Politics & Government

Republican Requests Recount in Close Valley Assembly Special Election

By City News Service

Republican Susan Shelley today requested a recount in the 45th Assembly District special election, claiming an apparent discrepancy of 206 more votes counted than were available to count.

"I believe the discrepancy may be an indication of errors in the count," Shelley said. "It may be that these questions will be cleared up quickly, but in an abundance of caution, I have asked for a recount."

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The deadline to request a recount was 5 p.m. today.

Democrat Matt Dababneh defeated Shelley by 329 votes in the Nov. 19 election in the West San Fernando Valley district.

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There was no immediate response to a request for comment from the Dababneh campaign made late tonight.

Shelley also said that during her investigation of the election returns she "discovered that over 1,800 vote-by-mail ballots that were logged in as 'returned' and included in the county's vote-by-mail reports were actually undeliverable ballots that had been returned by the U.S. Postal Service."

"I believe this should be investigated further to see if this was the result of errors by the USPS or whether these voters should be removed from the voter rolls," Shelley said.


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