Citing concerns over voting “irregularities,” former state Sen. Lou Correa announced late Monday that he has requested a recount in last week’s special election for a seat on the county Board of Supervisors.
Republican Andrew Do beat Correa by a margin of 43 votes in the First District race, after a few days of counting where tallies tipped back and forth between Do and Correa, a Democrat.
In a statement Monday night, Correa cautioned that he “does not necessarily expect” the recount to change the final result.
“If ballots were cast illegally in the election and were erroneously counted in the original canvass of the votes, a recount cannot ‘undo’ those votes and remove them from the vote count,” Correa wrote in his statement.
“Conversely, a recount generally cannot result in adding any votes to the tally that were erroneously rejected in the original vote count.”
Instead, Correa said he wants to follow-up on a series of alleged irregularities to assure his supporters and the public that the election was free and fair.
“My campaign has received a number of reports over the past week or so contending that people who did not really live in the First Supervisorial District registered to vote and cast ballots in this election. We have also received reports regarding irregularities in the handling and processing of vote-by-mail ballots, with campaigns collecting (and even paying for) voted ballots and returning them to the Registrar’s office or at the polls,” Correa wrote.
During the observation of provisional ballots last week, Correa said that his lawyers found several questionable occurrences, including “provisional ballots being counted even though they were not signed by the voter; ballots cast by voters who appeared to have attempted to vote more than once; and voters who claimed to have moved into the First Supervisorial District just prior to the election without actually re-registering at their supposed new address.”
Correa added that a “recount will allow us to investigate and determine the scope of these and any other irregularities, to analyze whether they might have affected the outcome of the election, and to decide whether further action is warranted, either in the form of a judicial action or the District Attorney’s investigation.”
Click here for Correa’s full statement.