Sumner-Hoffman Recount Inches Along : Democracy Dealt Out Vote by Vote

At first glance, it looks like an unusual card game.

In a back room at the Orange County registrar of voters’ office in Santa Ana, a dozen people gather each day around two wide tables. Under glaring fluorescent lights, they watch intently, some taking notes, as a dealer at each table carefully lays one green card after another on a piece of black paper.

“Sumner,” “Sumner,” “Hoffmann,” “Sumner,” the dealer intones, reading the name on one card as he mechanically turns over the next. The action stops briefly when an observer calls out “Challenge!” and the questioned card is set aside. But then it resumes, with the dealer turning up one green card after another from his pack.

Bureaucratic Version of Bridge

In fact, the cards are election ballots. The black paper makes it easier for designated spotters around the table to see if they have been punched--voted.

And the men and women huddled around the ballots are not playing some bureaucratic version of bridge. Rather, they are conducting a controversial recount of votes from the June 3 primary for the 40th Congressional District Democratic nomination.

Their task--scrutinizing ballot after ballot for fictitious names, double punches and other voting errors--is repetitive, unimaginative and boring, both volunteers and election officials agree.

“It’s like watching paint dry sometimes,” said George Hollis, a regular observer.

But this exercise in tedium has a point. The political futures of two Orange County Democrats--county Democratic Party Chairman Bruce Sumner and Art Hoffmann, 30, a follower of political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr.--ride on its outcome.

Sumner, 61, a retired judge, waged a long-shot write-in campaign to prevent Hoffmann from becoming the Democrat’s standard-bearer against five-term Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) this fall. And on election night, when an unofficial computer tally from the precincts was released, the mainstream Democrat appeared to have beaten the LaRouche follower by 1,459 votes.

But several days later, the official count--a hand tally of write-in votes from each precinct--came in, showing Hoffmann the winner by 267 votes.

There have been differing explanations for the differing tallies. Two precinct workers, for instance, told The Times that they had been instructed not to count write-ins at their polls.

Not content with the explanations, Sumner demanded a recount, which began June 19.

The trend was established early: Hoffmann’s votes held steady but Sumner gained as much as 100 votes a day. By the recount’s third day, Sumner was leading by 14 votes and since then, his lead has continued to grow. With 582 of the 705 precincts counted and the recount expected to end by Friday, Sumner on Tuesday night was leading by 910 votes with 16,071 votes to Hoffmann’s 15,161. Hoffmann initially said he would not challenge the recount, but he now declines to discuss his plans until the recount is completed. Though he has stopped attending the count, seven of his supporters, all members of LaRouche’s National Democratic Policy Committee, are there each day, scrutinizing ballots and reading newspapers or LaRouche’s book, “DOPE, Inc.” during their breaks.

“We’re doing this in case Art would like to go to court,” explained Maureen Pike, a National Democratic Policy Committee member from Los Angeles, who described herself as Hoffmann’s “team captain.”

And there may be grounds for court action, Pike said. Ballots from some precincts were never sealed, 20 ballots in one precinct were left out of the computer count, and there was one precinct in which 87 Democrats signed the register but somehow 96 Democrats voted, she said.

“What has shocked me about this whole process is that there are such wild irregularities,” Pike said. Hoffmann’s attorneys--recount experts from Los Angeles and Washington-- witnessed the count for several days, and they were “shocked, totally shocked,” she added.

Election officials, however, have defended their precinct workers. On election night, “the majority of them counted the write-ins. There’s only one (vote) missed here and there,” said Rosalyn Lever, the registrar’s chief of election operations.

But Sumner and his attorney, Frank P. Barbaro, said they are also concerned by the disparities in the write-in count--and by some of Registrar Al Olson’s decisions not to count what they contend are Sumner votes.

Both men attend the recount daily, the white-haired former judge usually bringing a box of doughnuts for his seven volunteers, including housewives, attorneys and college students who monitor the count.

The mood in the Sumner camp is upbeat. A sign over their table across the room from Hoffmann’s declares, “It’s Sumner Time” and lists the margin of his lead.

Still Sumner is tiring of the recount. Lately he has complained about its cost.

“I have to pay $500 a day, even though I’m getting 75% per cent of the vote,” he said one day last week, as he handed Lever a $2,500 check to pay for the next week’s count.

Some of the costs include $35 a day paid to each of four of the registrar’s best precinct workers to do the counting. Assuming the finished recount shows Sumner the winner, the candidate will get his money back--but not until then, Lever said.

Sumner also grouses about the way ballots are counted.

“I’m not getting the votes where someone wrote in my name and marked an X,” he complained, noting that Olson only counts as valid those ballots on which Sumner’s name was both written in and punched with the voting machine. A ballot punched with a pencil also won’t be counted, Sumner and Barbaro complained.

“If the vote of everybody who wanted to vote Bruce Sumner was counted, Bruce Sumner would have won by 3,000 to 4,000 votes,” Barbaro contended.

Also not being counted for Sumner are ballots that Barbaro calls “the sleepers,” where ballots were punched in the write-in spot but no name was written in.

Still, although Hoffmann’s supporters routinely challenge ballots where Sumner’s name was misspelled, Olson has been counting ballots written for “Summer,” Somner” and “Summner” and even “Robert Sumner” as votes for Bruce Sumner.

Olson also gives Sumner credit for ballots known as “Judge Cards” in which the words “Judge Sumner” or “Judge Bruce Sumner” were written in. Citing an Election Code section that is usually applied to a candidate’s listing on the printed ballot, Hoffmann supporters routinely challenge the “Judge Cards,” contending that it is illegal to use an honorific on a write-in. But Olson, the arbiter for all challenged ballots, disagrees.

Questions about ballots come up first, when spotters for Hoffmann or Sumner call out “Challenge!”

They are pursued in detail every afternoon around 2 or 3 p.m. by a special challenge board, consisting of Olson, chief deputy registrar Shirley Deaton and Deputy County Counsel Stefen H. Weiss.

In the first days of challenges, there were sometimes long arguments involving Pike, Hoffmann’s lawyers, Barbaro, Sumner and Olson; but now dealing with challenges is a routine. Olson passes around questioned ballots, gives his verdict, Weiss stamps the envelopes and Deaton tallies the votes.

“I can tell you going into a challenge period what we’ll win and what they’ll win,” Pike said.

In addition, after several weeks of working together, the participants have adopted a friendly, bantering tone to the challenge period. As one recent session opened, for instance, Weiss jokingly offered “an opening bid of one club.”

Although both sides frequently disagree with Olson, they concur that he is not favoring either side. “Mr. Olson is our ruler,” Barbaro said. “He is extremely consistent, and he is fair.”

Still, after the many hours of the recount, participants--election workers, candidates and volunteers--say they will be glad when it is over.

Said Deaton: “From 8:30 until 6:30 you just sit and count and count. . . . We’re not preparing for the general election. We could be ordering supplies and contracts for pamphlets. . . . We’re letting everything else go.”

Pike, monitoring her first recount, said she had found the process interesting, “how an election functions.” But she will be glad to leave the registrar’s office, she said.

“Think of the poor girls (clerks) going through the elections cards day after day. At least we know this thing will be over in a couple of weeks.”