Borenstein: Evan Low just won the congressional recount he never wanted

Evan Low just scored the congressional race recount victory he never wanted.

Don’t misunderstand: It’s not that the assemblymember hoped to finish third in the March 5 primary and lose a place on the November runoff ballot. Rather, it’s that he never wanted the recount in the first place.

The astonishing tie for second place after the original tabulation of ballots would have produced a three-way runoff, which politically suited Low just fine.

If he and Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian had remained dead even and both had appeared on the runoff ballot, Low would have had a better chance of beating first-place-finisher Sam Liccardo, the former mayor of San Jose, in November.

That’s because, as the only gay or Asian candidate in the race and as the youngest and most progressive, Low would have benefited in a three-way race against two older White males who would have divided more-moderate voters.

So Low went to extraordinary lengths to complain about, and even try to stop, the recount. It was an amazing anti-democratic display that put his political objectives ahead of an accurate vote tally.

Fortunately, his efforts failed. The recount was completed. Low, who finished five votes ahead of Simitian, will now alone face Liccardo in the November runoff to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo.

That’s as it should be — a head-to-head matchup. The victor will need majority support and will come away with a mandate. That’s why we have runoffs.

Broken recount rules

But whether to have a recount should never have been in question. Exceptionally close races — or, in this extreme case, the first congressional race tie in the 13-year history of the state’s top-two primary system — should be automatically retabulated.

Our ballots are counted by machines, but it’s humans who check them for eligibility and feed them in. Mistakes are inevitable. That’s not a knock on the integrity of our elections, that’s just a recognition of reality.

We should want to get it right. Which is why state lawmakers should learn from this and make recounts automatic in exceptionally close races.

In 23 states and Washington, D.C., recounts are automatically triggered if results are within a certain margin. But not California. Here, recounts depend on someone being wealthy enough, or raising enough money, to pay the bill.

Fortunately, in this case, a political action committee called Count the Vote put up the bucks. The total tab from the elections offices in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties will probably turn out to be about $275,000.

Low has whined about the lack of transparency about the funders of the PAC. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to guess that the money probably came from backers of Liccardo, who will benefit from the breaking of the tie.

Sure, the PAC contributors were probably driven by political motives more than altruism. But that’s unfortunately the primary incentive in a state that refuses to fund recounts as it should.

Hypocrisy

We’ll learn the funders’ identities when the PAC files its disclosures in July. And when we do, we should thank them for their willingness to put up the money that ensured the count was right. Indeed, rather than demonizing the recount effort, Low should have been applauding it.

Ditto for Rep. Ro Khanna, a Low backer and campaign surrogate for President Joe Biden. Early on, he blasted the recount as a “crass political ploy” and an “undemocratic” move “to overturn the will of the voters.”

We’re still waiting for him to publicly walk that one back. For it’s hard to defend Biden’s 2000 election victory against attacks from Donald Trump while arguing against an exacting count in a congressional race back home.

To his credit, Simitian, even though he stood an even chance of elimination in the recount, never complained about it. And when the new tally was completed, he stepped aside with a demonstration of integrity and professionalism.

“I lost, and I concede. I trust the process, and I accept the result,” he said in a statement in which he congratulated Low and Liccardo.