Election certified with final hand count
of absentee ballots

By Ari Burack

December 8, 2007

San Francisco elections officials were able to finally certify the results of the Nov. 6 election Friday after a hand count of some 80,000 ballots, according to the Department of Elections.

The department was granted a weeklong extension earlier this week to finish vote counting due to issues with the city's current computer voting system, furnished by the Omaha, Neb. based Election Systems and Software.

Problems arose from the ES&S machines, causing California Secretary of State Debra Bowen to impose stricter conditions on the tabulation of results using hand counts.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen

Discrepancies between initial hand counts and results from the ES&S machines resulted in the need to manually recount absentee ballots related to measures A, E, F and G, according to Director of Elections John Arntz.

The final tally did not significantly change the initial results for the four measures, according to the elections department.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will approve the final election results, and will also separately consider a resolution to replace the ES&S computer voting system with a new $12.65 million, four-year contract with Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

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