District 28 recount will get under way today

Web Posted: 03/26/2004 12:00 AM CST

Rebeca Rodriguez
San Antonio Express-News

Atascosa and Wilson county officials will begin the recount today of the hotly contested District 28 congressional race pitting incumbent U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez against Laredo lawyer Henry Cuellar.

Bexar County and the other eight counties in the district are expected to have recounts performed early next week, Texas Democratic Party officials said.

Cuellar called for a districtwide recount after losing the March 9 primary by a slim 145 votes.

The district runs from Hays County in the north to Zapata County in the south and includes part or all of 11 counties.

Rodriguez, a San Antonio native, has represented the district for seven years. The lines of the congressional district were reconfigured last year, with new voters making up 50 percent of constituents.

Because the recount stems from a party primary, the Texas Democratic Party is handling the procedure.

It will be the first large-scale recount conducted in the state in more than a dozen years, and the first performed in Bexar County using the new electronic voting system.

Most of the counties use paper ballots, punch cards or optical scan machines, which means workers will be able to physically recount the ballots.

But Bexar County uses an electronic touch-screen system that does not produce an individual paper receipt after each vote cast.

A total printout of the nearly 48,581 votes cast during early voting and on election day would run into the tens of thousands of pages, state party officials said. Both campaigns have agreed not to count each vote but to accept the final computerized vote tally.

"We're not going to reprint all of those individual votes," said Ed Shack, an Austin attorney representing Cuellar in the recount bid.

A manual recount will be done of about 3,500 mail-in and provisional ballots cast, Bexar County Elections Administrator Cliff Borofsky said.

The entire districtwide recount should be completed by April 1, state party officials said.

The state canvass of votes will then be d and the results considered final.

According to the Texas Election Code, the only people allowed into the recount locations are the candidates, their representatives and counting officials.

Both Rodriguez and Cuellar will have representatives at all of the recounting locations, staffers said Thursday.

Cuellar filed the recount petition and paid $13,930 Monday. Party officials approved the petition Wednesday.