Alameda County Transportation Commission Requests a Vote Recount

      Measure B1 was placed on the November ballot promising to raise billions of dollars for transportation and regional planning projects over 30 years. The measure would permanently raise Alameda County sales tax by .05% and make permanent another .05% sales tax measure (Measure B) previously passed by the voters and scheduled to ‘sunset’ in 2020. In other words, our sales taxes would go up to 9.25% permanently. Then of course the state of CA gets into the act with the recently passed Proposition 30, which will increase sales taxes another .025% for five years. That means we could be paying 9.5% in sales taxes starting January 1, the highest sales taxes in the Bay Area. This will negatively affect our local economy.

      The Alameda County Republican Party Opposed Measure B1 because it made permanent these sale tax increases, is a monstrous bill promising goodies to 14 cities across Alameda County and creates a lot of power for regional management in the unelected committee that is the Alameda County
Transportation Commission. We were hopeful that in this economy taxpayers would not vote these additional taxes upon themselves and our small business community, which is already struggling to survive.

      This measure required a two-thirds voter approval to pass and when the Registrar of Voters certified the election last week, the total vote count in favor of Measure B1 was 66.53% of the vote. Now we are told that the ACTC will pay for a recount – or should I say the Alameda County taxpayers will pay for a recount.

      I am told that the cost per day of recounting ballots is approximately $5,000.  ACTC has hired the well-known Oakland law firm Wendel, Rosen, Black and Dean to handle their recount request.  They have notified the Registrar of Voters, Dave MacDonald, they want to recount all of the provisional
ballots. This sends up a ‘red flag’ to those of us in the business of elections. 

      Provisional ballots are provisional because the voter who was provided one could not be found on the roster in the precinct where they voted. Or they were listed as Vote By Mail voters and they didn’t have their absentee ballot to surrender. They could be voting in more than one polling place, might not be registered, could have recently moved, or not be eligible to vote (a non-citizen, too young, a felon). All voters are given a ballot if they show up to vote on election-day, and some are required to vote provisionally for the above noted reasons.

      The Alameda County Transportation Commission needs to find approximately 700 more YES votes for Measure B1 to pass and raise your sales taxes permanently, and having 14 cities in Alameda County as members of the ACTC, they can find $5,000 per day to cover the costs.   The recount process will start next Tuesday, Dec 4 at 09:00 at the Alameda County ROV offices in Oakland.

      Our coalition of NO on Measure B1 groups will provide one observer for each of the nine tables where the manual recount takes place and so will the representatives for ACTC from Wendel, Rosen Black and Dean. We are getting organized to respectfully watch the count and to assure that powerful attorneys don’t intimidate the Registrar’s team or the Registrar himself.

      Our Registrar of Voters, Dave MacDonald, has a good and clean reputation for running elections in our county. Our feeling is that he already rejected some provisional ballots as not being legitimate to count, and those ballots should not be added back now. We will watch carefully.