Amid confusion among residents about how to count the vote for City Council candidates in Tuesday's primary election, Morro Bay city attorney Rob Schultz said in a news release Wednesday that "it appears that votes received by each of the two top City Council candidates, (Noah) Smukler and (Christine) Johnson, is more than 50% of the 3,439 ballots cast thus far."
Since 50% of the vote is what it takes to be elected in such balloting, Schultz seemed to say that Johnson and Smukler had been elected. That would produce a new majority on the Couincil coupled with the uncontested election of Jamie Irons as mayor, who received 52.97% of the vote.
However, Schultz did not say:
1. Johnson and Smukler were actually "elected," even though he said they received more than 50% of the vote.
2. There are still 567 votes from Morro Bay yet to be counted by the county clerk-recorder's office. He said Johnson and Smukler have more than 50% of the votes cast
"thus far," as if those uncounted votes could change that 50%. However, even if candidate Joan Solu, who finished third in the voting, received all 567 of those votes, which is not conceivable, she could not overtake Johnson, who finished second in the unofficial results, or Smukler who finished first.
3. Why the unofficial results issued by the clerk-recorder's office (2012 Presidential Primary/ElectionNightResults ) used "total votes" cast to calculate the percentages of votes that candidates received, which gave Johnson 31.71% and Smukler 37.12% of the vote, less than the 50% that Schultz (and others) claimed they received.
Irons won 52.97% of the total votes in the mayoral race and was elected without question.
Schultz indicated he concluded Johnson and Smukler received more than 50% based on "ballots cast." So did some others in claiming Johnson and Smukler received 50% of the vote, even though the clerk-recorder based its results on "total votes" in both the mayoral and council races. And in so doing did not give either Johnson and Smukler 50% of the vote.
The central point here is that some have accepted the clerk-recorder's use of "total votes" to determine that Irons won while they seek to use "ballots cast" in arguing that Johnson and Smukler won 50%. This lacks consistency by not using either the same total votes or ballots cast for determining whether Irons as well as Johnson and Smukler won their races.
The clerk-recorder consistently used total votes in calculating results for both the mayor and council results, which turned out to give Irons 52.97% and Johnson 31.71% and Smukler 37.12%. Using ballots cast to measure the percentage of votes that Johnson and Smukler received--not the same total votes used to determine that Irons won--that gave Johnson 54% and Smukler 63%.
So questions about the council results in the June 5 primary appear to remain. The original questions about how to calculate the votes in both races seem not to have been completely addressed.
Here are counts using both total votes and ballots cast, based on edited information from the clerk-recorder's results:
City of Morro Bay Mayor
Total Votes 3366
JAMIE IRONS 1783 votes or 52.97% (51.8% if based on ballots cast, 3439)
City of Morro Bay Council Member
Total Votes 5862
NOAH SMUKLER 2176 votes or 37.12% (63% if based on ballots cast, 3439)
CHRISTINE JOHNSON 1859 votes or 31.71% (54% if based on ballots cast, 3439)
Read Schultz's News Release
