The Kern County Elections Office announced there is no change in the outcome of its earlier results for the state Senate District 16 race after a recount was requested two weeks ago and finished Wednesday.
County Registrar of Voters-elect Aimee Espinoza said her office finished its machine tabulation just before 11:00 a.m., then reviewed the results with both parties. Neither side contested the results.
“There is no change in the results from what we certified to the state,” Espinoza said. “After all the ballots were tabulated, we ran reports and let both parties look at results, both original and recount results, and they all matched.”
As it stands, Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, remains the declared winner in Kern County with 35,995 votes, or 58 percent, compared with David Shepard, R-Porterville, who received 26,026 votes. Representatives from Hurtado's campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“This was our first time going through this,” Espinoza said. “It was a learning experience for all of us and we are already looking at when we get back next week for ways to refine our process for future recounts, should there be any.”
With the exception of three individual votes in Fresno, the recount effort has proven largely fruitless for the Shepard campaign, which has shelled out thousands of dollars to the four counties since the process began two weeks ago.
According to Shepard Campaign Manager Austin Gilbert, the recount process has largely been smooth and cordial.
“So far, each staff has been accommodating, very nice and followed our requests as we stated at the beginning of the recount,” Gilbert said.
Shepard, who faced a deficit of 22 votes out of nearly 137,000 cast, has so far gained six votes in three of the four counties. His campaign now awaits the results of remaining Tulare and Kings Counties, which together gave him 38,974 votes to Hurtado’s 31,107 — a difference of 7,867 votes — in the November election.
“So far with the final results out of Fresno, we have netted three votes from them,” Gilbert said. “And we believe that we netted three votes out of Tulare, due to challenging votes.”
Tulare Registrar of Voters Michelle Baldwin said her county’s elections are about 60 percent done with the process of ballot retrieval. She confirmed Wednesday that Shepard gained three votes through challenges to “undervotes" — ballots that were previously uncounted due to any error in selection.
“We have now begun the process of putting them in stacks of 100 to run through the machine, we are about 50 percent done with that phase,” Baldwin said on Wednesday morning. “We should be able to start the machine recount on Tuesday, and it should only take us about the days to complete.”
Gilbert said the Shepard campaign has made about 100 challenges in all among the four counties, including 19 in Kern.
Kern denied all 19 challenges, and so far, Kings County has not overturned any challenges.
“We addressed all challenges related to ‘relevant’ material and started the sorting process, as well,” Kings County Registrar of Voters Lupe Villa said. “We continue to sort and will be sorting until maybe Friday.”
