Should SLO County taxpayers foot the bill for District 2 recount? No way!

The local Republican Party has been hard at work raising money to pay for a recount in the District 2 Board of Supervisors race, which Democratic incumbent Bruce Gibson won by just 13 votes.

“We need your help to raise at least $25,000 up to $50,000 for this fight which is expected to begin next week,” the GOP messaged its members in a Saturday email blast.

Fair enough. A request for a recount was probably inevitable no matter how close the final count was.

Remember, Jimmy Paulding won the District 4 seat by 639 votes in the primary, and Republicans still requested a recount, which turned out to exactly mirror the original count.

So of course they’ll challenge a 13-vote spread — but they should absolutely pay for it.

Here’s why we bring that up: There’s been speculation that at today’s meeting the Board of Supervisors majority may ask the district attorney to order the Elections Office to conduct a recount at taxpayers’ expense.

Talk about a conflict of interest.

District Attorney Dan Dow has made it clear that he has nothing but disdain for Gibson. He went so far as to contribute $25,000 from his own campaign chest to help fund a campaign of lies and distortions against Gibson.

On top of that, the three conservatives on the board have shown they will stop at nothing to keep conservatives in power — going so far as to adopt a radically gerrymandered map to give Republicans an unfair advantage.

That ploy didn’t work.

No wonder SLO County’s Republican leaders are so desperate that they’re practically begging for financial help.

“This is what we are thinking,” they wrote in the email to members. “There is nothing more important in our county than the conservative majority on the Board of Supervisors.”

Apparently, holding onto power is even more important than respecting the will of the voters, which explains why the GOP has gone to such lengths to undermine the integrity and competency of the elections staff.

First, there was the rumor that a potential crime had been committed claiming more than 300 ballots not initially accounted for were mysteriously discovered later — a rumor reported to FBI and later discounted by the District Attorney’s Office.

Then there were reports that dozens of ballots were not counted because poll workers had erroneously told voters they could turn in mail-in ballots without envelopes.

Actually, only 10 ballots arrived without envelopes, and only two of them were from District 2, according to County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano.

Let’s hypothetically give Jones the benefit of the doubt and assume those were his votes. That still leaves him down by 11 votes.

Enough rumor-mongering.

In every election, there are votes that go uncounted for a variety of reasons — almost always due to voter error.

Ballots may have been sent in too late. Mail-in voters forgot to sign the envelope. Their signatures are illegible and they don’t take advantage of the opportunity to “cure” their ballot.

The fact that ballots went uncounted in this race is no excuse for conservatives on the Board of Supervisors to fail to certify the election or, even worse, to intervene by asking for a recount.

That would further undermine the Elections Office when elections officials throughout the country are being harassed for partisan reasons and, in some instances, hounded out of office.

It also would be a misuse of public funds by a board majority that has consistently portrayed itself as the champion of taxpayers.

And it could set a frightening precedent, whereby every board majority requests a recount if the popular vote does not go their way.

Bottom line: Dr. Bruce Jones has every right to challenge the outcome of the election.

But he doesn’t have the right to any special favors because he happens to be the candidate supported by the current ruling majority.

We strongly urge all five county supervisors to respect the will of the voters by certifying the election results and staying out of the recount process.