Palo Alto’s council race may lead to a recount

Palo Alto voters may not know the full results of the City Council race until early December, with the battle between Planning and Transportation Commission members Keith Reckdahl and Doria Summa for the fourth open seat likely heading to a recount, according to figures released by the Santa Clara The county Registrar of Voters was released Wednesday.

Reckdahl, vice chairman of the planning commission, saw his lead over Summa expand from 30 to 47 votes with the latest results announcement. But with approximately 31,000 ballots still to be processed across the country as of Wednesday at 5 p.m., the race remained extremely close, with Reckdahl earning 12.31% of all votes cast and Summa 12.26%.

The Santa Clara County Registrar of Votes requires an automatic recount if the margin of victory between two candidates is less than 0.25% of all votes cast or less than 25 votes.

For Palo Alto voters, waiting for the results of a recount this year should feel especially familiar. In the March primary, two candidates for Congress – Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian and State Assembly Member Evan Low – finished in a tie for second place. Both were set to appear on the November ballot with first-place and eventual election winner San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo before a county resident supporting Liccardo requested a recount, resulting in Simitian losing by five votes.

In the city council race, no one needs to file an objection for the recount to take place. Unlike federal and state races, local contests are subject to the automatic recount policy if the margin falls within the county’s threshold. Michael Borja, communications officer for the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters, said the office will determine on or around Nov. 20 whether a recount is necessary based on votes tabulated by that date.

“It is ROV’s practice to declare a recount five days in advance, which means that ROV expects to start recounting votes on November 25,” Borja told this publication. “ROV will aim to complete the recount before the final election results are certified on December 5.”

Although Reckdahl and Summa are committee colleagues and political allies who supported each other’s campaign, the race was marred by complaints from community members that the ballots on voting machines put Summa at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the nine-candidate field. Her name was the only one not to appear on the first page, requiring voters to press “More” to see it.

Summa and her supporters had sent out mass emails on Election Day alerting voters to the name placement issue. Summa called the placement of the name “a mistake” and expressed regret that it could affect her changes in the elections. Bryna Chang, chair of the planning commission and a supporter of Summa’s campaign, agreed.

“It is critical that all candidates are presented equally to ensure the integrity of our election process, especially in a year with so many diverse candidates and issues,” Chang said in a statement.

California election law includes a process for candidates to challenge election results if there is an “error in the vote counting or ballot tallying programs.” In this case, however, the Registrar of Voters continues to maintain that there was no error and that the system worked exactly as intended.

Borja said that the limitation of the number of candidates visible on the screen at the same time is necessary to maintain a minimum font size for readability. It is “commonly the case that the number of candidates in a single contest exceeds the number viewable on screen at one time,” creating the need for the “More” button, he wrote in an email.

“The display of the municipal competition on the touchscreen was not the result of an error. It was displayed correctly as expected given the design of the system,” Borja wrote.

The machines do not distinguish between situations where one candidate, two candidates or more than two candidates are pushed to the next page, Borja said. He noted that the registrar’s office had posted notices highlighting the “More” buttons at each touchscreen machine at the six Palo Alto voting centers.

Voter registration data showed no significant differences between the number of votes the two candidates received through voting machines on Election Day. According to data released by the office, Reckdahl had received 867 votes on election day, while Summa received 852 votes.

These votes constituted less than 8% of the total number of votes that Palo Altans had cast for the two candidates on Wednesday evening. The remaining 92% were released by mail. Here, as with the votes on election day, Reckdahl had the smallest lead. He had received 10,211 mail-in votes as of Wednesday evening, compared to 10,179 for Summa.

But even if the impact of the name placement is small, it could make a difference in a race where only a few dozen votes separate the candidates for the last open seat, critics argue. Councilman Pat Burt, who finished third in the race for the four open seats and won another term, called the placement of names an “obvious problem” and said he was disappointed with the clerk’s inability to follow up think about the shortcomings of the system.

“The obvious problem is that it was simply not clear to voters that there was a second page that contained a single candidate,” said Burt, who had supported both Summa and Reckdahl’s campaigns.

While the data shows that most voters likely figured out that Summa’s name was on the second page, there may have been some who didn’t, Burt said.

“We’ll never know what portion of voters were so confused that they would have voted for Doria and didn’t,” Burt said.

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