Pilgreen Edges King in Recount

It took eight hours and was a painstaking process in which more than 13,000 ballots were individually inspected.

But the end result of Monday’s recount in the contest for a seat on the Glendale Community College Board of Trustees was the same: Martin Pilgreen edged out Victor King, this time by a mere four votes.

The recount, which included 51 previously uncounted absentee ballots, took nearly eight hours, City Clerk Aileen Boyle said. It was conducted in the City Hall basement.

It concluded a topsy-turvy race in what is usually Glendale’s most low-key political campaign. In the end, Pilgreen had 5,191 votes to King’s 5,187.

Pilgreen, a high school principal who dropped out of the campaign several weeks before the April 4 election because of a family illness, won the second of two open seats on the board by 19 votes.

To the surprise of many, Pilgreen said he would accept the seat. He has since been sworn in and sat in on his first board meeting.

But Pilgreen and King jointly agreed to pay for a recount after a tally of about 90 outstanding ballots eroded the gap between them to just four votes.

Last week, City Atty. Scott Howard decided that 51 absentee ballots that were turned in on election day--one day after the city’s deadline--should also be counted. On Monday, King and several aides took part in the recount, inspecting each ballot for errors before running them through a vote-counting machine.

City officials said it was the first recount in Glendale since a school board race was contested in the mid-1970s.