Rematch Approved in Long Beach Race Decided by 6 Votes

A Long Beach City Council candidate, who has alleged that ballot irregularities cost him the June election, will get a rare opportunity to run again under a plan approved by the courts and city officials.

After weeks of negotiations, the plan calls for an electoral rematch between the candidate, Dee Andrews, and Laura Richardson-Batts, who won the 6th District contest by a mere six votes after a recount.

“It is very unusual to have an election overturned,” said Conny McCormack, the registrar-recorder for Los Angeles County. “We’ve had a few cases involving recounts where the results were reversed, but I cannot think of a case like this.”

The rematch will be consolidated with the Nov. 7 general election. Richardson-Batts will remain in office, pending the outcome of the vote, but she cannot describe herself on the ballot as an incumbent. The city also agreed to pay the legal fees of Andrews, who filed suit last month to overturn the election.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge overseeing the case approved the terms of the new election Monday, after attorneys for Andrews, Richardson-Batts and the city agreed to another contest. The Long Beach City Council voted 7 to 0 for the rematch late Tuesday night. Richardson-Batts abstained.

“I just want a fair election, and we are going to get a fair election,” Andrews said Wednesday. “I will give 100% to the people who elect me. I’m not part of the downtown power clique.”

During the 1990s, recounts in a city election in Diamond Bar and school board races in Beverly Hills and West Covina produced new winners. But there have been few such problems, McCormack said, considering that hundreds of elections are held every year in the county.

In Long Beach, though, the Andrews case marks the second time a new municipal election has been ordered in six years. Tonia Reyes Uranga contested the 1994 council victory of Mike Donelon on the grounds that some voters had cast their ballots in the wrong districts. Donelon prevailed in the rematch.

Richardson-Batts, whose victory was certified July 18 by the City Council, said Wednesday that she was disappointed by what happened in the election, but vowed to concentrate on city issues while in office and during the campaign.

“The chances were high a judge would have approved a special election,” she said. “We could have fought it out. We chose not to. We did not want to put 6th District voters through the ringer.”

The new council member pointed out that she has defeated Andrews twice--once in the primary by fewer than 100 votes and then in the disputed June runoff. “I am the winner, despite everything that has gone on,” she said.

Andrews, 59, a youth counselor and former schoolteacher, ran against Richardson-Batts for the central Long Beach post vacated by Doris Topsy-Elvord, who had to leave office because of term limits. Richardson-Batts, wife of the city’s deputy police chief, once served as a council aide to Topsy-Elvord and is now a marketing representative.

Richardson-Batts appeared to eke out a victory in the June 6 runoff by seven votes. In a recount, her slim lead shrank to six: 1,198 to 1,192.

Andrews filed suit after the city attorney’s office discovered that eight people had voted twice, a potential violation of the voter fraud section of the state election code.

Since then, Andrews’ attorneys have found out that 69 registered voters who lived in the 6th District were sent sample ballots and voting information that mistakenly told them to cast their ballots in the 4th District race between attorney Dennis Carroll and incumbent H. Delano Roosevelt.

According to the Long Beach city clerk, voters within a square block near the 6th District boundary were incorrectly classified as 4th District residents by the county registrar-recorder’s office.

“From my perspective, the most serious problem was mistaking the boundaries of the district by the county,” said Long Beach City Atty. Bob Shannon.

McCormack conceded that her office made some mistakes. But she said that only three or four of the 69 voters who were misclassified actually cast ballots in the June 6 election, not enough to influence the outcome.

Bruce A. Dybens, Andrews’ attorney, contends that if the disenfranchised 6th District voters had cast their ballots in the right place, his client would have easily won.

While the lawsuit was pending, Dybens began to investigate other votes, including those of Topsy-Elvord and four members of her family. The former councilwoman, her husband and her mother, as well as her adult son and daughter-in-law, all voted by mail from the same address on Olive Avenue.

Dybens subpoenaed family members to question them in court about whether that has been their permanent residence. The subpoenas requested tax records, driver’s licenses, utility bills and vehicle records.

Andrews said the votes raised questions about whether all five people live at the house. He said he also is suspicious because Richardson-Batts used to work for Topsy-Elvord.

Although she owns two homes in Long Beach, Topsy-Elvord maintains that the Olive Avenue house has been her family’s primary residence for 40 years and, as such, qualifies everyone to vote in 6th District elections.

Topsy-Elvord says she and her husband have lived there at least four days a week. Her son and daughter-in-law use the home as their legal residence for voting purposes, she says, because they are renters and often change addresses.

Defending her former boss, Richardson-Batts said there were adult children of 6th District residents who voted for Andrews but did not permanently live in the district.