Measure Q: I told several people that I thought Q would fail, largely because it wouldn't do well in Marin County. Moreover, I said I expected Marin voters to give much stronger support to Prop. 1A (bonds for a high-speed train to L.A.) than to a local rail measure. Well, I certainly was wrong. Support in Marin increased since 2006, and, as a result, this time the rail measure passed. I was right that Prop. 1A would do better - 65 percent vs. 62.6 percent. But 2.4 percentage points doesn't exactly equate to "much stronger." In Sonoma County, by the way, Prop. 1A lagged well behind Q - 64 percent vs. 73.5 percent.

Prop. 8: Election results don't become final for about a month after Election Day, as late absentees are counted and the vote is canvassed. During that time, I would imagine that there will be a rush, much as there was right before the election, for gay couples to marry. That's going to be an extra crunch for county clerks, who will be wrapping up the election at the same time they have a big demand for marriage licenses and civil weddings. I also imagine we'll see a court fight over the validity of the marriages conducted in the six months between the state Supreme Court ruling and whatever date Prop. 8 takes effect.

Rohnert Park: Interesting mixed message in the results here. Measure L, the sewer rate rollback, passed, yet the candidate most closely associated with it (Dawna Gallagher) finished last in the City Council election. We'll probably get a picture very quickly of whether the sponsors were right that the city could meet all its financial obligations, including paying for the regional treatment plant and The Geysers pipeline, with lower rates. A major argument of Measure L's sponsors was that the city had been adding a sewer line to promote growth. Yet the new council majority may be considerably friendlier to development proposals than the majority that has been turned out.

It also will be interesting to see if the new council revisits the issue of retirement benefits for the Public Safety Department. Joe Callinan and Gina Belforte were critical of the negotiations that resulted in a two-tier retirement system, which reduced the city's long-term liability.

Board of Supervisors: I haven't got an up-to-date voter registration breakdown of Sonoma County by supervisorial district, but I'm surprised to see that there were far more votes cast in the 1st district (Valerie Brown vs. Will Pier) than either of the other races. Pier quietly put together a very serious challenge to an incumbent supervisor, but attention was focused on the contests between Shirlee Zane and Sharon Wright in Santa Rosa and Efren Carrillo and Rue Furch in the west county. The numbers will change as the remaining absentees are counted, but probably not the proportions. For now, there are 40,500 ballots in the 1st district, 31,000 in the 3rd and 34,000 in the 5th.

Ballot fatigue: It's not unusual to see a big drop-off from the top of the ballot to the bottom, but not this time, at least in Sonoma County. There were 196,300 votes cast for president and 180,671 for Measure Q, the last item on the ballot. What else were voters intense about? Prop. 8, for sure. There were 194,000 ballots cast.  And Proposition 2 (chickens and cages), with 190,300 ballots.

-- Jim Sweeney