serve in Joe Biden’s White House, and he has more than 30 members of the Congressional Black Caucus to back him.

Baradaran is reportedly being considered to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees the federal banking system.

“We need an OCC leader whose values are fully aligned with the needs of working people,” the members wrote in a letter to Biden. “What we need is an expert whose worldview is suited for this moment, and who is prepared to aggressively undo the harms of the past. Mehrsa is the leader of the OCC that we need.”

Eric Dinowitz, Mino Lora, Michael Hinman, Ethan Stark-Miller, Jamaal Bowman, University of California-Irvine, Mehrsa Baradaran, Joe Biden,

Comments