Election results - got 'em right here, right now
MARK ROSMAN In the News
As the election season of 2007 gets into full swing, I took a moment last week to review some results from the 2006 Monmouth County Board of Freeholders race. In the immediate aftermath of an election, the key questions that reporters ask election officials are who won and what were the vote totals.

The voting results you see published in daily newspapers the day after the election and in weekly newspapers five to seven days after an election are not really "official" results. Until all of the absentee ballots and provisional ballots have been counted, the results of the election cannot be certified. Sometimes that takes weeks.

By the time every vote has been counted and every municipality's election results have been reported to the county, local news has moved on. The breakdown of the voting will not change the outcome of the election, and even if a few votes have been added or subtracted to a candidate's total that was reported on Election Day, in 999 cases out of 1,000 it won't make a difference in the outcome.

After the election, it is left to the party leaders, and some journalists, to seek out the complete results of the election and to try to figure out what happened in one particular town or another.

I started to do just that on several occasions after the 2006 freeholder race and got sidetracked every single time. Either the person I needed to speak with wasn't in, or the results weren't on line, or no one was available at the elections board to fax the pages - there was always some reason why I couldn't get that information.

Combine that with the fact I was doing a hundred other things every week in order to produce this newspaper and I would then forget for weeks at a time that I wanted to see those results and now here we are 10 months later.

The lack of having those election results kept gnawing at me as I read some Internet message boards over the past few months. Specifically, anonymous posters on one particular board kept hammering away at Andrew Lucas, the Republican Township Committee member in Manalapan who ran for a three-year seat in the 2006 freeholder race. Lucas was running against Democrat Barbara McMorrow. The bloggers have been making an issue of the fact that Lucas did not carry his hometown.

There was also a race for a one-year freeholder seat between Republican Anna Little and Democrat Greg Gibadlo.

As it turned out on Election Day a split ticket won; Little defeated Gibadlo 86,621 to 83,147 (3,474-vote margin) to capture the one-year seat, and McMorrow defeated Lucas 87,598 to 82,924 (4,674-vote margin) to capture the three-year seat.

Little was a sitting freeholder at the time and McMorrow had run for freeholder before and was well known as a teacher and principal in the Freehold Regional High School District. She was also a former member of the Borough Council in Freehold Borough.

A couple of Internet posters were bashing Lucas because he did not carry his hometown of Manalapan in his run for county office. I have learned over time to take anonymous Internet messages with a grain of salt and wanted to see if those posters had their facts right about Lucas.

It turns out they did. I finally got ahold of those town-by-town results on Sept. 6, and here is what happened in eight western Monmouth County communities.

In Colts Neck, Lucas defeated McMorrow 2,189 to 1,181 and Little defeated Gibadlo 2,251 to 1,089. Colts Neck is a "Republican" town and delivered for both GOP candidates.

In Englishtown, McMorrow defeated Lucas 189 to 167 and Little defeated Gibadlo 181 to 172. In Farmingdale, Lucas defeated McMorrow 198 to 187 and Little defeated Gibadlo 221 to 155. I'm not certain if there are enough votes in those two municipalities to draw any conclusion about the results.

In Freehold Borough, McMorrow defeated Lucas 1,345 to 710 and Gibadlo defeated Little 1,144 to 811. Freehold Borough is a "Democratic" town and delivered for both Democratic candidates.

In Freehold Township, Lucas defeated McMorrow 4,387 to 4,167 and Little defeated Gibadlo 4,908 to 4,073. Freehold Township is a "Republican" town and came through for both Republicans.

In Howell, Lucas defeated McMorrow 6,083 to 5,703 and Little defeated Gibadlo 6,497 to 4,995. McMorrow is a former principal of Howell High School. I'll be honest. I can't figure out what Howell is.

OK, Internet bloggers, here you go, savor this one because you got it right. In Manalapan, McMorrow defeated Lucas 5,030 to 4,306 and Gibadlo defeated Little 4,968 to 4,274.

Lucas did lose his hometown by 724 votes. Perhaps these results indicate that Manalapan is a "Democratic" town, but in the 2004 election Republican George Bush defeated Democrat John Kerry in Manalapan 8,687 to 7,544, and Lucas received 8,550 votes in his first bid for Township Committee.

In Marlboro, McMorrow defeated Lucas 5,833 to 4,140 and Gibadlo defeated Little 5,698 to 4,224.

Marlboro could probably be called a "Democratic" town and delivered for both Democratic freeholder candidates, but if that is really the case, how does one explain the fact that the mayor is a Republican and all five members of the Township Council are Republicans? Just as a point of interest, Kerry outpolled Bush in Marlboro in 2004 by a count of 9,350 to 9,100.

As it turns out, only Little carried her town of residence, Highlands, 841 to 758, over Gibadlo.

McMorrow did not carry her town of residence, Freehold Township, over Lucas, and Gibadlo did not carry his town of residence, Middletown, losing to Little 10,765 to 9,905.

So is it that big a deal that Lucas did not carry Manalapan? Only to about two or three people who feel the constant need to bash others on the Internet.

You can study election results all day long and try to come up with reasons why a candidate did or did not win his or her race. In the end, candidates have to sell themselves to the voters and explain why they can do a better job than their opponents.

And maybe they need a bit of luck, too, since some people know nothing about the people for whom they are voting and just pull a lever. We'll have the answers to this year's election on Nov. 6. Maybe this time around I can get those municipal results a little bit quicker.

Mark Rosman is the managing editor of the News Transcript.