The Alameda County Board of Supervisors is considering ordering the county Registrar of Voters to conduct a recount for all ranked-choice races in the Nov. 8 election, including the Oakland mayor\u2019s race and an OUSD school board race where an error apparently led to the wrong candidate being certified as the winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Supervisor Keith Carson called for the potential recount, which could cost hundreds of thousands, in a memo<\/a> to his colleagues, saying election outcomes have been \u201ccalled into question\u201d due to mistakes made by registrar Tim Dupuis and his staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carson wants an independent third party to oversee a recount of the elections, possibly a registrar from another county. Under his proposal, Alameda County\u2019s registrar would pay for the recount, and representatives of the Democratic and Republican parties and good government groups would observe. (Under state law, any member of the public can observe ballot counts for elections.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n At today\u2019s Board of Supervisors meeting, where Carson\u2019s recount proposal was considered, Dupuis gave a presentation<\/a> to explain the errors his staff made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Dupuis, the problem was that the county\u2019s ranked-choice voting tally system, a machine that uses an algorithm to conduct the ranked-choice runoff, was not configured properly. Ballots where a voter mistakenly didn\u2019t select a first choice but did pick candidates for their second, third, fourth, and other choices were \u201csuspended,\u201d meaning they were set aside and not counted in the first round. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Oakland\u2019s ranked-choice voting law, the algorithm should have been set to take the second-choice vote for these ballots and treat them as first choices, so they would be counted in the first round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By suspending some of these blank first-choice ballots, the results in the first round weren\u2019t entirely accurate, meaning that the wrong candidates could have ended up in last place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the registrar, when they re-ran the ballots through the tally system with the proper configuration, only one of the races in Oakland had a different outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the OUSD District 4 race, Nick Resnick was certified as the winner on Dec. 20. But when the registrar used the correct algorithm, Mike Hutchinson was no longer eliminated in the first round due to his suspended ballots, and in the second round, he was able to pick up enough of the third-place candidate\u2019s second-choice votes to defeat Resnick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At today\u2019s supervisors\u2019 meeting, Dupuis said a recount of all the ranked-choice races for Oakland and possibly the other cities that used the system, Berkeley and San Leandro, could take weeks or months to complete. Carson said he was motivated to bring the proposal forward because the integrity of elections matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some members of the public who called in to speak during public comment made the point that a recount of ballots won\u2019t do anything to address the registrar\u2019s error. The ballots were counted and entered into a database correctly. The error happened when the registrar applied the wrong algorithm to the counted ballot data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo one has presented any facts that ranked-choice voting here is at fault at all,\u201d said Berkeley resident Andy Kelly, a supporter of ranked-choice voting. \u201cThey\u2019ve raised issues with how [ranked-choice voting] has been administered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Others have objected to the use of ranked-choice voting, saying Oakland should reconsider its use in local elections. Most notably, mayoral candidate Loren Taylor<\/a> called ranked-choice voting a form of \u201cvoter suppression\u201d during his concession speech in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the error was discovered by two outside groups\u2014CalRCV and FairVote, which both advocate for ranked-choice voting\u2014and brought to the registrar\u2019s attention, candidates in the District 4 race have signaled that they plan to take legal action. Hutchinson said he plans to file a lawsuit to overturn the certified results, which still have Resnick as the winner. Resnick has retained attorneys and demanded documents from the registrar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who was sworn in earlier this week, said she would welcome a recount of the mayor\u2019s race. The margin in that race was 600 votes, an unlikely but not impossible margin to overcome in a recount. In December, the Oakland NAACP requested a recount<\/a> for the mayor\u2019s race, arguing that the county should pay for it because Thao\u2019s margin of victory was so small. The group also argued that some voters might have been confused by ranked-choice voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The supervisors didn\u2019t vote during today\u2019s meeting on Carson\u2019s proposal to conduct a recount, but plan to bring the item back to next Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your donation makes this and all our other local reporting possible. Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Oaklandside relies on reader support to remain free for everyone in our community. Your donation goes beyond supporting our journalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It also helps your family, friends and Oakland neighbors have access to reliable, independent reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n darwin@oaklandside.org<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Before joining The Oaklandside as News Editor, Darwin BondGraham worked with The Appeal, where he was an investigative reporter covering police and prosecutorial misconduct. He has reported on gun violence for The Guardian, and was an enterprise reporter for the East Bay Express. BondGraham’s work has also appeared with KQED, ProPublica and other leading national and local outlets. He holds a doctorate in sociology from UC Santa Barbara and was the co-recipient of the George Polk Award for local reporting in 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The possible recount comes after the Registrar of Voters disclosed that it made an error tallying ballots, possibly resulting in the wrong winner in a school board race. by\u00a0Darwin BondGraham January 5, 2023 (Oaklandside.org) The Alameda County Board of Supervisors is considering ordering the county Registrar of Voters to conduct… Continue reading ![\"Darwin](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/darwin-bondgraham-headshot-80x80.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\nDARWIN BONDGRAHAM<\/h2>\n\n\n\n