MEASURE R LOSES RECOUNT

The recount of Berkeley's Measure R has left the medical marijuana
initiative 166 votes short of victory, and supporters still dissatisfied
with the count hoping that legal action would overturn the outcome.

Measure R spokesperson Debbie Goldsberry said that the recount uncovered
hundreds of Berkeley voters whose votes were not counted because of
improperly filled-out provisional ballot forms, and a thousand UC Berkeley
students whose votes were not counted because their names could not be
found in the Alameda County Registrar of Voters registration database.

The measure sought to end limits on the number of plants allowed to medical
marijuana users and would have allowed Berkeley's three medical marijuana
institutions to move anywhere within the city's commercial zone.

"I'm convinced that if we had properly counted all of the actual votes in
Berkeley, Measure R would have won," Goldsberry said. "But the decision of
the registrar's office is final."

Alameda County Assistant Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold said that while
there were small discrepancies in the Measure R count "they had no material
impact on the results of the election."

Ginnold said that one of those discrepancies was 20 fewer ballots than the
number of voters who signed in on election day at the Side B precinct
station at the Northbrae Community Church on The Alameda in Berkeley.
Despite a search by registrar's office workers during the recounts, those
ballots were never recovered. In addition, the voter count and actual
ballots were off "by one or two votes" in a number of other Berkeley
precincts. "But there will always be that type of discrepancy in any
election," Ginnold said.

The vote count discrepancies Ginnold referred to were a different issue
from the uncounted votes referenced by Goldsberry.

Goldsberry said that in the case of the thousand UC Berkeley student voters
not found in the database, "the students' names may have been there, but
the workers just may not have been able to find them because of the way in
which they were listed and the way the workers were searching." Goldsberry
said the uncounted votes involved students who lived in UC dormitories.

She said that the largest number of improperly filled-out provisional
ballot envelopes came from two Berkeley precincts. "We suspect that workers
in those precincts were not giving proper instruction as to how to fill out
the envelopes," Goldsberry said. "That's something which is just going to
have to be looked out for and corrected in future elections."

The battleground for Measure R now shifts from the counting room to the
courts, where Berkeley-based Americans For Safe Access have filed a state
lawsuit contesting the election. That lawsuit involves ballots cast by
computer in the Nov. 2 election.

Goldsberry said that many of the uncounted paper ballot votes were
discovered after the filing of the lawsuit early last week, and so will not
be at issue in the legal proceedings. "We're just going to have to suck
that up."