Candidates question methodology of recount, prefer full search of all ballot boxes

Contra Costa elections specialist Joel Paschall counts ballots during an internal check of the results of local races at the Contra Costa Clerk Recorder Office in Martinez, CA on Thursday, December 1, 2022. Margins of less than ten votes separated candidate races in Antioch and Richmond. (Don Feria for Bay Area News Group)

By JUDITH PRIEVE | jprieve@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: December 21, 2022 at 2:21 p.m. | UPDATED: December 22, 2022 at 5:38 a.m.

It’s Groundhog Day – again – for Contra Costa County election officials who continue to separate ballots in the Antioch and Richmond city council races for the seventh day in preparation for a recount that both campaigns for Joy Motts and Andrew Butt have requested.

Helen Nolan, the assistant registrar for Contra Costa County, said that the recount would begin after all ballots were pulled for the challenged races. That is now set to happen Thursday morning.

“With the recount, it’ll probably take the majority of the day Thursday and part of the day on Friday to come to a conclusion,” she said.

Nolan said 4,621 ballots were received for Antioch’s tightly contested District 1 race, with 4,270 including votes for a council candidate. That race ended with Councilwoman Tamisha Torres-Walker ahead of Motts by three votes following a Dec. 1 elections audit.

In Richmond, 4,194 ballots were received and 3,842 had votes marked for the council seat in the District 2 race, which ended in a tie between Butt and Cesar Zepeda following the audit. Butt later lost to Zepeda following a draw of names in Richmond.
Butt and Motts on Wednesday expressed frustration over the long process, which they say has been confusing.


Joy Motts candidate for Antioch City Council, District 1. (Courtesy of Joy Motts) 

“The whole thing’s been kind of like new information every day and so I’m not necessarily counting on that (a Thursday recount) happening,” Butt said.

Butt added it seemed “there’s no rhyme or reason to the exact way” or an “exact formula” that election officials are using for the recount process. “Their default is they are doing what they think is the best way to do it.”

Butt said his brother, Daniel Butt, planned to file legal documents on Thursday to contest the election, something that has to be done within 20 days of certifying the election. The Butts were also questioning the city of Richmond over the district map used for the election, saying it was not the one the council had agreed upon.

Motts said she was upset with how hard it has been to get timely answers to questions about the process.

“Frankly, I don’t think the county had a process for doing a recount, especially to do two at the same time,” she said.

Motts said both candidates, who had agreed to work together, wanted all the boxes examined, but after that was done for two days, elections officials returned to a different method only pulling from boxes that they knew contained ballots for those Richmond and Antioch districts in question. The campaigns were notified via email late Friday, and Motts said there wasn’t time to collaborate with Butt’s campaign to decide how to proceed and the county returned to the quicker method of examining targeted boxes.

“Both of us were upset that they were changing (methods); we had an agreement and now they’re moving the goalposts on us,” she said.

Nolan, however, said officials are not required to pull ballots according to the candidates’ requested method. Elections officials have a long internal checklist that they follow during recounts, she said.

“They don’t get to determine how we pull the ballots, but we offer that as an accommodation because they requested it,” she said. “But, after two solid days of spending four times as long going through boxes and coming up with zero additional ballots, we used our discretion to go to the targeted method.”


Andrew Butt Richmond City Council District 2 candidate. (Courtesy of Andrew Butt) 

If the candidates decide after the current recount is complete, they want to go back and look through all the boxes, they will have to pay per employee used for that purpose and that will increase the estimated $22,000-per-candidate cost, Nolan said. It will also add about another week to the recount process, she added.

Motts said she was unsure what she would do if she lost after the recount was completed and still wanted a breakdown of costs if they moved forward later with the longer recount method.

“Honestly, it’s just been super frustrating,” she said.

There is no date as to when the recount needs to be completed, according to the elections code.

Nolan added that elections officials were working hard to complete the recount process.

“We are eager to get this wrapped up and tied with a red bow and just, you know, give them some resolution, some peace,” Nolan said.