Water Board Vote Off by 122 Million : Election: ‘Large human error’ in Santa Margarita’s apportioned tally could change results.

The county registrar of voters said Tuesday that an audit revealed that the announced ballot returns from last week’s Santa Margarita Water District election were off by 122 million votes, forcing a recount that could change the final results.

“We’ve made a large human error,” said Registrar Donald Tanney. “We’re going to start from scratch and recount every ballot cast.”

The error was discovered Tuesday in the course of an audit that Tanney had ordered to check the accuracy of several precinct returns. The election was held Nov. 2.

The water district is a so-called “landowner” district--in which votes are apportioned on the basis of a property owner’s assessed value, rather than on the typical “one-person, one-vote” basis--and the hundreds of millions of votes cast cannot be tabulated by ordinary vote-counting methods. Instead, Tanney said, they must be manually tabulated one ballot at a time.

The cumbersome process of handling 5,028 ballots, and totaling the millions of votes involved, meant that the final results were not tabulated until nearly 4 a.m. Wednesday.

Tanney said that someone miscounted 122,000 votes appearing on one ballot as 122,122,000 votes. The resulting 122-million-vote mistake affected the vote totals of two challengers--Jim Mizell and Betty Olson--and one incumbent, Jim Neidert.

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Tanney said the three candidates’ vote totals would undoubtedly be reduced after the recount, but it was unclear whether the final election results would be affected.

Ballot returns announced in the wake the Nov. 2 election showed that four water district board incumbents lost their seats to newcomers Mizell, Olson, Bob Lay and Jim Holmes.

With more than 605 million votes to his credit, Mizell--a certified public accountant from Mission Viejo--was the top vote-getter in the contest for full-term seats that attracted seven challengers and three incumbents.

Olson, a UC Irvine professor from Trabuco, finished second with more than 429 million votes. Neidert, a real estate salesman from Rancho Santa Margarita, finished in sixth place with more than 178 million votes.

The candidate most likely to benefit from the revised ballot count is Sean Barrett, an incumbent appointed to the board in July. Barrett finished in fourth place. But if Olson loses a substantial number of votes, Barrett could move far enough up in the rankings to retain his seat and deny victory to Olson.

Holmes, a Mission Viejo retiree, beat out incumbent William F. Krasho, a construction manager from Rancho Santa Margarita, in a race for a separate, short-term seat and is not thought to be affected by the tabulation error.

In the Los Alisos Water District election--the only other “landowner” district in Orange County--two newcomers, Rod Jewell and Tom Bishop, beat out incumbent Harry C. Johnson for two open seats. Tanney said the Los Alisos district election appears error-free and no recount is planned.

Under a new law approved this year, the Santa Margarita and Los Alisos districts will be converted to “one-person, one-vote” districts in 1994. The law was prompted by reports in The Times of questionable management practices, including excessive spending and gift-taking by the Santa Margarita Water District’s top two managers, Walter W. (Bill) Knitz and Michael P. Lord. Both men retired after their activities were disclosed and are under a joint criminal investigation by the FBI and the county district attorney’s office.

The Times also focused attention on the manner in which the district’s board was elected under a special state law. Under the special “landowner district” election scheme, a homeowner whose property is assessed at $200,000 has 200,000 votes to cast for each open seat, while major developer-landowners have millions of votes.

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Tanney said he was not criticizing his staff for the error discovered Tuesday, because the tabulation was time-consuming and lasted until the early morning hours of the election. But he visited the offices of county supervisors Tuesday to notify them of the problem.

“I’m not beating anyone up down here,” he said. “Landowner elections are difficult. I very much want to go through the process in an atmosphere that is less pressurized. We’re going to go back and do it right.”

Although Tanney wants the recount done by the end of next week--the deadline for all final results to be certified--the final tabulation may not be completed until the end of November.

The newly elected Santa Margarita Water District board is scheduled to take office in December.

The Santa Margarita district serves a population of about 84,000 in the communities of Rancho Santa Margarita, Mission Viejo and Coto de Caza, and in unincorporated areas of the county.