San Diego: trial of mayoral contest starts
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports: Two formal challenges to Mayor Dick Murphy's victory in the 2004 San Diego election got under way yesterday as lawyers pressed their arguments that thousands of ballots that could tip the race were wrongly excluded.
The lawyers for two sets of voters contesting Murphy's re-election argued that county election officials were in error and unfair when they relied on a state law to exclude thousands of votes for Councilwoman Donna Frye.
The first day of the trial also featured testimony from Registrar of Voters Sally McPherson, who was questioned about how and why her office published certain election materials and how some votes were counted and others not.
The trial centers on 5,551 uncounted ballots cast in the Nov. 2 election. The ballots have Frye's name as a write-in candidate for mayor, but do not have a small oval-shaped bubble next to her name shaded in. Four more votes for Frye were found in a review of ballots by attorneys in the case on Friday. -- SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Politics -- Registrar questioned on vote-counting
The sidebar on this story contains links to several video clips. The first has part of Fred Woocher's opening argument in which he compares an uncounted ballot with Donna Frye's name written in, the other candidates marked out, but no mark in the bubble and an absentee ballot instruction booklet sent in by a voter, and which was counted a vote for Murphy.