Gap Narrows in County Board of Supervisors Election Results

Andrew Do holds an 85-vote lead over former state Sen. Lou Correa today in the special election to fill the vacant First District seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said his staff will complete counting vote-by-mail, provisional and paper ballots today.

Remaining to be counted are about 4,700 vote-by-mail ballots dropped off at various precincts on Tuesday and about 760 provisional ballots and 150 paper ballots cast by voters who did not want to use the electronic machines, Kelley said.

Subscribe to News Alerts and a Daily Email Newsletter for Rancho Santa Margarita Patch

Some provisional ballots may be later disqualified, Kelley said. Provisional ballots are typically cast at precincts where voters are not registered to cast a ballot.

Kelley said he plans to certify the vote after 8 p.m. The top vote- getter will take office.

The second-place finisher can then request a recount. The trailing candidate must pay for the recount, but the money would be refunded if the original result is changed.

Do entered Thursday’s resumption of counting provisional ballots with a 239-vote lead. When the day’s count ended, he had 18,698 votes, 39.1 percent, to 18,613 for Correa, 39 percent.

Garden Grove City Councilman Chris Phan was a distant third at 7,785, or 16.3 percent, followed by television news anchor Chuyen Van Nguyen at 1,850, or 3.9 percent, and Lupe Morfin-Moreno, a specialist with the Orange County Health Care Agency, at 818 votes, or 1.7 percent.

Do had a two-vote lead after all 101 precincts were counted Tuesday.

In 2007, the last time there was a special election for the First District, election night ended with a seven-vote difference, with Janet Nguyen ultimately prevailing. She was elected to the state Senate, triggering Tuesday’s special election.

Do was Nguyen’s chief of staff. And it was Correa’s election to the state Senate in 2007 that triggered that special election.

The First District includes Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Westminster, the unincorporated Midway City area and portions of Fountain Valley.

• City News Service