Amador County – Former Mayor and current Ione City Councilman David Plank defeated a recall attempt with 63 percent of the vote Tuesday, when voters chose “No recall” over “Yes.”

A full hand count of the Ione special election ended with an unofficial victory for the “No On Recall” party. Amador County Registrar of Voters Sheldon Johnson read each ballot in the hand count that started just after polls closed at 8 p.m., starting with 649 absentee ballots, which, when totaled, showed 408 “no” votes versus 238 “yes” votes, on the election to recall David Plank.

After 9 p.m., the 294 other ballots, including about 30 absentee card handed in at the polls were also hand-counted, and the “no” votes outnumbered “yes”, 185-107. The unofficial tally showed 597 “no” votes on the recall, and 342 “yes” votes.

Plank will keep his seat on the Ione City Council, pending final certification of the election.

The replacement candidate portion of the ballot showed Dale Haney with 581 votes and James Ulm with 253, after all votes were hand-counted. Of the total submitted 943, Plank received 63.3 percent of the votes for “no,” against 36.2 percent for “yes.”

Ulm received 26.8 percent of the vote, while 109 people (or 11.5 percent) cast “under votes” for no candidate. Haney, who had opposed the recall in his filing as a replacement candidate, received 581 votes, or 61.8 percent of the vote.

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.