Being out-spent and out-endorsed on the media front, they proved again the importance of a solid ground game in Chico elections. They have a lot to be proud of. Their wins extend through all of the local elective public offices.

Beyond the campaign mechanics, is the actual vote. The liberal message must have resonated with the majority of voters or else they would not have achieved this victory. As a democracy we can all be content knowing that Chico's direction has been determined by a majority of the populace.

Conservative candidates should also be thanked for taking the time and effort to campaign on behalf of their supporters. Losing is not fun, but you can't lose if you don't try, and we're all better off when citizen's stand up and take part in the civic process.

Lon Glazner

1. Mary Flynn and Scott Gruendl will maintain the top two spots. Now the big question is whether Tom Nickell can hold onto his 40 vote lead over Mark Sorensen for the third seat. I do not think incumbent Dan Herbert can overcome his 729 vote deficit behind Nickell once all the ballots are counted.

2. It's also too close to call between Maureen Kirk and Steve Bertagna. There's a 234 vote margin which is still within striking distance for Bertagna to overtake Kirk, but my bet is that she holds onto her lead.

3. My biggest surprise is how badly Anthony Watts fared. I felt that Andrea Lerner Thompson and Kathy Kaiser would fight for the third seat, but both of them might join incumbent Rick Rees as winners. Watts is behind Lerner Thompson by 736 votes and Kaiser by 763 votes, which is a significant margin. But since the school district is larger than the City voting base, there might be enough uncounted votes for him to catch up. I doubt it, but it's possible.

4. If the News & Review endorsed Nickell, I suspect he'd be up by 300+ votes over Sorensen considering how many more votes Flynn and Gruendl currently have over incumbent Herbert. Right now, Flynn received a whopping 2,227 votes more than incumbent Herbert, while Gruendl received 1,883 more votes that his soon-to-be former colleague Herbert.

5. But increasingly, newspaper editorial endorsements have less influence on our local elections. If the City Council and Supervisor races hold up, the E-R editors will probably wonder why more voters aren't in agreement with them.

And not surprisingly, some of my predictions held on and others were off the mark.

The results are far from final -- the Butte County Clerk-Recorder's office is reporting there are up to 13,000 votes remain to be counted across the county. Officials say it may be before Thanksgiving before the results are made official.

Update at 11:37 p.m. -- Aaaaaaaaand we're done (for now). Upwards of 13,000 absentee and provisional ballots remain to be counted in Butte County.

As for the rest... I suspect we'll see homeless campgrounds built and people removed from the park in the next couple of years. Good times, good times. Hey wait... aren't these voting machines supposed to be fixed by Diebold or something?

Several local races remain extremely competitive with 90.3 percent of Butte County votes counted as of 10:34 p.m.

Just 16 votes separate the two candidates running for Butte County's 3rd District supervisor. With 78.8 percent of the votes counted, Maureen Kirk holds on to a tenuous lead with 4,765 votes, just 16 ahead of fellow Chico City Council member Steve Bertagna.

Click to read full E-R article

With 60 of 72 precincts reporting, Anthony Watts is only ahead of Andrea Lerner Thompson by 20 votes and ahead of Kathy Kaiser by 41 votes.

This is a bad sign for Watts. I still think he'll win one of three seats, but Watts should be worried right now considering that the other incumbent, Rick Rees, is far ahead as the top vote getter.

Are you surprised by tonight's results? What will happen next? Let us know in the comments.

Kirk pulls ahead. Nickell and Gruendl moving up.

Flynn and Sorensen holding on. Herbert dropping. Dailey continues to be a a non-factor.

But Britney Spears is moving up as a write-in candidate.

If the trend line continues, it looks like the deteriorating situation in Iraq may have impacted our local elections. I'm kidding.

I'm at a loss. I no longer care what happens with the elections tonight.

This is a race between Andrea Lerner Thompson and Kathy Kaiser for the third seat.

The current results may be found here. We're waiting for the latest update -- the first post was at 8:28 p.m. and there hasn't been a peep since.

Update at 10:38 p.m. -- There have been more fast and furious updates since the original post. More than 90.3 percent of the votes have now been counted.

With one of 45 precincts reported, Flynn is on top right now with absentee voters that traditionally swing more votes to more "conservative" candidates.

I expect Dailey to continue to fall behind as the night goes on, but the other candidates are all in the mix.

Here is a round-up of election observations by Enterprise-Record staffers Steve Schoonover and Barbara Arrigoni:

At the polling place in the Congregational Church on East First Avenue, the long ballot resulted in delays in mid afternoon, which are unusual for that voting place.

But poll workers reported that the voting machines were a big hit, especially with senior citizens. One older gentleman was certainly delighted, almost to the point of being giddy.

He stayed on in the lobby after voting to enthusiastically tell those waiting how much fun voting was. He said he'd planned to start voting absentee but had changed his mind because he'd enjoyed the machine so much.

Glenn County assistant director of elections, Susan Alves, reported people seem to be more educated in how to use the voting machines today. The machines were introduced at the June primary.

Alves also said there have been a few lines reported at the precincts today, which wasn't seen at the last election. She guessed today's turnout will be about 62 percent.