I stopped at the Registrar of Voters office in Santa Ana this morning to observe the process of verifying the ballots in the ongoing race for the open seat in the First Supervisorial District.
Prior to taking a fifteen minute break I found volunteers at four tables checking paper ballots of four precincts, 68626 through 68630. There were perhaps 40 people in that room either checking ballots or observers representing the campaigns of Trung Nguyen and Janet Nguyen who wore white or yellow observer badges. Included in the observers I saw several powerful political players. Philip Greer and Jimmy Camp of Janet’s team and Mark Leyes, Scott Hart, Steve Spernak and Bryan Lanza were among the observers for Trung. I hadn’t seen Bryan since the 2002 Simon campaign for Governor. Also monitoring the recount were consultant Joe Giardiello, Steve Baric, Chairman of the California Republican Lawyers Association and attorney Kevin Muldoon.
This race is too close to call! I don’t care what the pundits may say as to who might win this photo finish race.There is simply no pattern to the voting. The current schedule is to continue this process up until 8 PM tomorrow with any challenges to begin at 10 AM on Monday.
The highest number of rejects will be in the category of “overvotes.” While I stood over one of the teams I spotted one ballot where the voter had selected “five” candidates. So much for reading the instructions. Another group of ballots that will be thrown out have markings on them such as a signature, the voters initials, or simply some comments about the candidate.
If you have an opportunity to visit the Santa Ana Registrar’s office I would encourage you to stop in to observe this very civil and well organized effort. Credit to Neal Kelley and his staff for their professional handling of this recount.
Larry, did you see or hear of any problems with the counts or recounts on the E-Slates or any questions on counting the VVPAT’s.
From the video clips I’ve seen, all the questionable ballots have beed the paper kind.
Have any of the eletronic ballots been questioned?
Cook.
I only saw them checking paper ballots this morning. Both team representatives were watching over the volunteers shoulders without incident or discussions.
It’s always that last bag on new
ballots that arrive just before the
end of the recount…that makes the
difference. Who you gonna call?