Primary candidate sues county over recount

By: DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer

Lawyers for Linda Soubirous, a candidate for county supervisor who nearly forced incumbent Bob Buster to face a runoff, filed suit in Riverside Superior Court late Friday to make the county provide information denied her in a recount of the March 2 primary.

The lawsuit also asks a judge to declare that elections officials must release more detailed information whenever recounts are requested for elections conducted on touch-screen, electronic voting machines.

The primary was the 29th election Riverside County has conducted using the machines. The county purchased more than 4,000 of them from Sequoia Voting Systems in 1999 for nearly $15 million.

Reached Friday night, Buster said the suit was "more publicity-seeking on the part of my opponent."

In response to Buster's statement, Soubirous said, "This is about seeking fairness and honesty, and transparency in elections. It has nothing to do with publicity. It has to do with democracy."

Soubirous requested and paid for a recount after initial, unofficial results showed Buster received fewer than 50 votes beyond the number he needed to avoid a November runoff. The recount slightly cut into Buster's cushion but did not change the result.

Gregory Luke, an attorney with the Santa Monica law firm of Strumwasser & Woocher representing Soubirous, said the suit is not about overturning the results of the March 2 primary, which awarded Buster another four-year term.

Luke said the suit is about delivering a meaningful recount of a touch-screen election, not just a reprint of Election Day results.

"We have no idea if the election was done wrong," he said. "But we do believe that the recount was done wrong."

Luke said the recount Soubirous requested for her primary race with Buster and former Lake Elsinore Mayor Kevin Pape was a farce because Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend only rechecked information stored in cartridges used to extract votes from touch-screen voting machines.

He said Soubirous, who resides in Lake Mathews near Riverside, repeatedly demanded, to no avail, to have results checked against information stored in those ATM-like computer machines. Luke said she also was denied an opportunity to check logs showing which poll workers processed results, and how.

"We believe they are relevant to a recount," Luke said. "Mischelle Townsend decided they were not relevant to a recount, and in doing so put the cart entirely before the horse, miles before the horse."

Townsend could not be reached for comment. Townsend had announced her retirement in June and her last official day on the job was Friday.

Roy Wilson, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, said the recount was handled appropriately.

"Basically, what (Luke) is asking for is a second recount," Wilson said. "We'd be happy to accommodate him if he wants to pay for it."

Joining Soubirous as plaintiffs are Grace Slocum, past president of the League of Women Voters of Northwest Riverside County; VerifiedVoting.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit advocacy group formed by a Stanford professor; Russell Henson, a Riverside-area resident; and Allen E. Hill, a retired admiral in the U.S. Navy from the Riverside area.

The recount only slightly altered the election numbers. All changes stemmed from paper ballots; the electronic vote total was unchanged.

Revised overall totals gave Buster 24,772 votes (50.07 percent), Soubirous 17,069 votes (34.5 percent) and Pape, the former Lake Elsinore mayor, 7,631 votes (15.42 percent). Buster needed 50 percent, plus one vote, to avoid a runoff.

Because state law says election results must be challenged within 30 days, Buster said, "it seems to me that this is not a serious challenge to the recount at all. It's too late."

There is, however, a six-month window for challenging results if fraud were to be detected, Luke said.