O.C. supervisor’s recount nearly ready
Election officials have recounted the bulk of the ballots in a very tight supervisorial election and could announce the result Monday, the Orange County registrar of voters said Friday.
“The absentee and paper ballots are finished,” Registrar Neal Kelley said of the race between Janet Nguyen and Trung Nguyen to replace Lou Correa for the county Board of Supervisors’ 1st District seat. “Only the electronic votes need to be recounted.”
Correa was elected to the state Senate in November.
Trung Nguyen, a Garden Grove schools trustee, bested Janet Nguyen, a Garden Grove city councilwoman, by seven votes in the Feb. 6 special election, prompting Janet Nguyen’s campaign to request the recount. The two candidates are not related.
“We feel good about what’s happened so far,” Dave Gilliard, a campaign consultant for Janet Nguyen, said Friday about the recount, at which both sides have had witnesses present. “Our people in the room are confident; we feel that there will be a different result based on what we’ve seen.”
A spokesman for Trung Nguyen’s campaign did not return calls seeking comment.
Gilliard said he would not discuss specific numbers until after Kelley rules on about 60 challenged ballots, which he is expected to do early Monday.
After that, the consultant said, Janet Nguyen’s campaign will make a decision on whether to request that the remaining 10,000 electronic votes be recounted by machine or by hand.
If they are counted by machine, Kelley said, the final results could be available in hours; otherwise it could take several days.
About 36,000 ballots have been recounted so far, the registrar said.
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