OAKLAND — As it stands, the certified winner of an Oakland Unified school board race is prepared to be sworn in to office Monday, even though high-ranking Alameda County officials and election experts have determined he did not actually win.

Both candidates entangled in the stunning election debacle — triggered by apparent human error in the county Registrar of Voters office — have lawyered up and still fully intend to claim the District 4 school board seat.

And with all the city’s newly elected leaders set to be inaugurated Monday, county officials are running out of time to figure out how to reverse such an unprecedented mistake.

“We are working with the county counsel at the moment to figure out how exactly to bring the correct candidate in,” Registrar Tim Dupuis told the county Board of Supervisors at a Thursday meeting. “That is a work in progress at the moment.”

But in the public eye, the situation’s urgency is been overshadowed by scrutiny of ranked choice voting, an “instant runoff” format that allows voters to list their preferred candidates and transfers second- and later-choice votes from losing candidates to the frontrunners until someone wins majority support.

Nick Resnick, an education executive and former teacher, was certified the winner of the race in early December after a lengthy vote-counting process saw him outlast Pecolia Manigo and District 5 Director Mike Hutchinson, both of whom shared supporters.

But after being alerted by advocacy groups to a counting error, the registrar’s office has now determined that Hutchinson, who finished third place in the election, should actually have been the winner.

That’s because the county registrar activated a feature in the Dominion election software that suspended ballots where voters left the first-choice column blank. Under Oakland’s charter, those ballots should not have been suspended; instead the voters’ second and later choices should have been moved up one rank.

“In the first or any round, in the event that any ballot reaches a ranking with no candidate indicated, that ballot shall immediately be advanced to the next ranking,” the charter states.

When run correctly, second-choice votes for Hutchinson on those suspended ballots should automatically have counted in his favor, putting him in position to beat Resnick with vote transfers from Manigo.

More than a week after the registrar’s mistake came to light, the situation remains in a holding pattern — Hutchinson is preparing to take the matter to the courts, while Resnick said he questions the legitimacy of the registrar’s latest conclusion — and plans to take office.

“What we have now is the registrar and this advocacy group are saying, ‘“Wait, wait, wait, we’re actually smarter than the voter and we actually know what the voter meant better than the voters themselves,” Resnick said. “The votes need to be counted as people intended them — they did not vote for a first-place candidate.”

Neither candidate has spoken to Dupuis since last week, when the registrar called them individually to deliver the alarming news. Both Resnick and Hutchinson (the latter has two years left in his current District 5 board seat) attended a school board orientation Wednesday but did not discuss the election issue.

On Thursday, Dupuis told the Board of Supervisors that he was working with the California secretary of state to figure out how the issue can be avoided in future elections.

He is also lobbying the state to form specific guidelines for ranked choice voting, so that granular aspects of vote processing — such as “suspended ballots” — aren’t left for cities and counties to decide individually.

But at least on Thursday, the supervisors and many in the public were less concerned with what went wrong for the school board, instead turning their scrutiny to ranked choice voting as a format.

Supervisor Nate Miley called the instant runoff system “confusing,” peppering Dupuis with questions about the Oakland mayor race, in which vote transfers helped elect the winner.

“I am the great-, great-, great-grandson of John Hutchinson, who was born enslaved,” he said. “My mom marched with Dr. King in Selma to Montgomery too. And the voters in my district have elected me to represent them. So I’m really hopeful that there can be relief from the county supervisors without me having to go to court.”

At the same forum, an attorney for Resnick accused Dupuis of going radio silent after last week’s phone call.

“The registrar called our client out of the clear blue sky — he has not reached out since that time or provided any information about the legal impact of the re-tabulation,” said the attorney, Jim Sutton, who demanded a meeting by Friday, latest.

---

• Report an error
• Policies and Standards
• Contact Us