San Luis Obispo County completes Fourth Supervisorial District recount, no discrepancies found

SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY, Calif. – The San Luis Obispo County Elections Office found no discrepancies in the results for the county's Fourth Supervisorial District following the completion of a recount that was requested by a community member on behalf of incumbent Lynn Compton.

Challenger Jimmy Paulding beat out Compton by 639 votes in the certified results from the June 7 primary elections. Paulding tallied 10,769 votes and Compton rallied 10,130 votes.

Darcia Stebbens, a registered voter, filed a recount request in July, kicking off the recount process that she had to pay for per California elections code.

The manual recount process began on July 19 at 9 a.m. and ended around 4:15 p.m.on a daily basis, according to San Luis Obispo County Elections Officer Elaina Cano. The recount was conducted publicly, as required by law, and there were four to six observers each day of the process, Cano said.

"After 18-days, I am pleased to report that there were zero discrepancies between the manual recount and the certified results. There were 23 precincts and five mail ballot precincts, which had three separate counting groups – polls, provisional, and vote-by-mail ballots that were manually tallied," Cano said.

"Each one of the totals for the precincts and counting groups matched exactly to what the certified results showed."

In 2018, Compton narrowly defeated Paulding and she sued the County Clerk's Office, accusing it of violating county elections code.