Poorly designed touchscreen may have altered Oakland's at-large election results, candidate says

Berkeley's mayoral race is a nail biter, as are races in Fremont, San Leandro, and Hayward, after Monday's large drop of election results; County brings back watered-down Just Cause ordinance

A touchscreen in Oakland’s 10-candidate at-large city council race shows two candidates are not listed on the initial screen without manually scrolling up.

ELECTION 2024

OAKLAND CITY COUNCIL - AT-LARGE

—Oakland City Council at-large candidate Kanitha Matoury believes some of her supporters struggled to locate her name on county-issued touchscreen voting machines.

—Oakland’s at-large council race featured 10 candidates, but touchscreens used in Alameda County only showed the first eight candidates.

—If voters did not notice the “scroll up” bar above the candidate’s names, they may not have noticed Matoury and candidate Selika Thomas’s name was missing from the list.

—“Our office has received multiple reports from supporters who had difficulty locating Kanitha’s name on the voting screen, with some requiring assistance from poll workers,” Matoury’s campaign said in a statement.

—In a memo sent to Matoury’s campaign team on Nov. 6, the day after Election Night, campaign manager, Ananda Neil, believes the touchscreen’s design cost Matoury votes, and by extension, ranked choice support for candidate LeRonne Armstrong.

—“Without written instructions, or a requirement to view all candidates before moving on, we believe our lack of visibility on the digital ballot booths cost Kanitha votes. Votes that likely will RCV to Armstrong, possibly determining the difference on who wins this seat,” Neil wrote.

—Matoury’s campaign formed a slate that included Armstrong and candidates Tina Tostado. They each alerted their supporters to ranked them as their first three choices.

—“There is a way to determine if there was a difference between these ballot booths: review the At-Large tallies for every polling location. If there is a consistent difference favoring Kanitha on paper, we can conclude she lost votes due to this visibility issue,” Neil wrote.

—Neil expressed a desire in the email to issue a complaint to the California Secretary of State’s office, according to the campaign memo.

—“Our intention is not to alter the outcome in favor of any candidate, but to ensure that this election accurately reflects the will of Oakland voters,” Matoury’s campaign said.

—A public poll in August and another three weeks ago showed Matoury outpacing her eventual Election Day numbers.

—Matoury is currently fifth in the at-large race with 3.85 percent of the first-place votes, as of Monday’s election update. Thomas finished well off the pace of also-rans with less than one percent of the vote.

—“As a representing candidate for small businesses, we have been asking supporters to rank with Armstrong (and believe a substantial percentage of them did),” Neil added.

—However, voters may not have gotten the message.

—Candidate Charlene Wang received the lion’s share of Matoury’s votes after rank choice tabulations, followed by Armstrong, and Rowena Brown, the likely councilmember-elect.

VOTES TRANSFERRED FROM MATOURY*

• Charlene Wang—1,419

• LeRonne Armstrong-1,300

• Rowena Brown—763

  *-as of Monday.

—MONDAY’S UPDATE—The Alameda County Registrar of Voters’ election update added 150,000 ballots to the vote tally on Monday. The total number of ballots cast is now 483,458.

—Now here’s the bad news: The next update is scheduled for Friday afternoon. Roughly 215,000 ballots remain to be counted, based on previous estimates. [Correction was made to the number of processed ballots and those remaining be counted]

—YOUTH VOTING—Meanwhile, turnout for 16- and 17-year-olds in Berkeley and Oakland school board elections is 528 voters, as of Monday’s update. Youth voting made its debut in Berkeley and Oakland election this fall.

—Albany voters last week overwhelmingly approved Measure V, which will allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in city council and school board races.

—411 ON THE 510—There’s much more inside! Become an East Bay Insiders subscriber today and get full access to the inside scoop every weekday morning at 6 a.m. It’s what the insiders read.

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MORE INSIDE:

• ELECTION RESULTS ROUNDUP: Berkeley mayoral race tightens up, as does Fremont’s District 6 council race.

• Progressive campaigns surged after Monday’s large new batch of ballots were counted

• Alameda’s Trish Herrera Spencer is dropping in the polls

• Rowena Brown wins Oakland’s at-large race, Gary Singh is the winner in Union City’s mayoral race

• COUNTY NEWS: Just Cause returns for a quick vote today

• County to release winter relief funding to five Alameda County cities.

• Temporary fire station coming to Castro Valley for a hefty rental price

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