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Related: Teng Moves On

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Teng Loses Recount

By Joseph Hong

It’s official: Tony Hall remains supervisor in District 7 after completion of the recount of ballots from that district’s December runoff as requested and paid for by supporters of Mabel Teng, said Department of Election officials. In the runoff election, Supervisor Tony Hall edged out Mabel Teng by 39 votes, a margin of less than 1 percent.

The Department of Elections finished counting Tuesday evening, a day sooner than they expected by working overtime — saving Teng supporters an extra $2,080, which they were obligated to pay at the start of each day of counting. The process took 10 days over a three-week period.

“We stayed late to finish counting the ballots and we resolved any challenges that were still outstanding,” Chris Hayashi of the S.F. Department of Elections said Wednesday morning. “We’ll be having a press conference today of any changes in the actual vote tally, but at this point I don’t know the exact number of what the changes have been,”

As early as Tuesday morning, Teng supporters had expressed doubt that the runoff result would be reversed.

“Given the number of ballots that remained since yesterday it seems unlikely that the gap would be completely closed…but until you finished counting the ballot there still is a chance that Mabel Teng could still win,” said Teng’s attorney, Lowell Finley.

It is estimated that Teng supporters — such as the San Francisco Neighbors Association, a group represented mostly by Chinese Americans, and individuals such as Warren Hellman — will have funded some $22,000 in total for the manual recount.

Throughout the recount process, Teng’s supporters had said there were problems with ballot counting.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, Director of Elections Phil Paris still had not made a decision on whether to throw out or to count approximately a dozen challenge ballots favoring Tony Hall, giving Teng supporters a glimmer of hope.

Of those challenge ballots, about 10 are ballots cast by voters who, intentionally or unintentionally, double-voted for Tony Hall. Though the five duplicated ballots had been thrown out, Finley said the five mirror ballots remained in the count. He also said that based on election law, all ballots of voters who knowingly attempt to double-vote should be tossed out.

Other questionable ballots came from the Laguna Hospital precinct, where a few Chinese-surname voters filled out provisional ballots; however, they weren’t counted because the required addresses sections were not filled out, possibly because of the lack of assistance by poll workers, according to Finley.

“[On Monday] the director granted several of our challenges based on that lack of assistance, which he confirmed based on his own internal investigation,” Finley said. “Not to have people sufficiently trained... is not acceptable.”

However, Hayashi said that issue has been raised without basis, stressing that the Department of Elections did comply fully with state and federal law in regard to bilingual poll workers.

Nevertheless, Teng supporters conceded that even if most of the remaining challenge ballots were ruled in favor of Teng, it probably wouldn’t be enough to place her ahead of Hall in the final vote tally.

For Teng and her supporters, a court challenge would be a last resort effort. The deadline to file such a lawsuit is next Monday, however, and so far neither Finely nor Teng supporters have indicated they would make such a move.

“On the whole I thought the department handled the recount very well,” Finley said, “but I think some serious questions emerged on how the department conducted the election.”