Slow Count Has Candidate in Limbo : Write-In Hopeful Might Not Know Outcome for Week

Michael Lasky can be forgiven for thinking these days that votes are counted quicker in the Philippines than in the 75th Assembly District.

More than two days after the polls closed, Lasky still does not know whether he qualified for the November ballot in the 75th District, and San Diego County election officials said Thursday that he may not know for another week.

“It isn’t proceeding as quickly as I had hoped,” Lasky said in a wry understatement. “I feel like I’m kind of dangling right now.”

As of late Thursday, Lasky, who ran as a write-in candidate in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in an attempt to prevent the automatic reelection of Assemblywoman Sunny Mojonnier (R-Encinitas), was 43 votes short of the 1,371 needed to get his name on the November ballot.

However, because all of Lasky’s write-in votes must be hand-counted, and because the county registrar of voters’ office has higher priorities, whether he surpassed or fell tantalizingly short of the magic number is unknown.

“We’ve gone through about 99% of all the write-ins and still have some other things to check, so there’s still a possibility that he might make it,” Registrar Ray Ortiz said Thursday. “But there are so many other priorities that I just can’t make a special case of Mr. Lasky right now.”

Ortiz explained that election officials still must examine more than 300 precinct vote boxes that contain damaged and unused ballots, “because many times, write-ins are put in the boxes by mistake.”

But before doing that, Ortiz said, his staff will be working on other matters that take precedence over Lasky’s predicament, including canvassing a San Ysidro school district race in which five votes separate the two candidates and a close Lemon Grove City Council race. The registrar’s office also plans to expedite its canvass of the San Diego mayoral election so that former Councilwoman Maureen O’Connor’s victory can be officially certified in time for her inauguration next month.

“I realize Mr. Lasky is very anxious about this, and I’d like to put it to rest, too, but it’s not the No. 1 thing on the list,” Ortiz said.

Lasky, who says he is trying to get on the ballot in the heavily Republican district because “every public official needs to be held accountable at election time,” appears to be taking the delays in good humor.

“It is a cliffhanger situation, and one would like to know one way or another,” said Lasky, a 44-year-old UC San Diego doctoral candidate. “But it’s in other people’s hands and there’s nothing I can do to hurry it along. I’ve resolved to take a patient approach.”

If Lasky’s write-in count ultimately falls about 10 votes short, questions about the legality of some ballots could produce even further delays in resolving the fate of his candidacy.

Under the law, write-in ballots must specify both the candidate’s name and the office is seeking--in this case, “Lasky-75th Assembly.” However, Ortiz said that on about a half dozen write-in ballots--those have not yet been added to Lasky’s total--voters mistakenly identified the office that he hopes to run for as the state Senate.

Because Lasky was the only official write-in candidate running for any office in the 75th District, Ortiz contends that the intent of the voters who wrote in Lasky’s name but misidentified the office “seems clear enough to me.” Ortiz added that he is “inclined to count those votes,” but said that he plans to seek the county counsel’s opinion on the matter.

“I think my purpose is to get people on the ballot, not keep them off,” Ortiz said. “It might be stretching the law a little bit, but I’d have to ask whether we’re really looking at a law so strict that it can keep people off the ballot because of a technicality like this.”

About seven other voters mistakenly wrote Lasky’s name on the voting booklets used by all voters at the polls, not on their individual ballots, as they should have, Ortiz noted.

Although those voters also obviously intended to help Lasky qualify for the November ballot, Ortiz said that he “would be hard-pressed to count” the voting booklets because they stray so far from the proper write-in procedure.

“If those votes would make a difference, (Lasky) might have to go to court,” Ortiz said.

Lasky hopes that the question can be resolved at the registrar’s Kearny Mesa office, not in a courtroom.

“The easiest thing would be to just get 43 more votes from what remains to be counted,” he said. “Forty-three votes isn’t a significant number in and of itself. But it’s looking like a big number right now.”