COUNCIL ELECTION : Tampering With Mail Ballots Charged

Less than 24 hours before the polls opened in today’s 1st District City Council runoff election, the two contenders took some last-minute political potshots at each other after one candidate released documents she said prove someone has been tampering with absentee ballots.

While Sharon Mee Yung Lowe avoided directly accusing her opponent, Mike Hernandez, of orchestrating the effort, she said she suspects Hernandez’s “political machine” had something to do with it while acknowledging that she had no proof.

Hernandez, a Cypress Park bond agent, called Lowe’s Monday morning press conference on City Hall steps “a desperate act by a desperate person on the day before the election.”

“I know we had nothing to do with this,” Hernandez said. “No one should be tampering with a ballot and I certainly think it should be investigated, but for her to release it to the media like this the day before the election I think indicates just how desperate she is.”

Hernandez, 38, and Lowe, 36, are in a runoff to fill the vacancy created when Gloria Molina won a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in February. The winner of today’s election will serve the last two years of Molina’s term.

At her press conference, Lowe cited the case of a voter who requested an absentee ballot but never received one. Instead the voter received a notification from the city clerk’s office that the signature on a ballot cast in her name did not match the signature on her application for a ballot. The vote on the ballot had been cast for Hernandez.

The woman turned over the original documents to Lowe’s campaign staff Saturday, Lowe said. Copies and demands for an investigation were delivered to the district attorney’s office, the state Fair Political Practices Commission, the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday morning, she said.

In addition to the forged ballot signature, Lowe said volunteers for her campaign also found 34 voters who said they applied for absentee ballots in July, but have never received them. She said an “overwhelming majority” have Asian surnames.

City Clerk Elias Martinez reviewed the list Monday and said applications from three of the voters had arrived late, three had already voted, eight were not registered, 12 were sent ballots but had not returned them, and there were no absentee ballot applications from the remaining eight. Martinez said the case of possible fraud had been turned over to police.

“My first objective is to ensure that the rest of this election is conducted in as fair a process as is possible, as well as in a legal manner,” said Lowe, a Chinatown attorney. “We are asking for preservation of evidence to see whether or not any other absentee ballots have been (improperly) returned.”

Hernandez said his staff also had found voters who did not receive absentee ballots after applying for them.

“We handled it on a day-to-day basis, contacting the (city) clerk’s office to check their paperwork and see what might have gone wrong,” he said. “We didn’t call any press conferences.”

Lowe said she made her announcement on Monday to avoid looking like she was “playing sour grapes after the election.”

“We want a status update of every single absentee ballot request,” Lowe said. “We just want to make sure that everything is done fairly.”