Losing Candidates’ Protests Lead to Recount : Politics: Claims of irregularities include allegations of unlocked ballot boxes arriving more than two hours after polls had closed.

The eight losing candidates in last week’s Maywood City Council election have demanded and received a recount of the votes, claiming they witnessed several irregularities, including unlocked ballot boxes that arrived at City Hall more than two hours after the polls closed.

“This isn’t sour grapes. We want to ensure that we have fair elections in this town,” said John Tallman, who finished fifth among 11 candidates in the race for three seats.

Incumbent Henry Santiago Jr., political newcomer Dorothy Ramirez and incumbent William Hamilton won the three open seats. Tallman was just 26 votes behind Hamilton and 12 votes behind Tallman’s running mate, Tomas Martin.

On Tuesday night, about 50 Maywood residents, including several of the defeated challengers, gathered in front of City Hall to protest the swearing in of Santiago, Ramirez and Hamilton.

Tallman also complained about a vote-counting machine that continually broke down on election night, causing a delay in the final tally.

The recount will take place this morning, said Chief Administrative Officer Leonard Locher. A four-member panel of impartial citizens will hand-count the more than 1,400 ballots, he said.

Locher scoffed at Tallman’s charges. He said the ballot boxes arrived at City Hall in a reasonable amount of time and denied that any of them arrived unlocked.

Locher said that because of the trouble with the counting machine, city officials had to replace some original ballots that could not be read by the machine. The duplicate ballots were then stapled to the original, he said. The original ballots, not the duplicates, will be counted today.

Tallman maintains that when duplicate ballots were created, mistakes could have been made. “(The candidates) were roped off too far from where the duplicates were being counted,” Tallman said. “We couldn’t watch what was being punched” on the ballots.

The candidates were about 10 feet from the counting machine, said Locher, who along with the city attorney was charged with duplicating the ballots.

Until the recount begins, Locher said the ballots will remain in a locked vault in his office.