Paso Robles resident Darcia Stebbens has requested a recount of the San Luis Obispo County District 2 Supervisor race in the November General Election.
According to the certified election results, released on Dec. 7, incumbent supervisor Bruce Gibson won that race over challenger Bruce Jones by just 13 votes.
Stebbens is requesting a visual inspection of the ballots along with any "relevant material" and a manual recount of the ballots.
According to her official request, "relevant material" includes unvoted ballots, duplicate ballots, ballot envelopes, vote-by-mail ballots without envelopes, ballot envelopes with missing or non-matching signatures, ballot envelopes considered non-deliverable by the U.S. Postal Service, ballots postmarked after Nov. 8, ballots received after Nov. 15, and a number of other results, logs, files, data, and even surveillance video recordings.
Stebbens also specifically wants information about what is referred to as a "spreadsheet error" in which more than 300 provisional ballots were added to the unprocessed ballot estimate after the count on Nov. 23. The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney's Office conducted an inquiry into the incident and found no evidence of election crimes. County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano said the 327 provisional ballots in question were not initially reported because a spreadsheet did not generate totals for certain precincts.
Also requested as part of the recount is information about vote-by-mail ballots that were voted at a precinct but allegedly turned in without an envelope per instruction of the precinct worker.
In July, Stebbens requested a recount of the San Luis Obispo County District 4 Supervisor race in the June Primary Election. That recount took 18 days to complete and did not change the result of the election.
In that race, Jimmy Paulding unseated incumbent Lynn Compton by 639 votes.
Per state and county guidelines, a recount must begin no later than seven days after the request was received, and the person requesting it is responsible for paying for the cost of the recount.
