Seat 3 on Sunnyvale’s City Council will be decided by a drawing of names.
“In the event of a tie, the City selects the winner by lot,” said Sunnyvale Communications Officer Jennifer Garnett. “This means we will put the candidates’ names into a container and draw one name to determine the winner.”
Garnett says she cannot recall a time that Sunnyvale has needed to resort to drawing names to choose a city council member.
Sunnyvale’s City Clerk will conduct the name draw on the morning of Jan. 3.
The Nov. 8 election between Murali Srinivasan and Justin Wang initially ended with Sirinivasan in the lead by a single vote. The Registrar of Voters certified the election and Wang formally asked for a recount.
“We conducted the recount process last week and allowed 3 additional ballots to be added to the final count,” said a spokesperson for the Registrar of Voters. “These ballots were part of a batch that arrived after our 7-day cutoff for Vote my Mail ballots, but after further examination, were deemed valid. Two ballots were in favor of Wang, and one vote was in favor of Srinivasan.”
The official results of the election show that 2,814 people in Sunnyvale’s District 3 voted for Sirinivasan and 2,814 voted for Wang.
Whoever’s name is drawn will serve District 3 for a full, four year term. The winner will be sworn in later in the day.
Sunnyvale will also swear in its District 5 and District 1 council members on Jan. 3, 2023. Richard Mehlinger was elected to serve District 5 and received more than 70% of the vote on Nov. 8.
District 1’s Linda Sell was appointed to the position in August because she ran unopposed. By appointing Sell to the office instead of running an election, Sunnyvale saved approximately $20,000.