San Diego Soap Opera

If the San Diego mayoral race had happened in Afghanistan, United Nations election monitors would still be trying to straighten it out, and warlords might be settling it with guns.

Placid San Diego isn’t a warlord kind of place, but it is caught anyway in a battle about what democracy means: Is it the will of the voters or adherence to a set of rules? Does it matter if the rules are as inconsistent as the Red Queen?

Voters and the rules governing elections usually produce a winner together, though sometimes with a tortured and unsatisfying detour through the courts (Florida, 2000) or a long delay (Washington state’s gubernatorial race, 2004). Such problems are impetus for clearer federal voting rules.

San Diego is in a category of its own. Common sense might dictate a runoff of the two top vote-getters in the Nov. 2 election. If it’s good enough for Ukraine, it ought to be fine with San Diego, right? Nope. The “rules” will almost certainly prevent it.

In a nutshell: Environmentalist/surfing activist/City Council member Donna Frye, a Democrat, mounted a last-minute write-in campaign long after the primary election, which had produced a runoff between incumbent Republican Mayor Dick Murphy and another Republican, county Supervisor Ron Roberts. With Murphy up to his neck in controversies over city pension debt, questionable accounting and other assorted funny business, Frye’s last-minute campaign took off. She ended up neck-and-neck with Murphy, with Roberts third. Murphy has been sworn in, with a judge’s blessing, only because more than 5,000 of the write-ins were excluded: Voters had written in Frye’s name on the ballot but failed to fill in a little bubble next to it.

An outside tally of the excluded ballots showed this week that Frye would have won persuasively, were they counted. If she decides to sue, her attorneys will no doubt contend that voter intent is what matters, as in deciding to count a half-hanging chad or an X instead of a dot.

Frye, however, may never get her day in court -- at least on that issue. A San Diego attorney, Roberts supporter John Howard, has gone to the California Supreme Court with his contention that Frye’s candidacy was illegal because the City Charter says a general election shall be between the two top vote-getters in the primary. Not a word about write-ins. The city’s municipal code, however, allows write-ins in the general election and sets rules for them; that’s what the city clerk cited in accepting Frye’s candidacy.

The lawsuit, which lower courts sidestepped, argues that the charter trumps the municipal code. That city records are a mess provides a little extra blurriness.

Murphy might stay mayor. Murphy and Roberts, but not Frye, might end up in a new runoff. In some judicial miracle, Frye’s votes might all be counted. But in this world, the chance of a Frye-Murphy runoff is vanishingly small. No one in San Diego seems inclined to fill the streets to protest.

For outsiders, San Diego’s election has been a luscious soap opera. Too bad it’s getting so much publicity, though. If this is what a San Diego election looks like, what are average voters in Kirkuk to think about what the U.S.-backed Iraqi government is planning for them?