Correa Suspends Recount After 6,250 Ballots in 16 Precincts Produces No Changes, Switches to Provisional Strategy, Eyes Turn to SD-37
Posted by Chris Nguyen on February 10, 2015
One of the last times we’ll use this graphic of Supervisor Andrew Do (R-Westminster), former Senator Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), Councilman Chris Phan (R-Garden Grove), Chuyen Van Nguyen (NPP-Garden Grove), and Lupe Morfin-Moreno (R-Santa Ana)
After recounting 6,250 ballots in 16 precincts (12.85% of all ballots cast and 15.84% of all precincts) in the First Supervisorial District, no ballots changed.
Correa has opted to suspend the recount to instead focus on provisional ballots, a strategy suggested in a colorful post by Orange Juice Blogger Greg Diamond.
Diamond cited the effort to overturn the North Orange County Community College District’s Measure J in which the measure’s opponents initiated the recount but focused on gathering information about the provisional ballots in order to challenge the provisionals in court. Their court date is Wednesday, February 18.
However, Measure J opponents have a much shorter road to victory than Correa does.
Simple math explains this: Measure J opponents need to toss 34 out of 154,118 (0.02206%) votes cast. Correa needs to toss 43 out of 48,626 (0.08843%) votes cast.
Measure J opponents also have the advantage of a multicounty district: they can challenge ballots in the LA County portion of the North Orange County Community College District (that district really needs a name change for the sake of geographic accuracy). Correa can only challenge ballots in Orange County.
The history books are about to be written on the First Supervisorial District Special Election.
| County Supervisor First District, Short Term |
| Completed Precincts: 101 of 101 |
| Vote Count | Percentage | |
| ANDREW DO | 18,905 | 39.1% |
| LOU CORREA | 18,862 | 39.0% |
| CHRIS PHAN | 7,857 | 16.3% |
| CHUYEN VAN NGUYEN | 1,879 | 3.9% |
| LUPE MORFIN-MORENO | 834 | 1.7% |
| MARK I. LOPEZ (W) | 2 | 0.0% |
Yesterday, Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley sent out this unintentionally symbolic tweet, as political eyes turn away from the First Supervisorial District Special Election and toward the 37th Senate District Special Election:
It’s only 35 days until the SD-37 Special Election, and the first mailer should arrive in my mailbox any day now.
Time to start focusing on this trio of Republicans: Business Owner/Assemblyman Donald P. Wagner, former Orange County Supervisor John M. W. Moorlach, and Naz Namazi
OC Political 
UPDATED: Recount Changes 0 Ballots in First 16 Santa Ana Precincts; If Correa’s Not Prepping for a Court Case, He’s Taking a Dive | Orange Juice Blog said
[…] is what happens when you write a post the night before and set it to go off in the morning. Sometimes things have changed overnight. (Link is to today’s story worth reading in OC Political.) Or, in this case, it changed […]
Greg Diamond said
Well, almost, Chris. It’s not yet quite time to turn away from this race.
As I said in my provocatively titled article, the rumored hidden horrors of any portion of our county can’t just be swept under the rug; we have to be willing to confront them. Correa has presented anecdotal stories of serious wrongdoing with respect to absentee ballots in particular in Little Saigon; I’ve heard similar reports and I presume that you probably have as well. I don’t know (and I will presume that you don’t know) if they are true, but if true they are deeply disturbing not least because they would mean that honest Vietnamese politicians will be at a substantial disadvantage to dishonest ones to emerge as representatives of this area. Little Saigon needs either a clean bill of health now or serious and drastic treatment to recover.
The difference between the Measure J recount and this one can be reduced to one word: “systemic.” No one seems to have any basis to assert that any sort of systemic corruption was taking place within the NOCCCD; even if a few ballots may have been illegitimate, the likelihood of widespread errors would be small. In Little Saigon, by contrast, people are talking — and I stress again that I have no way of knowing if any of it is true — about request for ballots being placed in the name of voters who don’t even know that it’s happening, or who are paid to hand over their ballots to someone else to cast, etc. In other words, one central causation for many tainted ballots, rather than various isolated and independent events,
IF IT IS TRUE, I hope that we can agree, then it is intolerable. It’s not good for Democrats; it’s not good for NPPs, and in the long term it may be worst for Republicans, because it puts the wrong sorts of people in control of your party.
We have to know the truth. I hope that Correa’s prospective lawsuit becomes a vehicle for doing so. My fear is that, if something is amiss, it’s not in the provisional ballots but in the absentees, perhaps out of reach of his likely complaints.
Truck Drivin' Mike said
Me thinks it’s time for the brilliant Dr. Diamond to get a job. I suspect though that road has a lot of burned bridges.
Greg Diamond said
Geez, Chris — I have to bring you guys into someone else’s fight, but this poster (who has adopted the pen name of the longtime commenter now known as “truck drivin’ mike” on Orange Juice, to take advantage of the confusion that that generates) is apparently the person who goes elsewhere by the (fake, so far as I can tell) name “Robert Darley,” under which he has a perfunctory (and fake, so far as I can tell) Facebook profile that allows him to participate in sites that require commenters to have one.
He used to post on OJB under names such as KenLaysNotDead and nameless, and elsewhere as carpetbagger, as well as various ad hoc names. He is very, very upset that I won’t let him post anonymous attacks against people on OJB — so he acts out like this from time to time. I’d ask you to take it down, but what the heck — let people enjoy his handiwork, so long as they also get to see my response.
By the way — when I hit reply to this comment it tells me that I’m replying to “The Marshall Plan” (author of the comment below, which is apparently intended to be taken more seriously), so chances are he’s trying to make a money out of you as well. He generally uses new ISPs for his “one-offs,” but has been known to make mistakes.
How much you want to eliminate anonymous defamation and sockpuppetry in your comments section in this fine blog is, of course, up to you. Me, I finally had enough of it.
Greg Diamond said
The “have” is first line should be “hate” — and I really DO hate to have to respond to this cowardly character assassin. You guys don’t need this sort of crud in your gears.
TheMarshallPlan said
If these allegations are so serious, then how come Team Correa waited until all options failed before coming forward with the alleged voter fraud. I do love the irony that it’s Democrats who are the main ones against voter ID laws and question Republican accusations of voter fraud, and here we have Democrats coming forward with a scenario that voterID would have taken care of.
Greg Diamond said
The concern about reports of voter fraud was in his initial letter, gormless.
Voter fraud is extremely rare — and accusations of it are usually wild (or, when plausible, well out of date.) This sort of fraud requires a group of people who are brazen, arrogant, and have good reason to think that they won’t get caught. But the repeated stories that keep coming up suggest enough smoke that in this case, amazingly, there may actually be some fire.
Voter ID laws are a cure worse than the disease, because it puts an enormous burden on those least able to travel and to afford time off work to get such an ID. It’s also unnecessary as a DA that was truly on the ball could work with undercover officers to get at the truth and seriously punish any wrongdoers. But alas, here in OC whatever our DA is on is not “the ball.”
Measure J Hearing Today, Potential Harbinger of What Will Come in Correa Lawsuit « OC Political said
[…] a single vote changed in the recount, leaving Andrew Do in office as the new Supervisor, Correa switched to examining provisional ballots (i.e. the Measure J opponents’ […]