The final tally showed that 5,547 voters wrote in Frye's name but failed to darken the adjoining bubble -- enough votes to eclipse Murphy's 2,108-vote margin of victory in a three-way race. Frye, a city councilwoman who launched her write-in bid five weeks before the Nov. 2 election, remained undecided on her next move. She has until Jan. 7 -- or 30 days from the election's certification -- to pursue a legal challenge. Sally McPherson, San Diego County's registrar of voters, determined that ballots with unfilled bubbles cannot be counted under state election law. A Superior Court judge upheld her position last month in a challenge filed by the League of Women Voters of San Diego. "Law says that you got to fill in the oval. I don't think our position will change -- it will not change," McPherson said Wednesday. Murphy began his second term last week. The count of disqualified ballots was sponsored by two Frye voters and several news organizations. "We have the votes," said Fred Woocher, an attorney representing the Frye voters. "There's no doubt about what the voter intent was. We have ... a substantial enough number of them that there's no room for quibbling around the margins." Woocher asked for a recount of seven precincts, an exercise that may take until the end of the week. After that, he will ask the registrar to count the disputed ballots and, if his request is denied, he might sue. Several dozen election workers counted the empty-bubble ballots over two days in a warehouse at the county registrar's office. At each table, an election worker flashed each empty-bubble ballot to volunteers from the Murphy and Frye camps and a news organization. Kelly Murphy, the mayor's daughter and a volunteer observer, reiterated her father's position that the empty-bubble ballots shouldn't count. "The law's the law," she said. "The law is there to avoid the chaos that can happen. There's got to be lines drawn." The mayoral race was nonpartisan, but Murphy and candidate Ron Roberts are Republicans and Frye is a Democrat.
Disallowed San Diego mayoral ballots would have elected write-in
SAN DIEGO (AP) - A complete review of disqualified ballots in San Diego's mayoral race showed Wednesday that write-in candidate Donna Frye would have ousted Mayor Dick Murphy had those votes been counted.
