Judge still undecided in Tuesday election

UPDATE 8/28 5:30pm: Latest unofficial results show the following:

Tozer 442
Weis 444

This (we think) includes all votes but are still not final or official.

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UPDATE 8/27 3pm: How about trying to game out the Precinct 6 Justice of the Peace race? Here’s some extra information that might help us with a prediction.

(1) When we add uncounted votes from the Recorder’s office, there are 258 votes still outstanding (not yet counted in the below totals). But that’s for the whole county. For Precinct 6, we need to narrow it to Republican ballots only and narrow it to the Town of Parker, Upriver, Bouse and Poston. And so we get 94 uncounted votes in the Precinct 6 Judge race.

(2) We can now compare how people voted by area yesterday with the number of votes outstanding in each area. Are you with me? We can look at the trends. Yesterday, here’s how it broke down with the number of uncounted votes beside:

Town of Parker: Tozer 153, Weis 203 (55 uncounted)
Upriver: Tozer 198, Weis 124 (29 uncounted)
Bouse: Tozer 44, Weis 54 (10 uncounted)
Poston: Tozer 8, Weis 9 (0 uncounted)

(3) We can now give the candidates percentages. Like this:

Town of Parker: Tozer 43%, Weis 57%
Upriver: Tozer 61%, Weis 39%
Bouse: Tozer 45%, Weis 55%
Poston: Tozer 47%, Weis 53%

(4) Here’s where it gets interesting. We can then extrapolate from these percentages, do some math, and say that if the uncounted votes are in roughly the same proportion as the counted votes (and there’s probably not much reason to think they wouldn’t be), then the candidates could be expected to get the same percentages of the uncounted votes per area as they did the counted votes. For example, Tozer might be expected to get 61% of Upriver’s uncounted votes, and Weis might be expected to get 57% of the Town of Parker’s uncounted votes. What would that mean for the election? Here’s what:

Tozer would pick up 24 more votes in Town, 18 more votes Upriver and (say) 5 more in Bouse. Weis would pick up 31 more votes in Town, 11 more votes Upriver and (say) 5 more in Bouse. That would bring their totals to (***and this is just pure speculation and not based on anything other than Parker Live’s attempt to predict the result***):

Tozer: POTENTIAL 450
Weis: POTENTIAL 437

Still very close, and could be thrown off by the littlest factor. This also assumes that none of the uncounted votes are for Write-In candidates, which would change things slightly (only around 2% wrote in names on the ballot). It also involves some approximating of percentages, but gets us close enough. So, our official word is that this is still too close to call, but I hope that helps you game it out, if you’re interested. Will I be right or wrong? We should know the final unofficial results sometime on Thursday.

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UPDATE 8/26 11pm: Unofficial Election Results: Precinct 6 Justice of the Peace

Tozer – 403
Weis – 390

And with 140 provisional + late early ballots still to count, this race is too close to call. Final results expected in the coming day or two.

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Original story:

Arizona’s primary election comes Tuesday, and with it Parker area voters will decide who their next justice of the peace will be.

Each Arizona county has justice courts that are presided over by a judge who is elected for a four year term. Cases include civil lawsuits where the amount in dispute is $10,000 or less, landlord and tenant controversies, small claims cases and the full range of civil and criminal traffic offenses, including DUIs. Justices of the peace also resolve other types of misdemeanor allegations (e.g. shoplifting, writing bad checks, violating restraining orders) and, like other trial judges, also handle requests for orders of protection and injunctions against harassment.

La Paz County has three justice courts, JP4 in Quartzsite, JP5 in Salome and JP6 in Parker.

The Precinct 4 race includes Tammy Carnevale and Jeff Gilbert. The Precinct 5 race includes Robi Brady and Karen Slaughter. The Precinct 6 race includes Charlene Shontz Weis and Rich Tozer, with the addition of write-in candidate Jay Clagg.

Also on the ballot will be candidates for U.S. House, State Executives, State Senate and State House. The race among Republicans to take up Governor Jan Brewer’s mantle has been fought ferociously, and include six candidates: Secretary of State Ken Bennett, Treasurer Doug Ducey, former Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, former GoDaddy executive Christine Jones, former U.S. Representative Frank Riggs and former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas.

The advertising schedule at KLPZ 1380am has been sold out in the last days of the election with both local and state candidates vying for airtime. Each of the local candidates emphasized the importance of getting out to vote, with only one day left to sway potential voters. See a list of polling places HERE.