Tonight's runoff: Think your vote doesn't count?

There were 47 voting precincts in the District 63 runoff. Tan Parker beat Anne Lakusta by 48 votes. Simple math -- that's about one vote per precinct that made the difference in Parker's victory tonight. Some other thoughts about this wacky Election Night:

• I watched the results come in tonight in a very unique way. I simply hit "refresh" on my Treo smartphone to see the numbers on Denton County's website, all while I was driving 75 mph on I-20 east to Louisiana. There's total drama in waiting for the updates that came about every 30 minutes or so, and it definitely helped keep me awake on the road.
  
  
• So how did Parker look so bad in early voting, but run away with the vote on Election Day? Was there a mind-change in voters between last week and this week? Certainly there was no news to drive such a change, or was there? Or did the Parker campaign just out-hustle the Lakusta campaign in the final weekend of the race? More calls, more visits, more get out the vote. I suspect the latter made the difference in a race that was decided by less than 1% of the vote with more than 6,000 votes.
  
  
• In my voting precinct 424, both early voting and Election Day voting ran greater than 60% for Lakusta. It will be interesting to go through precinct-by-precinct to see where the big swings came. In a race that totally looked like Lakusta's when early voting results came out, it was surely a stunner to see Parker just walk her down all night long.
  
  
• A stunning upset in Commissioner Precinct 4. Andy Eads handily beat the incumbent Jim Carter, who had won the key endorsements. And J.W. Hand finally won himself a race. The old guy will be JP for the next 4 of his golden years. Pretty good retirement check to live on, plus all the money a JP makes in weddings.
  
  
• The biggest and most significant news to come out of the runoff? All three of these seats are now held by Flower Mounders. That's the way it should be. We're the big dog in this part of the county, and now we have a new batch of elected officials to represent us and lead us.