Badham’s Opponent in Doubt : Sumner’s Margin Erodes; Hoffmann May Have Won

The race for the Democratic nomination in Orange County’s 40th Congressional District went into limbo Friday when the registrar of voters said the apparent victor, Democratic Party Chairman Bruce Sumner, appeared to be losing as the count progressed.

But a top elections official said that many write-in ballots appear to have been overlooked when precinct workers counted them by hand on election night and that a formal recount will probably show Sumner the winner.

Sumner, 61, a retired judge, ran a write-in campaign in an effort to prevent Art Hoffmann, a follower of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche Jr. and the only Democrat listed on the ballot, from becoming the Democratic Party’s standard bearer. The winner faces a tough battle against Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) in a heavily Republican district.

Wednesday morning’s unofficial returns showed Sumner as the winner by a 1,459-vote margin. It seemed to be a rare triumph for a write-in candidate--in a race that had attracted nationwide attention.

But on Friday, Registrar A. E. Olson said that the official hand count of write-in votes now puts Sumner 465 votes behind Hoffmann.

The vote will probably not be certified until next week, but he added: “Based on these totals, Sumner has lost. If no recount is requested, Sumner will have lost.”

When he learned this Friday, Sumner said that as soon as the vote is certified he will demand a recount.

Questions about the eventual winner emerged because of the nature of the vote-counting process.

While votes for all other candidates are counted by machine, write-in votes are tallied by hand by precinct workers after the polls close. Precinct workers not only look to see that a ballot has been punched for a write-in candidate but examine the ballot to see if a candidate’s name was written in adjacent to the punch. The punch is required to validate the write-in.

“Just because there’s a punch in the write-in position, doesn’t mean anything has been written in there at all,” Olson said. “Or it could be some guy being funny--voting for his neighbor.”

The write-in ballots are also run through the registrar’s vote counting machines to pick up votes on other candidates and ballot propositions. At the same time, the machine records the total of holes punched “in the write-in position,” Olson said.

2,000-Vote Difference

In the 40th Congressional District race, there is now an unusually wide disparity--a difference of nearly 2,000 votes--between the machine tally for write-in votes and the hand tally, he said.

Olson on Wednesday had reported a machine tally of write-in ballots which gave Sumner 16,342 votes to Hoffmann’s 14,883. With the addition of late ballots, the tally stood Friday at 16,591 for Sumner to 15,089 for Hoffmann.

Meanwhile, the hand tally submitted by precinct workers for Sumner was only 14,624, Olson said.

Olson said he could not easily explain the disparity of nearly 2,000 between the machine and hand counts for Sumner.

“Maybe some votes didn’t count at all (in the hand count) that were written in for Sumner. Or possibly some were missed or blank or written in with funny names”--votes for Mickey Mouse or Santa Claus, Olson said.

But one election official who requested anonymity said Friday that he believed a recount would “likely show Bruce Sumner’s the winner.”

Because of the disparity, the official said he was “skeptical” of the hand tallies and questioned whether precinct workers had done their job properly.

Results Questioned

“We have some where the precinct board wrote ‘None’ (no write-ins) across the report. I don’t know if that’s true. But where the precinct board wrote ‘None’ and the machine came up with punches in the write-in position, I can’t believe there weren’t punches for Sumner,” he said.

In another instance, precinct workers counted 17 write-in votes for Sumner “but the machine count is 60. I’m skeptical that there were only 17 votes for Sumner. Maybe they (precinct workers) were tougher in rejecting names or didn’t look at all the ballots--didn’t do a thorough job.”

Sumner on Friday said there is no question he will ask for a recount, even if it costs his campaign an additional $5,000.

“I’m going to ask for the recount,” he said. “I find it an incredible difference, an amazing difference” between the machine count and the hand count, he said, adding, “they better get some new precinct people” to do the counting.

Sumner noted that if the certified count turns out to be wrong, the county--and not his campaign--will have to pick up the tab. “If I’m correct in my thinking, we won’t have to pay for it,” Sumner said.

Hoffmann on Friday called the latest tally “a minor turnaround. I’m not going to jump up and down yet until the final certified tally is released by the registrar. And I’d be real surprised if they don’t go for a recount. That’s why I’m not going to go into a frenzy yet. I’m going to wait till the fat lady sings.”

Olson said a formal recount cannot be requested until the election is certified, probably within 10 days. After the certification, candidates have five days to request a recount. Olson said he thought any recount, if requested quickly, might be finished before the 4th of July.

Democratic Setbacks

The turmoil over the write-in vote is the latest setback for Orange County Democrats who were embarrassed to discover in mid-March that Hoffmann, a technical writer and LaRouche follower, was the only Democrat to be listed on the ballot for the 40th Congressional District.

To prevent Hoffmann from automatically winning the primary and a Democratic central committee seat, Sumner mounted a long-shot write-in campaign.

With expensive mailers, refrigerator magnets with his name on them, 200 volunteers and about $53,000, Sumner tried to educate voters from Santa Ana south to Laguna Beach to write in his name. The process was a cumbersome one, however, requiring voters to remember his name, write it in on their ballots and then vote for it.

Early Tuesday night, as the absentee ballots rolled in, Hoffmann took an early lead and Sumner and his backers grew glum. But by Wednesday at 4 a.m., when the registrar released an unofficial final tally, Sumner was ahead with 52.3% of the vote to 47.7% for Hoffmann.

Sumner was planning to celebrate this weekend with a trip to the wine country. But after a call late Friday from the registrar of voters, he said quietly that “any celebration will wait.”