Recount underway in supervisorial race

07:24 PM PDT on Wednesday, April 7, 2004

By MICHAEL CORONADO / The Press-Enterprise

The Riverside County Registrar's office today began an official recount of the District 1 supervisorial race.

Political hopeful Linda Soubirous requested a manual count following the election, in which her opponent, supervisor Bob Buster, narrowly avoided a November runoff by winning 50 percent plus one of votes cast.

Of the 49,196 votes cast, Buster received 24,647 votes. Soubirous received 16,971 votes and former Lake Elsinore Mayor Kevin Pape received 7,578 votes.

Soubirous sent a letter to registrar Mischelle Townsend, formally requesting a recount, citing a Caltech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology study that scrutinized electronic voting machines and their accuracy.

Townsend called the study flawed because if took into account so-called under-votes and over-votes. This kind of counting provides misleading and inaccurate vote totals, she said. An under-vote, she said, is when an individual might deliberately choose to not vote for a particular measure or candidate, leaving that portion of the ballot blank. A voter might not know the candidates running for a particular judges' contest, for example, and make the decision to not cast a vote for that race or measure, she said.

An over-vote is when an individual casts more than one vote for a particular race, she said. Sometimes, a voter will cast multiple votes or even fill in all the slots of a race in protest of the political system.

In both cases, the under-votes and over-votes were counted in the study, she said.

The recount comes amid controversy surrounding the election, the registrar's office and the county's electronic voting machines.

A week ago, Soubirous supporters asked board supervisors that Townsend be placed on paid administrative leave after they filed a complaint to the FPPC alleging she failed to file conflict of interest statements on different occasions and exceeded the county's $340 gift limit.

Supervisors Buster, John Tavaglione and Roy Wilson declined the request, calling the request "ludicrous" and political.

Soubirous campaign manger, Brian Floyd, also alleged that security was lax during the vote tabulation at the registrar's office following the election.

Several advocate web sites also criticized the electronic voting machines in Riverside, questioning their accuracy.

Townsend then asked District Attorney Grover Trask to open an investigation to officially debunk the allegations she called "groundless, and politically-motivated innuendo".

This morning, three boards, consisting of four members each, will convene inside a room at the registrar's office to begin the recount.

The first phase involves counting paper ballots, including absentee, some provisional and mail-in votes. Soubirous is required to pay for the recount, which costs $400 each day, per board.

Buster and Soubirous are each allowed three representatives to be present during the manual recount and can ask questions or make a challenge.

The boards could be finished counting the paper ballots as early as Friday, Townsend said.

The second phase of the recount focuses on the electronic votes cast. Images, or printouts of the electronic ballots are made for review by the boards and the results are compared to a precinct tally. Should there be a challenge to a ballot cast, Townsend will make the final decision.