Long Beach District 6 City Councilman and write-in candidate Dee Andrews has won his bid for re-election after his campaign office called for a hand tally of 144 under-voted ballots Saturday night.
Monday, the Long Beach City Clerk’s Office counted the under-voted ballots—which are any ballots where a voter failed to make a selection or wrote a candidate’s name on the blank line but failed to fill out the rectangle on the ballot, City Clerk Maria de la luz Garcia said.
The latest results show Andrews with 1,088 or 51.03 percent of the votes, enough to win the primary and avoid a June runoff election. Miller received 556 or 26.08 percent of the votes. A total of 2,235 ballots were cast for the District 6 race out of a possible 21,382 registered voters.
The call for the hand tally was made possible pursuant to the state’s Election Code 15342, which allows write-in candidates whose names must be written to make such requests.
The city clerk’s office had released unofficial election results on Friday and Saturday, with the office showing results after counting all valid Vote-By-Mail ballots Friday, followed by revealing results on Saturday after the count of provisional ballots. The results on both days had Andrews lingering at just under 50 percent of the vote—shy of the 50.1 percent votes needed to avoid a runoff in June with candidate Erik Miller.
The election results, however, will not be made official and certified until Wednesday, April 20, de la luz Garcia said.
“A huge congratulations to Sixth District Councilmember Dee Andrews and Eighth District Councilman Al Austin, who both won reelection by receiving more than 50% of the vote, avoiding a run-off in June,” Mayor Robert Garcia said in an email sent out Monday. “Dee won as a write-in-candidate which is also unprecedented in a primary.”
“In the wake of the hand recount results for 6th district primary election, I want to congratulate Dee Andrews on his re-election,” said Miller. “I am very proud of the campaign I put forth over the past few months. More importantly, I am humbled at all the support that I received from my family, friends, and the community.”
Miller thanked his supporters and said he was looking forward to spending “some much needed quality time with my loved ones.”
Miller previously told the Post of multiple reports to the city clerk’s office he had to make on Election Day regarding signs promoting Dee Andrews illegally posted throughout the district.
“There was a lot of illegal electioneering that I think has an influence on this [election],” Miller told the Post on Election night. “There was at least 14 cases that I reported myself.I like to think that I was a high character guy and it was a little disappointing that someone with as much clout and has a long history in politics wouldn’t know the rules or respect the rules for that matter.”
Code enforcement removed 30 illegally placed signs from District 6 on Election Day, Long Beach Development Services (LBDS) spokeswoman Jacqueline Medina told the Post on Monday. Though she did not have an exact number she did say “a majority” of those signs were promoting Dee Andrews.
Andrews’ campaign could not be reached for comment Monday.
Above, left photo of Councilman Dee Andrews with Councilman Rex Richardson during a watch party on Election Day. Photo by Stephanie Rivera.
This report was updated on 04/19/16 at 10:38AM with a statement from Erik Miller.