SAN ANTONIO — A woman who missed making the District 2 runoff for San Antonio City Council by only 59 votes last weekend has filed for a recount of some of those votes.
Denise Gutierrrez-Homer said she believes some of the machines at one polling place may have been corrupt because of an Election Night issue.
“When the numbers were updated, it showed I had received over 33,000 votes. So we took pictures and laughed, but we all knew there had been a glitch in the system," she said. "A few minutes later, we were on the phone with the elections department and we were told there was a corrupt reader."
Surrounded by supporters, Gutierrez-Homer came to a morning news conference Friday armed with numbers. Her focus is on the 10 precincts that vote at Lamar Elementary, and on what she claims were provisional ballots at the Lions Field polling location on Broadway.
“All I'm asking, all I'm requesting, (is) that the voters of D-2 have their votes counted and their voices heard,” Gutierrez-Homer said.
First-place finisher Keith Toney ended the night with 27% of the vote, but second-place candidate Jada Andrews Sullivan was only 59 votes ahead of Gutierrez-Homer.
“Mathematically, these numbers don't add up. You have a lot of under and over votes," Gutierrez-Homer said.
Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen responded to the claims by saying all votes have been properly recorded.
"I am here to tell you we've never, ever lost a vote," Callanen said, adding there were no provisional ballots cast at the Lions Field site on Saturday.
Callanen admits there was an issue with one machine, but she says every voting device has three separate counting mechanisms. The problem , she said, was caught and addressed immediately.
“It threw a bad number and we knew that right away, so we drew that down,” she said.
Callanen is confident her numbers will stand, adding they will count both paper mail in ballots and review machine cast votes.
The committee of citizens that will do the physical work of counting through the ballots will meet at election headquarters Tuesday at 9 a.m.
Callanen said she expects to have results within a few hours.
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