MEDICAL CANNABIS RECOUNT UNDER WAY

Alameda County officials began recounting ballots Monday in a Berkeley
ballot measure to ease restrictions on medical marijuana sales and possession.

Measure R, which would have allowed medical marijuana clubs to move into
retail areas without public hearings and also would erase limits on the
amount of pot patients could have, narrowly lost, 25,167 votes to 24,976,
according to certified results.

The Alliance for Berkeley Patients sought a recount and committed to paying
the more than $20,000 it is expected to cost.

An attorney for the group, Gregory Luke, says he wants access to data from
individual electronic voting machines because it is most likely to be
uncorrupted.

Registrar Brad Clark will make a decision on that later this week.

Assistant Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold said her office planned to
manually count all paper absentee and provisional ballots and recount
electronic votes stored on memory cards.

It is expected to take two weeks.