Election Officials Get Food for Thought : City Council: Anxious staffers at one point launch a frantic search for vote results after precinct worker fails to turn them in. She had gone to her mother’s for dinner.

Final results in the special election for the City Council were delayed two hours Tuesday night while a precinct worker had dinner with her mother.

In the meantime, anxious city officials, candidates and their supporters and reporters cooled their heels at City Hall, fueling wild speculation and at one point setting off a frantic search for the missing votes.

City Atty. Arnold Glasman said Jennifer Scott was supposed to bring the ballots from a precinct at the Emerson Village retirement home to City Hall to be counted. But, he said, she apparently thought there was no hurry and could hand them in the next day.

By 9:30 p.m. Tuesday night, votes had come in from 25 of the city’s 26 precincts. Boyd Bredenkamp, a businessman and planning commissioner, held a clear lead over two opponents in the race to replace recalled Councilman C. L. (Clay) Bryant.

The City Council chambers, where the ballots were counted, was crowded with Bredenkamp supporters waiting to cheer the final results. A beaming Bredenkamp was standing by to go on cable television with a victory speech.

Time passed and the wait continued.

The audience filled the time with speculation. Maybe someone had stolen the ballots. Maybe, the concern of council candidates about crime had yielded another example, an election worker waylaid.

Election officials began making some calls and found out that Scott, the precinct inspector, had left for City Hall more than an hour earlier. They also learned that she was pregnant and hadn’t been feeling well. More speculation. Maybe she didn’t deliver the ballots because she was delivering a baby.

City Clerk Elizabeth Villeral then called the watch commander at the Police Department to report Scott and the ballots missing.

City Councilwoman Nell Soto, who supported losing council candidate Bob Dahms, said she was in bed when she was awakened by a call from a friend who had heard on a radio scanner that police were hunting for missing ballots. She said the friend was convinced that chicanery was afoot, and that the results were tainted. Soto was more realistic. She said she knew one precinct wasn’t going to change the outcome.

But by this time, some Bredenkamp supporters waiting at City Hall were beginning to think that an election they had won at the polls was in danger of being stolen. What if ballots had been destroyed? Would there be a new election?

Then, a report circulated that the city attorney was about to leave City Hall to pick up the ballots. A dozen Bredenkamp supporters rushed to their cars to follow. Two reporters chased the supporters chasing the attorney.

Just then, Scott showed up.

City officials ushered Scott off to a private meeting to find out what had happened. Glasman said Scott told him that she went to her mother’s house for dinner. The mother apparently thought it odd that the ballots had come along and suggested that her daughter try to get to City Hall before midnight. But, Glasman said, Scott still thought she had until the next morning to turn them in.

Scott refused to talk with reporters. A man who accompanied her said it was simple: “She didn’t know she was supposed to bring the ballots in.”

Villeral said Scott should have known from the instructions given to her that she was to take the ballots to City Hall immediately, but no harm was done. Glasman said the 378 ballots had not been tampered with, and the results from the precinct nearly matched those of the election as a whole.

When the missing precinct was added at 11:30 p.m., final results showed that Bredenkamp had captured 54% of the vote. He received 2,903 votes to 1,868 for Dahms and 604 for Nancy Lopez. The turnout was 13.5% of the eligible voters.

Glasman said he and the city clerk will look into the matter further, but the precinct worker’s excursion to her mother’s house for dinner does not appear to jeopardize the integrity of the election. “There is no indication of anything but some very poor judgment by a precinct officer,” he said.