Concerns raised about Cerritos Council election

Korean translation by county could have skewed results.

By Larry Caballero

Before Interim Cerritos City Clerk Vida Barone could officially certify the city council election results of Mar. 8, Planning Commissioner Ken Cha, on behalf of Mayor Cho, addressed the Special Council Meeting Mar. 15.
Cha said the outcome of the election was a “huge surprise.” All three winners broke the record of 4,621 votes set by former Mayor Sherman Kappe in 1994.
After counting all the late absentee and provisional ballots, ABC School Board member Mark Pulido received 5,198 votes, Councilmember Bruce Barrows received 4, 704 votes and Mayor Joseph Cho received 4,682 votes.
Prior to 2011, only five candidates had ever received more than 4,000 votes: Kappe, Paul Bowlen in 2003 with 4,601 votes, Jim Edwards in 2009 with 4,166 votes, Laura Lee in 2007 with 4,134 votes and John Crawley in 2005 with 4,005 votes.
“This year, 4,000 votes were not sufficient to win the election,” said Cha. Former Mayor Grace Hu received 4,224 votes, more than all but two candidates in the entire history of Cerritos elections.
“How could four candidates receive more than 4,000 votes in the same election?” Cha asked. He said that several factors could have contributed to this result, with the chief among them being that this election had a record number of Cerritos voters (10,097) who cast a ballot, and consequently, a record number of votes (21,682) were cast.
“Simple math gives an average of 2.15 votes per ballot,” said Cha. Voters could have cast their votes for one, two, or three candidates; however, Cha informed the council that the ballots for Korean voters were inaccurately translated.
“Instead of writing ‘Vote for no more than three candidates’, the Korean instructions said ‘Vote only three candidates’ so Korean voters were misled to believe that they must cast three votes or their ballots would not be counted,” said Cha.
“There is no way to know exactly how many extra votes were cast by Korean voters because of this mistranslation, but our estimate is that this caused almost half of the Korean voters, up to 1,800, to vote for three candidates, contrary to their intention.”
Cha concluded that even if the Korean instructions were accurately translated, the ultimate outcome of the election would probably not have changed, but the order of the first, second and third place finishers would likely have changed.
Councilmember Barrows took exception to Cha’s comments and accused Mayor Cho of accusing the interim city clerk of not doing a good job. “The city clerk deserves an apology,” said Barrows.
Councilmember Chen said that there was no proof to substantiate Cha’s statements. “This is purely your own assessment,” said Chen. She reminded Cha that the 32.8% turnout in the election was not the highest in the City’s history, and his interpretation of the election results “had no bearing on the outcome of the election process.”
Mayor Pro-Tem Lee agreed that it was only Cha’s personal assessment and commended the city clerk “for doing a great job.” Councilmember Edwards agreed that Cha was expressing his own opinion and also praised the city clerk. “I believe it’s the voter’s responsibility to be well-informed,” said Edwards.
Mayor Cho agreed with his fellow councilmembers that the city clerk “had nothing to do with the outcome. I am not blaming the city clerk,” said Cho. Cho believed the responsibility for the faulty ballot translation belonged to the county that hired the company that printed the ballots.
“I do not want this to be a problem in future elections,” said Cho. Once all of the councilmembers had the opportunity to speak, the elections were officially certified.