Santa Monica City Council candidate Ted Winterer issued the following statement
Friday, December 3.

Earlier this week the County Registrar certified the election results for the City of Santa Monica. The final tally left me 56 votes behind Councilmember Bob Holbrook in the race for the third and final 4- year seat on the City Council, a mere .08% difference of the total votes cast.

Any elector has until five days after the certification to contest the election results. Given the razor thin margin between Councilmember Holbrook and me, I owed it to my supporters to explore the prospects of a challenge.

We looked long and hard at the County’s report of uncounted vote by mail and provisional ballots to see if a challenge of these ballots might yield a different election result and could not find enough potential new votes to affect the outcome. And we analyzed the error rate of a hand count of the machine-generated tally in five Santa Monica precincts: while I gained a few votes in the recount the trend appeared insufficient to overcome Council member Holbrook’s lead. Given the improbability of a change in the outcome, we have decided not to contest the election results.

I congratulate Councilmember Holbrook on his victory and thank him for his graciousness and good cheer during what has been a difficult month for both of us.

We ran a campaign of which we’re proud: we obtained just about every endorsement we sought, reached our fundraising goals without taking donations from special interests, mailed campaign literature throughout the city and spoke personally with thousands of voters. I hope the City Council will pay heed to the issues I’ve raised and the concerns of my supporters.

I will always be grateful to those who worked on my campaign, to those who donated funds towards my efforts and, of course, to those who showed their support by voting for me. I look forward to continuing to serve our fine city as a Planning Commissioner.