Will Hurtado’s 22-vote lead hold up as recount starts in state Senate District 16?

State Sen. Melissa Hurtado was sworn in for a second term following a 20-vote win in the 16th District, but a recount launched by her Republican challenger could take days before the dust is settled in the closest state Senate race in more than a century.

Tuesday morning, two dozen Fresno County Elections workers began to sift through 221,419 ballots to locate the 4,909 ballots that were counted in the 16th Senate District. That needs to be completed before ballot signatures can be challenged.

Fresno County Clerk/Registrar of Voters James A. Kus said that process could take three or four days.

Republican David Shepard requested the recount on Dec. 13, four days after Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern elections officials certified Hurtado’s 68,457-to-68,437 vote win.

Hurtado, a Sanger native who moved to Bakersfield to run in the 16th District, was sworn in for a second state Senate term on Dec. 10 at her Hanford district office.

On Monday, Kern County added four votes to the tally, a 3-1 count in favor of Hurtado that gave her a 22-vote lead.

Tulare County began its recount on Monday, and officials rejected 14 challenges to handwriting on vote-by-mail ballots raised by the Shepard campaign.

Tuesday, the action shifted to Fresno County while Tulare officials paused their efforts at the behest of the Shepard campaign.

Kus explained the process to representatives for the Hurtado and Shepard campaigns, and explained the start would be delayed while election workers made their way to a county warehouse near the Fresno fairgrounds. The workers were not asked to show up until a cashier’s check covering the $3,973 recount cost for the day was delivered by the Shepard campaign.

Once the workers began to show up, a staff break was called at 10 a.m. before any ballots could be manually sorted. The work will be interrupted by a one-hour lunch break, and a 15-minute afternoon break. Activities are scheduled to stop at 4 p.m., unless election officials determine otherwise.

According to the procedures outlined by Kus, “a counted vote by mail or provisional ballot may be challenged only on grounds of disqualifying distinguishing marks or some other grounds visible on the face of the ballot.”

That ballot will then be set aside and removed from the count if the elections official determines the ballot was not properly cast.

If “frivolous or mass challenges” are made, the elections official will advise the recount observer of the challenge requirements and remove the observer if that activity continues.

Shepard, a 29-year-old farmer from Porterville, had built a lead of up to 3,400 votes in the first days following the Nov. 8 election only to see that advantage whittled and eventually evaporated in the last few days of the count.

Hurtado lost in Fresno, Tulare and Kings counties by a combined 9,947 votes but made it up with a 9,969-vote advantage in Kern County.