Alameda County has made little progress toward conducting a recount of three elections in 2022, including the Oakland mayor’s race, the registrar of voters told the county’s Board of Supervisors this week.
Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis told the board Tuesday that he reached out to two people who could conduct an independent manual recount. Neither can. One was the previous registrar of voters for Alameda County.
Dupuis isn’t aware of anyone else to do it, he told the board.
Besides the Oakland mayor’s race, the board wants a manual recount conducted in the San Leandro mayor’s race and District 5 City Council race in San Leandro.
The information provided by Dupuis was part of an update the board requested from him following an error that led to a new winner in the race for the Oakland Unified School District District 4 school board seat.
First, Nick Resnick was declared the winner of the race, but the computer that tabulated the election was misconfigured. After it was configured properly, Mike Hutchinson won.
No other races were affected by the misconfiguration.
Hutchinson took his case to court and Resnick last month decided to no longer contest the revised outcome. He resigned from the board.
A judge on Monday ruled that a manual recount is unnecessary in that race. Following comments Tuesday from Supervisor David Haubert, one member of the public suggested the board was leaning toward reversing its request for a manual recount in the other three races.
Haubert asked Dupuis if he was confident the computer tabulations were accurate once the computer was configured properly. Dupuis said yes and Haubert said the judge’s ruling in the school board race is evidence of that.
Dupuis also said the priority for his office must now be the 2024 election, which has its primary less than a year away.
