GMO Labeling Proposition 37: The Recount

Having two such recounts in one year is highly unusual, if not unprece­dented. The ear­lier effort came after the June pri­mary, when Bay Area sur­geon John Maa requested a recount for Prop 29, the cig­a­rette tax ini­tia­tive that would have helped to fund can­cer research.

Now Maa is impart­ing some of his own hard-earned (and expensive—recounts in California must be bankrolled by the requester) knowl­edge to Grace. Both acknowl­edged that Maa has given her strate­gi­cal advice on how to proceed.

Grace is no stranger to the elec­toral process, either. In an inter­view by phone late Tuesday, she said she has been actively involved in issues of elec­tions integrity since at least 2004, when she helped with an audit of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Her inter­est began after the Bush-Gore recount in Florida in 2000. She also heads an orga­ni­za­tion called the Institute for American Democracy and Election Integrity.

Grace said that at least one of her rea­sons for request­ing the Prop 37 recount was the obvi­ous one—to see the elec­tion results over­turned and Prop 37 pass. She is founder and direc­tor of the Sunrise Center, which advo­cates “green” and healthy lifestyles and has pub­licly sup­ported Prop 37. But she also said that she and a small group of cit­i­zens are con­cerned “about elec­tion anom­alies that can’t be explained” in a few counties.

“We’ve done a cer­tain amount of sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis. It’s just a question—nothing’s for sure,” Grace said.

In an email, Maa pro­vided a lit­tle more background:

“In the weeks dur­ing the can­vass fol­low­ing the November elec­tion, the mar­gin for Proposition 37 nar­rowed sub­stan­tially, as over 3 mil­lion pro­vi­sional, absen­tee, and dam­aged bal­lots were counted. Unusually high num­bers of pro­vi­sional bal­lots were noted in sev­eral coun­ties, likely the result of the new online voter reg­is­tra­tion processes imple­mented before the November elec­tion. Supporters of Proposition 37 ques­tioned whether the Associated Press called the elec­tion pre­ma­turely a vic­tory for ‘No on Prop 37′ with such a large num­ber of bal­lots remain­ing to be counted.”

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at KCET.org.