DANA POINT : Uncounted Ballots May Decide Election

About 550 potentially crucial uncounted ballots in the close City Council race could be tallied as soon as today, city officials said Thursday.

Most of the uncounted ballots were mailed or were absentee ballots filed on Election Day, said Rosalyn Lever, an assistant to the county registrar of voters.

She said there is also an unspecified number of ballots that were not counted because they contained write-in candidates or were somehow damaged by the counting machines.

Any ballot that contains any writing for a candidate for any office is pulled out and forwarded to the registrar of voters without being counted at the precincts, Lever said.

Dana Point resident Bonnie Streeter ran an unofficial campaign for county sheriff and received at least 10 local votes that remain uncounted, said Ernest A. Nelson, the candidate who placed fourth in the race for three open council seats.

“There were about 14 different (Dana Point) precincts that had some ballot cards pulled out,” Lever said. “There are also some out there that the machines crunched on election night. We’ll get them counted as quick as we can.”

The remaining ballots are considered crucial because only 69 votes separate the top four finishers. Because of the unusually low turnout--only about 30% of the registered voters--and the 12 candidates in the race, it took far fewer than the expected 3,500 votes to win a council seat.

Toni Gallagher was the top finisher with 2,604 votes, followed by Councilwoman Karen Lloreda and Harold R. Kaufman with 2,576 and 2,555 votes, respectively.

Still considered in the running are Nelson and Bill Shepherd with 2,535 and 2,416 votes, respectively.

Although the top finisher received only 13.6% of the vote, there will be no runoff under city law.