On election night, things will be the same as they ever were, with results slowly being released by the department in the hours after the polls close at 8 p.m. Included in those results will be voters' first-choice picks in the seven races for seats on the Board of Supervisors.

Yet things will get a bit trickier once they start counting voters' second and third choices, which elections officials aren't even planning to extract from the memory cards in the voting machines until the next day.

Last month Arntz said he wouldn't even tabulate those votes until he had completed his final canvas of the ballots, which usually takes weeks. That idea drew loud protests and threats of challenge by the Bay Guardian, the Center for Voting and Democracy, and some campaigns, so Arntz agreed to tabulate preliminary votes the next day by 4 p.m. (see Trail Mix, 9/15/04).

Arntz then said he would run the RCV program only once a week until a winner is declared, which again drew howls and official Sunshine Ordinance requests for records by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Bay Guardian, and others. At this point, Sup. Matt Gonzalez intervened, offering a resolution requiring Arntz to release the preliminary results and updated data set on a daily basis. That resolution was slated to go before the Board of Supervisors' Rules Committee Oct. 27 and the full board on Election Day, although his aides told us it might be modified.

But Oct. 25, Arntz issued his counterproposal: releasing the preliminary results on every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday by 4 p.m. That was fine with Gonzalez, who told us, "I'm OK with it. We'll probably just take Arntz at his memo" and drop the resolution.

Whatever happens with this election – both on election night and over the days or weeks to come – you'll be able to follow it and get the latest results (even if we have to tabulate them ourselves) at sfbg.com. So log on and follow the drama. (Steven T. Jones)

Money, profanity, and profane amounts of money San Francisco Board of Education commissioner Heather Hiles uttered the best line of the election season Oct. 20, telling fellow commissioner Mark Sanchez to "shut the fuck up" at a public meeting in front of a bunch of teachers and kids. The outburst, which was first reported in the San Francisco Examiner, came in response to a comment Sanchez made about Hiles's prodigious campaign fundraising.

Hiles has made herself the poster child for public campaign finance during this election. She's blanketed the city with campaign posters while outspending many of her competitors by a factor of 10. Along the way, she also became the first school board candidate in the city's history to exceed the $90,000 voluntary spending limit, inspiring Gonzalez to introduce legislation that would bar school board commissioners from voting on contracts for people who contributed to their campaigns.

But Hiles certainly isn't the only one running for local office who looks like she's trying to buy the election. Just how much does one need to run an effective campaign in this city? We're not sure, so we're publishing the names of the 10 candidates who've turned their campaigns into a race to see who can raise the most money.

Go ahead and ask them how much you need to be a candidate, so long as you know you might get a nasty response. Figures are the total dollar amount raised as of Oct. 16; incumbents are indicated by an (i).

Board of Supervisors
Michela Alioto-Pier (i) $241,602
Aaron Peskin (i) $228,875
Lillian Sing $209,829
Gerardo Sandoval (i) $185,742
Sean Elsbernd (i) $165,303
Jake McGoldrick (i) $110,415
Rennie O'Brien $80,220
Matt Tuchow $80,154

School board
Heather Hiles (i) $205,504
Larry Kane $82,664

(Matthew Hirsch)

This just in As we were going to press, Sup. Aaron Peskin's office sent over the announcement of its first salvo against SFSOS and the other secretive groups that have filled people's mailboxes with nasty attack mailers: "Supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Sophie Maxwell, Jake McGoldrick, Aaron Peskin and Gerardo Sandoval join former Ethics Commissioner Paul Melbostad and former Common Cause S.F. Director Charlie Marsteller to urge the passage of groundbreaking legislation bringing 'issue advocacy' advertisements under the purview of the San Francisco Ethics Commission. The legislation, to be introduced at Tuesday's Board meeting, will require the responsible parties of any advertisement mentioning a candidate for office within 90 days of an election to disclose their funding sources and expenditures." (Jones)

Digging into no-fly lists and the president's jacket Remember the feeling you experienced Dec. 13, 2000, as Al Gore strode to the podium and stood before the world, wooden as ever, to call an end to the weirdest election in U.S. history? That was disbelief, a sensation investigative journalist Dave Lindorff has had again and again throughout the George W. Bush presidency.

Lindorff, author of the new book This Can't Be Happening (www.thiscantbehappening.net), has spent the past four years documenting what he calls Bush's "war on civil liberties." He reported on the Transportation Security Administration's no-fly list, which is now being challenged in court, and he covered Operation TIPS, a short-lived plan to have people spy on their neighbors and notify the feds if they think one of them is a terrorist.

Lindorff was also the first journalist who paid serious attention to the Pentagon's quiet move to reconstitute local and regional draft boards, a story that received a "Most Censored Story" award from Sonoma State University's Project Censored. Lindorff was in town Oct. 23 to accept the award.

The stories he's covered over the years aren't really censored in the sense that an editor refused to publish them; you can find most of his latest writing at Counterpunch.org and Salon.com. Rather, they're censored by the mainstream media, which passed over the story about the draft much in the same way they've failed to investigate that mysterious bulge protruding from Bush's jacket during the first presidential debate (another Lindorff story).

For the story, Lindorff obtained a TV image of the solid rectangular device strapped to Bush's back and learned from a surveillance expert that it was likely part of a radio communication system. He also reported that before the debate, Republican officials insisted no cameras be placed behind the candidates. But the White House press office refused to return Lindorff's calls for comment, and the Kerry campaign declined to make an issue of the bulge.

"What I did didn't take much brilliance," Lindorff told us. "It's just indicative of the low caliber of the [mainstream] media."

At least, it shows how mainstream editors keep reporters from pursuing stories that might get criticized by the partisans in power: Lindorff said he's gotten at least five leads from "a staff person at a major metropolitan paper in San Francisco." (Hirsch)

And speaking of the San Francisco Chronicle ... It was good to hear columnist-economist Paul Krugman speak in Berkeley Oct. 14 – making the case, in his inimitable style, that the Bush administration is the most blatantly corrupt and mendacious in recent history – particularly because his perspective has disappeared from Bay Area mass-media outlets.

The San Francisco Chronicle used to regularly run Krugman New York Times column, but he disappeared from the pages just as the campaign season heated up and started taking heat from the right for his tendency to actually question official statements and point out when tax-cut math doesn't add up.

The Chron's editorial page has gotten more and more conservative in recent years as the paper tries to reach out to suburban readers and become more of a regional paper. You can see that just by looking at its endorsements: recommending rejection of John Burton's plan to expand health care coverage (Proposition 72), an offer to extend the school board vote to immigrants (Proposition F), and a resolution opposing the Iraq war (Proposition N), and supporting Prop. 62, which helps rich candidates and hurts third parties.

But would the Chron really drop Krugman, who was recently named columnist of the year by old Editor and Publisher magazine, just for being an effective if controversial truth-teller? So I e-mailed Chron editorial page editor John Diaz and reader representative Dick Rogers to ask why they dropped Krugman.

"John tells me we still receive the Krugman column from NYT but don't run him because there's more of a set column lineup. Cynthia Tucker, Molly Ivins and Bob Scheer now get more regular play," Rogers wrote six days later. Diaz didn't respond.

Krugman used to be part of the set lineup, and now he's not. Hmm, I didn't think I got a real answer. So I wrote Rogers back, repeating my questions: Why was Krugman dropped? Who made that decision? Rogers's reply was "Call John." So I did, a couple times, but got no reply, something I've come to expect from the brass at the Chron, which doesn't have much regard for the tenet in the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics calling for journalists to be accountable to the public and to one another.

Finally, I e-mailed Diaz again, asking why he dropped Krugman, and baiting him a bit with my theory on the matter: "My suspicion is that your decision had something to do with the fact that the Right has been criticizing him at the same time that y'all are trying to increase your readership in the suburbs, yet Krugman's standing as a popular and respected columnist seems to be confirmed by the fact that Editor & Publisher named him columnist of the year."

This time, I got a reply: "Hello Steve: Thanks for the opportunity to comment, but I'll pass. It's clear you've already settled on your premises. All the best, JD."

I thought it was a cop-out on what should be an easy question to answer, and I told him so, saying he knows as well as I do that I'd be forced to dutifully print whatever answer he gave me, no matter how plausible it sounds. But I'd pretty much given up on getting an answer by playing nice, so I tried to goad him a little with lines like "I'm really trying to be fair to you, and I would like to believe that you aren't simply a bitter conservative stuck in a liberal town, or a company man carrying out edicts from corporate. C'mon, John, give me some reason to believe that you're practicing honest journalism over there."

I got no response from Diaz, but Rogers let me have it: "Hold on a second, Steve. First, you didn't level with John about what you were angling after, then you admit using a 'confrontational style' with someone who's about as civil a person as I've ever met. He's no more obliged to talk to you than you'd be obliged to talk to him under the same circumstances. If you throw food at the dinner table, don't expect the host to pass you the potatoes."

To which I responded: "So when I ask a simple and straightforward question about why a column was dropped then I'm not 'leveling' with John, and when I level with him and lay out one possible theory about why the column was dropped, then he won't talk to me because he feels like I have my mind make up. How do I win in this situation, Dick? And what exactly was so inappropriate about the questions I asked him in my original e-mail. I didn't really start goading him until he told me 'I'll pass.' And, yes, journalists are obliged to answer questions about their work, even if I'm a bit abrasive and he's the most civil guy you ever met. Frankly, Dick, you're not sounding much like an independent third party here, but rather like the protector of a delicate friend."

Anyway, you get the idea why it's so tough to do good media criticism in these days. There's a lot of criticize, but journalists are such an inaccessible and thin-skinned lot that it's really not much fun. But if you feel like trying to get a straight answer out of these guys, their e-mails addresses are readersrep@sfchronicle.com and jdiaz@sfchronicle.com. Good luck, and let me know what you learn. (Jones)