Ms. Thiebaud is working with her union to defeat Proposition B. But, in a phenomenon related to the fact that most city workers live outside San Francisco, the city's public employees are a tiny voting bloc in San Francisco, at most 2 percent of registered voters.
Were you pleased with the tiny vote your NoEU – Yes to Democracy Party got in the European elections?
But on polling day, only a tiny majority voted for devolution, not enough to overcome the rule that 40% of all those eligible to vote had to endorse the scheme.
But now the Senate is in Democratic control, President Bush must depend on the House to advance his agenda, and House Republican leaders are struggling to deliver with a tiny six-vote margin.
"It's not just that there is a loophole allowing a money cloud to descend on a marginal constituency long before an election," said Labour MP Martin Linton, whose Battersea constituency – held with a tiny 163-vote majority in 2005 – is listed as an "early gain" on the Tory blueprint.
While many candidates had little or no general election competitions, others had to spend up to $60 a vote to secure victory in districts with tiny voting populations.
At the second time of asking, however, on December 28th, the result was reversed by such a tiny number of votes that the electoral commission had to rerun the vote in one district just to make sure.
"A tiny number of votes can have a huge impact, so machines are part of the era of sweaty palms," says Doug Chapin, the director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan group that monitors voting reform.
If the government takes the Queensland seat of Herbert – which is currently the subject of a recount, given Labor pulled ahead by a tiny handful of votes – it will get to 77 seats.
I think it's planned that way … so all the new senators look stupid and the government can justify changing the rules," he said, referring to government proposals to change Senate voting so people could not be elected on a tiny percentage of the vote.
