Maybe we should have parkettes on the bridge too

One thing I'm seeing regarding the bridge tolls is a disturbing number of transplanted New Orleanians who voted for them due to some version of, "Where I'm from we have tolls so that's probably the non-backward thing to do."

Aside from the bullcrap about mowing the grass and threatening to let the bridge fall into the river, I can't think of a less-informed or more irrelevant reason to have supported the tolls but it's a popular one among the transplants I talk to.  I guess the best way to poll this demographic regarding the tolls would be to propose it on Neighborland and letting the kids there tell you what they think.

Since we're down to counting absentee ballots now, it will be interesting to see if the voters who were transplanted away from New Orleans have a better sense of this thing than the ones who were transplanted to it.

Feeding the trolls

How much does is cost to drive across the river and back? 

Tune in Saturday.

board of elex in orleans will count military/overseas votes Sat. We wont know CCC toll vote for sure until then twitter.com/MHernandezWWL/…
— Monica Hernandez (@MHernandezWWL) November 7, 2012

Orleans board of elex says large # of early votes, computer issues caused delays in counting
— Monica Hernandez (@MHernandezWWL) November 7, 2012

Well sure we've all had "computer issues" I guess.

But what I'm wondering is why, as I was going to bed last night, everyone was certain that these 24,000 plus some outstanding ballots would have no bearing on some of the other close races.

Eric Strachan missed making a runoff last night by fewer than 2,000 votes.  And Austin Badon was tantalizingly close to avoiding one altogether.  I understand that not all of the outstanding ballots affected these specific districts but still no one was concerned that these results might not have been "final"?

At around 2:30 a.m., the secretary of state posted new totals that appeared to include -- for the first time -- early voting numbers for Orleans. Those totals showed the tolls defeated by the narrowest of margins: 50.14 percent to 49.86 percent, a split of just 829 votes out of more than 300,000 cast.

However, those numbers apparently were not really the "final" numbers. The secretary of state's website still listed no actual tallies for early votes in Orleans Parish, at that point, though the "yes" and "no" columns each had been boosted by roughly 12,000 votes.

Meanwhile, Gambit editor Clancy Dubos tweeted that even those late numbers did not include some ballots that had to be tallied by hand. At 3:11 a.m., he said those votes had apparently been counted, and the tolls had passed by a margin of just eight votes as a result.

Somehow counting these late-added early votes  by hand at 3:00 am, even under the watchful eye of Clancy Dubos, seems suspicious. I mean there are real live trolls who have a stake in this thing after all.  So now they're counting the military absentee votes.  I don't know where those voters actually live in Orleans Parish but a lot of military families do live on the West Bank.  Anyway we'll see how it goes.

"Resonable restriction"

Police lining up to shoot at people fleeing a flood A-OK with Federal judge.