Hermosa’s Residents Relearn a Lesson in the Value of a Vote

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: ‘Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Journals,” 1854

One woman didn’t get home from work in the San Fernando Valley on time. Another came down with a case of chicken pox. One man had to visit his father in the hospital. Another arrived at the polls too late.

Stories of missed votes abound in Hermosa Beach this week as opponents and proponents of a proposed $31-million beachfront hotel development stare--some in ecstasy, others in horror--at the official results from last week’s special election.

2,398 votes against the hotel.

2,397 votes for the hotel.

“There are a lot of people out there who wish they had voted,” said City Clerk Kathleen Reviczky, hanging up the telephone after telling yet another astonished caller that the hotel indeed had lost by just one vote. “Everyone seems to have heard of someone.”

One penitent resident who was unable to find the time to vote on Election Day called Reviczky late last week and asked if he could vote anyway. The resident proposed adding his vote to the handful of challenged ballots that Reviczky did not count until Friday.

“I guess they figured it was worth a try,” she said. “It has been a very emotional issue.”

Nearly 39% of Hermosa voters went to the polls for the special election, more than twice as many as elected Reviczky and council members John Cioffi and Tony DeBellis in a municipal election last year. It was one of the highest voter turnouts for a special election in the city’s history. But what if more people had voted? Forty percent? Or 41%?

Second-guessing of election results happens all the time, but it is particularly intense when two votes--just .04% of the qualified ballots--might have changed the outcome. A vote on a similar hotel development, proposed by the same developer, lost by 19 votes in December--a much-talked-about squeaker at the time that looks more like a landslide now.

“I can’t explain it. I am still baffled,” said developer Joe Langlois, who moved only 18 votes closer to building a hotel after six months and an estimated $50,000 worth of campaigning. “I thought the margin would be substantial.”

An attorney, who said he intended to vote “yes” but arrived at the wrong polling site four minutes before closing, dashed to the correct polling site only to be turned away by election officials.

“It was very embarrassing,” he said. “In the last election I was the last person in the door, and I was thinking at the time that I could be the hero of the election if it came down to one vote. Now I feel more like the big goat.”

Close elections invite free-wheeling analyses.

“It’s a mandate,” said an elated Paul Robinson, who helped lead a mishmash of residents against the proposed development.

“I think we are ahead because there were two ballots that were not punched but the intention of the voter was there,” countered Edie Webber, a former council member who supported the proposed hotel. “The two people, and they were probably aging people who probably had forgotten, voted by marking the ‘yes’ with a pen rather than punching the hole. The intention of the voter was there.”

The two ballots, which were disqualified by Reviczky, would have swung the election in favor of the hotel, Webber said. “It would be a mandate for us, then, too,” she said.

With a recount scheduled for next week, residents will have several more days to marvel at the closeness of the vote.

But that is nothing new in Hermosa. Nearly 80 years ago, their parents and grandparents probably did the same. On Christmas Eve, 1906, 47 voters went to the polls in an unincorporated portion of Los Angeles County, voting 24 to 23 to incorporate the 1.3-square-mile community as the City of Hermosa Beach.