Senate Election Could Hinge on ‘Hanging Chad’

When asked to pick a candidate running for the 20th state Senate District in the Valley, more than 9,300 people voting in the June 2 primary left their ballots blank, deciding not to vote for anyone.

Or did they?

In every election in Los Angeles County, a few voters who go to the polls or mail in absentee ballots don’t punch their ballot cards with enough gusto. Instead of leaving behind a clean, little rectangular hole to show who they voted for, a punched speck of paper may cling to a corner or two.

If the stubborn bit--known as “hanging chad”--flops back into the hole, the computer counting ballot cards will not record the vote.

Although very rare, those and other potential errors may never be caught unless a candidate demands a manual recount, a very costly, laborious option now being seriously considered by former state Assemblyman Richard Katz.

“There are all kinds of things you can look for in recounts,” said Katz, who lost the Democratic nomination for the state Senate seat by 31 votes to Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon.

The recount process is governed by a dizzying maze of requirements, rules and procedures. For instance, hanging chad is counted only if the paper chip is broken on three sides and attached to the ballot by no more than two corners.

History clearly shows that overcoming a 31-vote margin in a recount is, at best, a longshot.

“The bottom line is that some errors occur,” said county Registrar-Recorder Conny B. McCormack, a 17-year veteran whose office tallied the votes and would conduct any recount. “Typically, in most recounts there will be some ballots added in. But I’ve never seen someone pick up 31 votes.”

Recounting the 103,300 votes cast in the 20th state Senate District race sounds easy, but it’s not.

First, there are the lawyers. Katz predicts a challenge of the election would cost him $40,000 in legal bills and consultant fees, money that won’t be refunded even if his effort is successful.

A recount can only be requested in writing within five days of the certification of the results by the county Board of Supervisors, which is scheduled for June 30.

Any voter can make the request--provided the person finds the money to pay the county registrar.

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For Katz, a recount would cost roughly $6,000 per day and take about a week, running upward of $40,000, McCormack said. The daily tab must be paid in advance every morning, but the recount can be stopped at any time. If the election is reversed, the money is refunded.

State Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) offered to pay some of the expense, and Katz also is permitted to accept campaign contributions to pay the costs.

Once underway, the challenger can decide which ballots county election officials will recount first, and can prioritize specific precincts or even absentee voters.

“Usually, they’ll start with the absentees and the precincts that gave them the most support,” said Lance Olson, general counsel for the state Democratic Party, who has assisted a handful of Democrats in past recounts. “That’s where they have the best chance to pick up ground.”

In Los Angeles County, all recounts are conducted by election workers in a sparsely furnished, unmarked room on the third floor of the Registrar-Recorder’s office in Norwalk. The room is open to the public, and candidates involved in the disputed contest usually have teams of observers on hand.

The ballots are tallied by four-person “boards”: a caller, who examines every ballot and calls out the vote punched; a watcher, who looks at the same ballot to ensure the caller is correct; a tallier, who records each vote on a ballot sheet; and a checker, who also records each vote to double-check the tallier.

The boards count 10 hours a day, excluding two 15-minute breaks, and the workers are not allowed to eat, drink, talk or listen to music while they’re examining ballots. No observers in the room are allowed to touch the ballots.

Occasionally, voters merely dent the card when they punch, especially on absentee ballots. Although it may be obvious whom they intended to vote for, it doesn’t count, McCormack said.

Absentee voters sometimes circle or mark their choices on a ballot, rather than punching out the proper boxes. Those are counted, McCormack said. However, those ballots are rare, and they are usually fished out when the absentee ballots are first opened.

“A lot of things can happen. When people do a absentee ballot, they could be doing it on their kitchen table, and they might not punch it through the whole way,” said Stephen J. Kaufman, Katz’s attorney monitoring the election process.

Last week, Kaufman spotted two absentee ballots not counted because they only had indentations, he said.

“We really don’t have a choice, since the law is pretty clear,” McCormack said.

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If, during the recount, there is a dispute about a ballot, McCormack or the elections officials will settle the matter immediately.

Election workers also re-audit voting logs from every precinct involved in the disputed contest, to ensure the number of voters who signed in at a polling site match the number of ballots received from that site. All precincts undergo the same audit after every election.

Finally, the country registrar reexamines ballots that were disqualified, including absentee ballots submitted with signatures that don’t match the voter’s signature on his registration card. Most often, these are provisional ballots, those cast by voters whose names do not appear on the rolls but are accepted pending verification by the registrar’s office.

If the voters are not found on the voting rolls, the vote is not counted. The ballots are encased in secure envelopes, and if the envelopes fail to include the voter’s birth date or birthplace, they also are not counted.

Once a recount is completed, the losing candidate may still challenge the results of the election in court by questioning the ballot verification process.

“It functions as an audit of an election and of the whole election process,” said Timothy Downs, a lawyer and elections consultant in Washington. “In a way, recounts are good. They keep the system honest.”

Downs doubted that a recount would change the results of the Katz-Alarcon race, since past recounts in Los Angeles have allowed the registrar’s office to perfect its method of tallying ballots.

“The more recounts, the more accurate the system,” Downs said.