Review of Election Starts in Confusion

The first day of a court-ordered review of Compton’s contested June 5 municipal election got off to shaky start Thursday when 1,500 unused ballots were reported missing.

The Superior Court judge hearing former Mayor Omar Bradley’s lawsuit alleging voting fraud dispatched Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies to retrieve the ballots. City officials claimed they were left at Compton City Hall by error and would be presented in court today.

However, Bradley said the confusion over the missing ballots strengthens his claims that he was cheated out of the election.

“This is unheard of, unheard of,” Bradley said in the courtroom Thursday afternoon.

After the court session finished, Bradley’s attorney, Bradley Hertz, said: “In the least, the city clerk has a disorganized office and at most, perhaps, a cesspool of illegalities.”

Bruce Gridley, the attorney for the city, denied any wrongdoing by the city clerk and said the mistake was made earlier this month when sheriff’s deputies picked up boxes of ballots stored from a different election.

The ballot review began Thursday with an election expert inspecting the votes in court and tallying the overall totals, not conducting a candidate-by-candidate recount. He used an automatic counting machine, which can handle more than 1,000 cards a minute and was set up on a table near the jury box.

Scott D. Martin, the election specialist whose company supplied the Compton ballots, inspected the initial batch for texture, printing and color. He pronounced them legitimate.

“They all look like ours,” said Martin, of the Anaheim-based firm Martin & Chapman Co.

Once all the ballots are accounted for, court officials estimated, it will take about three days to process the 10,600 cast in June and the additional 20,000 ballots printed for that election but reportedly not used.

The review was ordered by Judge Judith Chirlin, who is hearing the lawsuit brought by Bradley and two City Council candidates on his slate against current Mayor Eric Perrodin, City Clerk Charles Davis and the city of Compton. Bradley lost the mayor’s office by 281 votes to Perrodin, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney. Bradley’s side accuses the Perrodin camp of such fraud as stuffing boxes with counterfeit ballots and having noncitizens vote, allegations Perrodin and Davis deny.

Martin on Thursday said the first bunch of absentee ballots were uniform except that they varied in color in four shades ranging from lavender to white.

Bradley’s attorney Hertz, who had offered to give Martin a magnifying glass and flashlight, wondered why the ballots could vary so much in color. “We are intrigued by that,” Hertz said.

But Martin said the differences were not significant and resulted from being printed in different batches.

Both sides planned to have experts on hand Thursday. When Bradley’s specialist was unable to attend the court session, his side accepted the defense experts.