Craps, anyone?

With the dice a-clinkin’, there was a little bit of Vegas at elections headquarters this morning.

Much like its Sin City counterpart, there was chance in the rolling of each die. But in this edition, it was all about using the three ten-sided dice to randomly determine the identity of precincts that will undergo a manual recount of the votes cast in the Nov. 6 Consolidated Municipal, School and Special District Election.

It’s a requirement of California Elections Code that, in the 28 days following the election, a one percent manual recount of votes is conducted to ensure the election’s overall accuracy. It’s part of the Official Canvas of the Vote; see our previous post.

Rest assured, no betting or the beating the house here. Not nearly so glamorous, we know. But hey, it’s important.

True to patriotic form, our dice are red, white and blue. They’re 10-sided, technically called pentagonal trapezohedra for you role-playing game buffs. In fact, legend has it we had to buy the dice from one of your hobby stores.

Precinct numbers consist of four digits, with the first identifying one of the county’s five supervisorial districts. Because we select precincts in district order, we rolled only three die to complete the precinct number: the red die for the second digit, the white die for the third and the blue die for the fourth.

In all, 18 of San Mateo County’s 400 precincts were chosen by the dice for recounting. Obviously 18 precincts is far more than one percent, but remember that there were 27 different local districts and cities with races this time around. Not every race is going to get picked in that random one percent, and the law requires that every race have at least some recounting.

The dice shooting (and the recounting, for that matter) was and is open to the public, and elections headquarters had two observers who even got to participate and take a few shakes with the dice. We’re all about sharing the love.