The Alameda County Transportation Commission will proceed with a recount of votes in a ballot measure to fund transportation projects -- including an extension of BART to Livermore.
The commission tentatively requested a recount on Monday.
The voting machines that counted the ballots registered 69,000 (out of a total of more than 500,000) as "under votes." That means that ballots were made up of multiple cards, and voters indicated their choices on only some of these cards. For example, the voters might have voted for president but not indicated whether they were in favor of Measure B1, the transportation measure.
The commission is hoping that some of these cards were recorded as under votes by mistake. By hiring human beings to count the cards by hand, it hopes to uncover some votes in favor of the measure that were overlooked.
"We want to see if we can target some precincts where we had some high support," said the commission's executive director, Art Dao. He said the recount will focus on precincts in Berkeley, where the measure got 81 percent "yes" votes, and Oakland, where it got 76 percent "yes" votes.