Lan Diep Won by 14 Votes After Recount

After the automatic recount,  Lan Diep now won by 14 votes instead of 36 over Manh Nguyen. However,  Nguyen's supporter has asked for a voter-initiated recount.   He is hoping that with another recount, he still can turn the tide.

The change in vote after the manual tally is mainly due to the under vote error by the counting machine.    These are ballots that neither were votes for Nguyen nor Diep.  However, the machine counted by mistake as either for Nguyen or Diep.

During this recount, Nguyen challenged 73 ballots and he was only granted 2 challenges, the rest were deemed not legitimate.

A year ago,  Diep lost to Nguyen by 13 votes.  There was no automatic recount rule then and he did not ask for a recount.


Note:  After the press release by ROV on July 15, 2016  after their official recount declaring Lan Diep won by 14 votes, they changed the number to 12 votes  on July 18, 2016.   The reason is they found another 37 ballots that somehow were misplaced.

Community Picnic on Saturday, July 16 at 10:00 AM

Manh Nguyen and His Recount Strategy

With just two days into the recount process, the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters has done such a sound job that by tomorrow, they expect to wrap up the recount and issue a final result.

But in a twist of intrigue, before the closing of the day, a voter in D4 named Nam Truong, sent in a request to have a voter-initiated recount on behalf of Manh Nguyen.   This prompted Lan Diep to tweet

5 hours ago

Lân Diệp Retweeted Ramona Giwargis

.@D4CouncilManh won't do anything himself. E.g. order a recount, file an ethics complaint, serve constituents, etc.

Manh Nguyen of course is being counseled by an election lawyer from LA.   So he makes sure he is getting his money worth.

The voter-initiated recount is being paid by whoever requested it.  Manh Nguyen is hoping  to be able to have additional challenge options with the voter-initiated recount, probably to rechallenge a number of ballots that were disqualified in the first place.   The cost is about  $2,000 a day similar to  what Orange County Registrar of Voters was charging last year.  

Lan Diep might not want to be too confident with this second recount.   This is where experience in election law comes in play.

Ballot Recount for D4 City Council Race

It took a day and a half for the ballot challenges by both sides to be either entered for further research, accepted or denied.   According to Lan Diep, he personally think that there were 2 ballots that could be for Manh.   But the ballots are being reviewed for clarification.

As of this afternoon, the actual counting has just began.  

Lan Diep entering the process with 36 vote lead.  The recount takes place manually  with one person calls out the vote, one observes and two people tally.  The two separate tallies recorded must be the same or the process has to start over. 

Councilmember Manh Nguyen took no chance and hired an election lawyer from LA.   He has a dozen people monitoring the recount.  Lan Nguyen, forever an underdog, is by himself,  with 2-3 supporters stopping by checking out the process.  

It will take about one week to complete the process.  The conventional wisdom is that unless the challenges are in Manh's favor, the manual recount will rarely see any ballot change.