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State Assembly member Evan Low is on the verge of advancing to the November runoff for a chance to succeed U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo in Congress after he picked up 11 votes as part of Santa Clara County’s recount.
Low has been in a heated race with Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian for a spot in the November primary, where one or both of them are set to take on former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo. Low and Simitian finished in a tie with 30,249 votes each after the March 5 primary. The two counties that make up the district, Santa Clara County and San Mateo County, both launched their respective recounts on April 15.
On April 30, Santa Clara County announced that it had completed its recount, which resulted in Low gaining 11 votes and Joe Simitian picking up seven votes when compared to the original tally.
While the results give Low a decisive edge in the final phase of the recount, the question of who will advance to November will not be answered until San Mateo County completes its own review of the primary ballots. Jim Irizarry, assistant elections chief at San Mateo County, said the county had completed its machine scan of all the ballots on April 24. San Mateo County’s machine scans did not change any of the results that were released after the March 5 primary, he said.
“It squared perfectly with our statement of the vote,” Irizarry said.
That said, San Mateo County was still reviewing as of April 29 the 16 ballots that were challenged by Jonathan Padilla, a political ally of Liccardo who had requested the recount. Irizarry said this involves checking the bar codes on each of the challenged ballot envelopes and working with the United States Postal Service to ascertain when each of these ballots was mailed.
While the machine count in Santa Clara County effectively confirmed the primary results, the picture was different in Santa Clara, where several precincts saw a shift in results, in some cases because of errors by staff, according to an announcement from Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.
The office identified 19 ballots from six precincts that were not included in the initial canvass results but are now included in the recount. These ballots were validated during the initial vote count but they were not tallied due to human errors by the machine operators. Twelve of these ballots were from a single precinct in which the operator pressed the wrong button on the machine and erroneously cancelled the batch.
The other seven came from five separate precincts and were not counted because of errors that occurred when tabulation machines jammed or misfed, causing some ballots to need to be rescanned. The operators in these cases had failed to rescan the ballots, according to the Registrar of Voters.
The Santa Clara County registrar also reviewed 45 uncounted ballots that were challenged by Padilla and his team of attorneys. The registrar ultimately determined that seven of these should have been counted. In six cases, the ballots were initially rejected because the ballots had unmarked boxes affirming citizenship status. During the recount, the Registrar of Voters identified other voter registration documents that affirmed their citizen ship. The other case concerned a signature that was initially rejected but ultimately deemed a sufficient match to the signatures on record.
The Santa Clara County registrar also found three ballots from two precincts that are erroneously counted twice in the original canvas. Those results have now been corrected.
Matt Moreles, assistant registrar of voters at Santa Clara County, said in a statement that the county’s election staff has been working diligently for the past two weeks to “conduct this unprecedented recount and ensure that the final results are complete and accurate.”
“This is the largest and most complex recount we have conducted, as well as our first machine recount on our new voting system,” Moreles said.
The final count in Santa Clara County, which represents about 80% of the district, showed Low finishing with 25,093 votes and Simitian with 23,775 votes. In San Mateo County, which is still finalizing its recount, Simitian finished with 6,481 votes after the March 5 primary, while Low had received 5,167 votes.
Clay Volino, spokesperson for the Low campaign, said his team has reviewed Santa Clara County’s final results and is now awaiting a final decision in San Mateo County on the remaining challenged ballots.
“We would like to thank the elections officials and their staff for their hard work during his process,” Volino said.
Santa Clara County officials had received more than 140,000 ballots for the congressional race, while San Mateo County had about 42,000 ballots.
Moreles called the recount a “learning experience” and said the Registrar’s Office will “use the lessons learned to improve our processes and strengthen our quality control safeguards.”
“It is not unusual for a recount to change the vote totals, especially in such a large jurisdiction,” Moreles said in a statement. “Because this contest was so close with two candidates precisely tied for second place, even tiny changes can make a difference in the outcome.”
The Simitian campaign could not be immediately reached for comments. Liccardo, for his part, released a statement earlier in the day, before Santa Clara County released its final count, arguing that California law should provide for automatic recounts in close elections. He also reiterated that he did not coordinate with Padilla on the recount request.
Even if the recount request was made by Padilla for political reasons, “that hardly renders Padilla’s recount request illegitimate; it merely puts it in the same category as every other recount request in U.S. electoral history,” he wrote.
“Elections are politically competitive,” Liccardo wrote.
This story will be updated.
