Update: School referendum passes by 1 point | Alea iacta est: Nov. 7, 2023 election results for Bloomington, Monroe County served when ready

Polls are now closed in Monroe County. The cutoff time was 6 p.m., which made for a 12-hour voting day.

But anyone in line by 6 p.m. has to be allowed to cast a ballot.

[Updated at 9:03 p.m. on Nov. 7, 2023. Based on unofficial results released by the county clerk, the MCCSC referendum passed by a 108-vote margin: 5,229 yes to 5,121 no.  That’s 50.5 percent to 49.5 percent. Here’s the .pdf of unofficial vote totals: Nov. 7, 2023 unofficial vote totals.]

Bloomington voters have elected their next mayor, clerk, and nine city council seats. For 10 of those races, the outcome was already known.

Unopposed on the ballot were Democrats Kerry Thomson for mayor and Nicole Bolden for city clerk.

Also unopposed on the ballot were the following Democrats running for city council: Isabel Piedmont-Smith (District 1); Kate Rosenbarger (District 2); Dave Rollo (District 4); Shruti Rana (District 5); Sydney Zulich (District 6); and Isak Asare, Andy Ruff, and Matt Flaherty (at-large members).

The only contested Bloomington city race was for the District 3 city council seat. Republican Brett Heinisch is vying with Democrat Hopi Stosberg for that spot.

Along with the District 3 results, this piece will be updated below, with results from the Monroe County Community School Corporation referendum, when they are available.

Typically, the results from early in-person voting and mailed-in absentee voting are released first, followed by the Election Day results.

Election Day results typically come in a few different batches corresponding to different polling locations.

Geography is a big factor. There’s some physical distance that has to be covered, when teams from different polling locations across the MCCSC district pack up everything—their ballots, the memory devices from the ballot scanners, and other election documentation—and turn in the whole package to Election Central.

Election Central is in downtown Bloomington, located at 7th and Madison streets in the old Johnson’s Hardware building. That’s where The B Square will remain parked until all results are in.

The B Square will add to this article with time-stamped updates from Election Central until the final unofficial results are in, or otherwise indicated here.

Here’s a key table that The B Square will try to maintain starting right after the polls close at 6 p.m. It provides a guide to when it might be reasonable to start expecting to see any results reported from Election Day. If a row is not shaded, it means ballots from that location have not yet been turned in at Election Central—which means that results from that location cannot be reported yet.

17:54 p.m. Election Central. Pizza X pizza pies have arrived to fuel the election division workers who will be receiving the ballots from 25 different voting locations.

18:02 p.m. Election Central. The final tally of voters is about 9,906. [Added at 9:24 Nov. 7, 2023. That’s the total just for in-person voters, either early or on Election Day.] Monroe County Democratic Party chair David Henry is estimating the turnout at about 16 percent. That’s based on 59,643 eligible voters.

18:17 p.m. Election Central. Just checking in to report that there’s nothing to report.

18:27 p.m. Election Central. Here’s a link: initial results from early voting. The referendum numbers work out to 54 percent yes to 46 percent no. In the past few local elections, Election Day votes have trended more conservative politically than early votes. So the final result could be very close.

18:51 p.m. Election Central. The table  above with the rows that are grayed out is keeping track of the polling stations that have turned in  their ballot materials to Election Central. So it will be a bit longer before the it’s clear whether the referendum passes.

19:01 p.m. Election Central. In the last 10 minutes three more polling locations have delivered their materials.

19:13 p.m. Election Central. Eleven out of 25 polling locations have delivered their ballots and other materials so far.

19:19 p.m. Election Central. Now it’s time to flip perspective. There are 11 voting locations that still have not delivered their materials.

19:26 p.m. Election Central. There are 9 voting locations that still have not delivered their materials. We’re expecting the next round up updated numbers sometime sooner. That is, we’ll likely get an updated set of referendum numbers before all the polling locations have delivered their ballots.

19:28 p.m. Election Central. Here’s a link: updated (not final) numbers

19:33 p.m. Election Central. The still not final results on the school referendum work out to 55.3 percent yes and 44.7 percent no. There’s still about 4,440 votes that are not yet reflected in those numbers.

19:41 p.m. Election Central. Just two polling locations have not yet turned in their ballots: University Elementary School and Grandview Elementary. We’re not sure if there will be an interim set of updated numbers before those two locations deliver their ballots.

19:49 p.m. Election Central. Grandview Elementary is the only remaining polling location that has not turned in ballots.

19:55 p.m. Election Central. Grandview Elementary has called in and they are on their way! It looks like the next update will be the unofficial final results. That is, they’re not going to run a report now including everything except Grandview.

19:59 p.m. Election Central. Grandview team has arrived. Once the thumb drive is handed over and uploaded, the last report of the night will get run.

20:13 p.m. Election Central. While we are waiting for the final unofficial report to be run, the topic of conversation is: Should mayonaise be used, instead of butter, to make grilled cheese?

20:13 p.m. Election Central. There seems to be an issue with precinct-by-precinct versus aggregated numbers that is a barrier to getting the final unofficial vote totals. But here’s the file of precinct-by-precinct numbers: final unofficial results. I can’t tell from that if the referendum passed.

20:45 p.m. Election Central. Here’s a link: final unofficial cumulative results. Referendum passes. Barely.

[Note: The Latin in the headline means something like “the die is cast.” Julius Caesar is supposed to have said it when he led his army across the Rubicon river in Northern Italy. Apparently some translators interpret it to mean that what’s done is done, but it’s apparently the subject of some scholarly controversy. It can also be analyzed as meaning something more along the lines of “the gamble has been taken.” In any event, it was a tradition of local Ann Arbor attorney David Cahill to post the phrase to local online outlets exactly when polls closed in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It’s a good tradition, one which The B Square transplants to Bloomington without apology.]