Measure C Backers Drop Recount, Ask for New Vote

Supporters of a Santa Ana proposition defeated by city voters June 3 called off their recount of votes Wednesday and argued that a new election should be held, citing ballot irregularities that may have caused citizens to inadvertently vote against the proposition.

Measure C, which would have altered local government by setting up ward elections for council members and a mayor elected by citywide vote, was defeated by 257 votes out of 22,707 cast in a tight race that saw the lead change four times in election night counting.

After the election, members of a coalition of citizen groups that sponsored the proposition called for a recount. The group had promised another petition drive to place the issue on the November ballot if the recount proved fruitless, spokesman Jim Lowman said.

But the supporters, who call themselves the Santa Ana Merged Society of Neighbors (SAMSON), took a new tack Wednesday by calling off the recount, for which they had already paid $750, and charging that irregularities at the polls justified a new election.

According to Orange County Registrar Al Olson, 55 of the city’s 161 precincts had been checked by the time the recount was called off Wednesday, and the pro-C side had picked up two extra votes.

“I could understand them calling off the recount with a net change of only two votes,” Olson said, adding that a change in the result would have been “pretty unlikely” had the recount been completed.

The alleged irregularities that caused SAMSON members to call off the effort and try to force a new election was the discovery of 50 city ballots that had been stuck underneath other ballots, Lowman said.

“I think they actually stuck together. I noticed the people who were doing the recount had trouble separating the ballots,” Lowman said. “Must be the composition of the paper.”

As they entered the polls on June 3, Santa Ana voters were offered six separate ballots for the various types of elections. Each card had spaces beside candidates or propositions where voters could punch holes to register their preferences.

In Santa Ana, the sixth ballot card, reserved for local measures, contained only one item--Measure C. The fifth ballot card contained six statewide ballot propositions, including one to allocate funds for parks--the Community Parklands Act.

Apparently some city voters picked up the fifth and sixth cards together and--without separating them--punched in votes on the state ballot, at the same time punching in six holes in the same location on the sixth card, Lowman said.

As a result, if a citizen voted “yes” on the Community Parklands Act, the hole punched on the sixth card would automatically register a “no” vote on Measure C, which was aligned directly underneath it, Lowman said. “But there was no punch (on the state ballot) that meant a ‘yes’ vote on C,” he added.

However, Olson said there is nothing to indicate that those ballots should be changed to “yes” votes on Measure C.

“The other side of that is that people may have (placed the ballots together) and then said, ‘Well, I was going to vote no on it anyway.’ It’s completely indeterminate,” he said.

Moreover, Olson said the ballots do not stick and theorized that the 50 ballots were punched that way because the voters themselves erred. He said the ballots definitely appeared to have been placed one atop the other and added that the phenomena had also been seen in the county’s other recount involving the Democratic nomination in the 40th Congressional District.

In any case, he said, even if those 50 ballots were counted as “yes” votes, that trend wouldn’t make up the 257-vote difference if the recount had continued.

Spoke to Olson

Lowman said he spoke to Olson about the problem shortly before calling off the recount and said he believes a new election is warranted. “It’s definitely possible,” he said.

Michael Metzler, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce and spokesman for the “No on C” group, said, “It does sound bizarre, but we can’t really comment until we know exactly what the problem is.”

Lowman admitted that the recount was doomed and said the “sticky ballot” issue is a last-ditch effort by SAMSON members before they start circulating petitions for the November election.

“We had to find a flaw in the system, and that’s apparently what this is,” he said.

To force a new election, an Orange County Superior Court judge would have to rule on a motion in the group’s favor, determining that the election was invalid. Lowman said he hopes to file that motion Friday but must first raise the cash to file such an action--an estimated $3,000 to $5,000--at a SAMSON meeting tonight.

New Petition Drive

Meanwhile, backers of Measure C--including several citizens’ groups and local Latino organizations--have said they will begin circulating petitions to put the issue on the November ballot. A letter sent to members of the League of United Latin American Citizens by local chapter president Zeke Hernandez indicated that the drive “will commence this Saturday, June 28, and terminate Thursday, July 3. A major effort will be undertaken to obtain 10,000 signatures over the weekend. . . . “

Election results have never been invalidated due to “sticky” ballots, Olson said. The last time the courts called for a new election was in a close Municipal Court judge’s race in 1980, he added.