Measure W looks to pass by slim margin

Expected to generate some $80 million a year for 30 years, Measure W’s passage stands to benefit all San Mateo County residents by expanding public transit options, improving highway interchanges and accelerating the shift in SamTrans’ bus fleet to electric vehicles, said Charles Stone, SamTrans chair and Belmont councilman.

Stone said he was elated to see the results post Monday, which he noted were a demonstration of voters’ enthusiasm for transportation improvements.

“This is a huge signal … to San Mateo County that the voters are ready to see transformative transportation and transit measures taken,” he said. “This is incredibly impactful to everyone in San Mateo County.”

Estimated to generate around $2.4 billion total, 50 percent of Measure W revenue would support public transportation in the county through SamTrans and Caltrain. In addition, 22.5 percent of the funds would go to highway projects throughout the county, 12.5 percent of the money would fund arterial and local road improvements, 10 percent would pay for regional connections and 5 percent would be allocated for bicycle and pedestrian projects.

By boosting funding for paratransit services, road improvements near congested corridors and SamTrans’ electric bus fleet, among other improvements, Measure W is expected to improve the lives of seniors, people with disabilities, low-income individuals and drivers, among others, said Stone. He added he was very thankful to the more than two-thirds of San Mateo County voters who supported the measure and promised them San Mateo County Transit District officials will be good stewards of the funds.

Opposition concern over tallies

But the uptick in the support for Measure W in recent election results updates gave environmentalist Gladwyn D’Souza pause. D’Souza previously opposed Measure W with concerns it wouldn’t deliver on its promises, noting several transit services and transportation projects have continued to decline despite the funds spent on them.

Noting anomalies in previous elections have been able to swing local tax measures worth millions of dollars in the past, D’Souza said he wondered whether the process elections officials have been using to count ballots that could not be read by a voting machine is thorough enough. Though D’Souza was told by elections staff that the two staff members who review damaged ballots whose barcodes cannot be read by a voting machine go through background checks, he wasn’t convinced a background check was sufficient.

He added he was told that after the ballots are counted, they are sorted by precinct instead of by the day they are sorted, which he felt would make it challenging for staff members to track which ballots were cast on a specific day in the case of a recount.

“I don’t feel like the checks are in place to correct for those kind of issues,” he said.

Chief Elections Officer Mark Church confirmed the processing and counting of damaged ballots is a routine and normal practice for the San Mateo County Elections Division, and has been the same process elections officials have used for years. He said every ballot contains a barcode that is scanned and used to tabulate the information, and those ballots with damaged barcodes are duplicated onto a clean ballot and scanned into the voting tabulation system by a team of two trained staff members.

Church added one staff member reads the voter’s ballot while the other records the information onto a new ballot. The information on the new ballot is then read to the first staff member to ensure no votes are changed, he said, noting only the new ballot is processed in the same way any other ballot would be processed. Church said the original ballot is kept for the Elections Office’s records while the new ballot is processed and both are marked with corresponding serial numbers to ensure they are not counted twice.

“This is the best practice, it is utilized by the other counties throughout the state,” he said.

Other close races

Measure W was not the only tax proposal solidifying a path toward passage. The San Mateo-Foster City Elementary School District’s push for a $298 parcel tax ticked further beyond the supermajority required to pass, as Measure V gathered 67.8 percent support, up nearly 1 percent from the previous posted results. The initiative designed to help officials cut down a structural deficit has gained momentum since Election Day, when it gathered only 64.5 percent support.

Diana Reddy increased her lead over Rick Hunter to 330 votes in the race for the Redwood City Council. The two are battling for a third seat, as Giselle Hale and Diane Howard already solidified victories.

Leads established by Richa Awasthi in her race for the second of two open seats on the Foster City Council and Flor Nicolas in her race for the third of three open seats on the South San Francisco City Council persisted.

In the Foster City Council contest, frontrunner Sanjay Gehani remains solidly the top vote getter with 5,187 total votes, earning 26.63 percent support from voters. With 3,784 total votes, Awasthi increased her lead over Patrick Sullivan to 224 votes and earned 19.43 percent of the vote. With 18.28 percent support from voters, Sullivan has fallen short of the second open seat, earning 3,560 votes.

In the South San Francisco City Council race, results largely held from the last update with frontrunner incumbent Mark Addiego remaining the top vote getter with 9,431 votes, followed by challengers Mark Nagales and Nicolas respectively. South San Francisco Councilman Pradeep Gupta fell short of re-election and remained in fourth place with 7,832 votes, behind Nicolas by 203 votes and Nagales by 504 votes.

Support for Measure II, the bond proposed to help finance reconstruction of the Millbrae Community Center, faltered slightly in the updated results Monday, earning 62.2 percent support, down from the 62.6 percent support posted Sunday. Also in need of more than two-thirds support from voters, the measure remains on pace to fail.

In addition to vote center ballots, more than 260,000 paper ballots have been received so far. Church said some 275 vote-by-mail ballots and 100 provisional ballots remain to be counted, along with an estimated 600 vote-by-mail ballots missing signatures and 188 vote-by-mail ballots for which the signatures don’t match that of the registered voter. Those whose ballots are missing a signature had until Monday, Nov. 26, at 5 p.m. to sign their ballots, while those whose signatures do not match their ballot will have until Dec. 4, two days before the election is certified Dec. 6, to address the issue, said Church.

More results are scheduled to come out Tuesday, Nov. 27, and on subsequent days if needed.

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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