Feb. 9, 2015 Updated 8:03 p.m.

By MEGHANN M. CUNIFF/STAFF WRITER

The first day of the recount in the 1st District Board of Supervisors election will be the last after Monday ended with no changes to Republican Andrew Do’s 43-vote victory.

Supporters of Democrat Lou Correa, who requested the recount, said they instead will examine registration materials for the about 1,200 provisional ballots, which include votes that Correa has said were illegally cast. Provisional ballots are used to record votes when a voter’s eligiblity is in question.

But Correa would need to wage a costly legal challenge to get those votes removed from the official tally.

His lawyer, Fredric Woocher, said Monday they’ll decide whether to do so after seeing how many questionable ballots there might be Tuesday. One issue with Tuesday’s review is that the registration materials don’t indicate how the person voted, so Correa’s supporters must be cautious to not challenge a ballot that turns out to be in their favor.


Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelly explains the ground rules for the recounting of ballots from the 1st District Board of Supervisors election. Andrew Do beat Lou Correa by 43 votes. , MINDY SCHAUER, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Correa, a 57-year-old former state senator, has said he doesn’t expect the recount to change the final result but that he owed it to his supporters to request one.

“We wanted to see how clean the ballots are, and as it turned out, they did a very good job,” Woocher said.

Eight paid volunteers with the Registrar counted about 7,000 ballots by hand Monday; there were 48,626 cast in the election, about 22.6 percent the district’s eligible voters.

Do’s supporters said they will be on hand Tuesday to question any challenges Correa’s team makes to provisional ballots.

“Let’s not exclude voters from this process,” said Jimmy Camp, Do’s political adviser.

Correa’s team paid $2,400 for Monday’s process, said Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley. Tuesday’s review will cost about $589.

Meanwhile, Do is in his second week as supervisor for the 1st District after being sworn in last week. The district includes Westminster, Garden Grove, Fountain Valley and parts of Santa Ana.

While a political novice, 51-year-old Do has experience with recounts: he was Janet Nguyen’s lawyer and chief of staff for the recount in 2007 in another special election for the same Board of Supervisors seat.

Nguyen had trailed opponent Trung Nguyen by three votes after the initial count, but her observers successfully challenged enough ballots during the recount to put her on top by seven votes. Trung Nguyen challenged the recount results and an Orange County Superior Court judge tossed four, but Nguyen’s three-vote lead remained.

She stayed in the seat until last fall when she was elected to the state Senate.

But circumstances differed in 2007.

Voters now aren’t prohibited from leaving distinguishing marks on their ballots. Whereas eight years ago election officials tossed ballots with writing on them – including one with an intricate flower drawing that now hangs framed in Kelley’s office – no such ballots can be eliminated this time.

The previous recount saw 40 to 50 ballot challenges each day, but Monday’s recount saw just 12 challenges, and none ended up changing the original vote tally.
Contact the writer: mcuniff@ocregister.com or 949-492-5122. Twitter: @meghanncuniff.