I got some interesting reaction from my Friday story about possible voting irregularities in Santa Clara County surrounding the San Jose mayoral election. Last, night, long after our story had run on TV and gone to the web, the Santa Clara County executive issued a statement to, hopefully, clear the air and set the record straight about a possible recount, vote verification and missing hard drive taken by an IT executive. Here is the County Executives statement. Today, the County of Santa Clara announced that it is near completion of the count of provisional ballots from the November 4, 2014 General Election. The count is expected to be completed by Sunday night. In compliance with Elections Code section 15360, the next step in the process is to conduct a post-election manual tally of one percent of the precincts chosen at random. The Elections Code ensures that all races are included in this process. The ballots are counted by hand and compared to the machine count. “Amidst speculation concerning the timing of the former IT Manager’s last day of employment, which was November 3rd, the County’s Registrar of Voters requested on November 7th, that the California Secretary of State conduct a review of the election. The Secretary of State’s Office will not conduct a review and the County is proceeding with the post election tally as prescribed by the California Elections Code.” “Contrary to news reports, no voter information is missing,” said County Executive Jeffrey V. Smith. “Voters may rest assured that the County has possession of the hard drive and other data reported missing in the media.” “I cannot comment any further on that matter,” Smith continued. “However, we will not be conducting an election recount. I am confident that the manual tally will confirm the election results.” So, after allowing at least two days of leaks and widespread speculation to run uncontested, the County and Registrar of voters are now attempting to set the record straight. To verify that, I have filed a Public Records Act request for certain pertinent records and will report back. To his credit, Mayor-elect Sam Liccardo contacted me today and said he cancelled the interview because he has no control over the Registrar’s Office. His office could have told me that when they cancelled the interview, but did not. He said he did not want to add or be involved to what he says was undue and false speculation. He said he did not appreciate being implicated in by my report. I told him we could have cleared that up had we met, but that was now water under the bridge. I stand by the original story given the information I had. For the record: how opponent has conceded and Liccardo will be the next Mayor. Here’s the original story: DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO VOTE IN SAN JOSE?: A CASE OF IRREGULARITIES By KTVU Reporter Tom Vacar A cloud continues to hover over the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters for the long count and some reported irregularities, including a critical missing hard drive. For the worlds highest of high tech counties, and the mayor race in its highest tech City of San Jose, hand counting or a recount is still a possibility for San Jose Mayor. Today, at the Santa Clara Country Registrar of Voters office, the 44 hundred remaining provisional ballots were being opened, flattened and counted. Those result are expected to be finalized by Sunday, a dozen days after the election. This is going on while allegations that the Information Technology chief may have taken a critical hard driver with him when he abruptly resigned just before the election. County Supervisor Dave Cortese, who has already conceded the narrow election, is concerned. All of this creates some kind of cloud of suspicion and its symptoms of a broken system, somehow, some way and I think people want to know that its not so broken that it screwed up the election, says Cortese. The cornerstone of a fair and free election is that it be open, honest and nothing goes missing: votes or hard drives. But, in this case, the registrar of voters is too busy to talk to talk to us. Councilman Sam Liccardo, the apparent winner by a narrow margin, agreed to a three oclock interview about these problems, but a few minutes later, his office called with this, Were gonna have to cancel that interview. I just spoke to the Council member and it looks like hes not gonna be able to do that interview.. To get a better handle on the results, the Secretary of State has recommended some sort of audit, verification or recount of some 40 thousand ballots, an unexplained arbitrary number. Im not sure that auditing or recounting or anything like that will change the outcome of the election. Certainly its not something that I would pursue as a candidate but I think that it will bring some peace of mind to the every day voter, says Cortese. At his hour, this is still no final certification of who really won in the worlds high technology city or if someone walked off with a critical election hard drive. leaving a stinging question for many voters: did my vote really count?
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 19:34:46 +0000