Registrar's Office Error Results in Apparent New Winner in Oakland School Board Race

Oakland school board election results are changing because of a misconfiguration of the system that tallied the votes, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters said in a news release late Wednesday.

The Nov. 8 election results for District 4 in the Oakland Unified School District will change because of the error.

Incumbent Mike Hutchinson is now claiming victory over Nick Resnick, Hutchinson said in a Facebook post Wednesday.

"Guess what I just found out……. I won the election!!!!!" Hutchinson wrote.

In an interview with NBC Bay Area on Friday, Hutchinson said he was "very surprised, but then again very happy."

The system failed to give candidates a first-choice vote when the voter selected a second choice for an office but not a first choice. If the voter selected a third choice, that was supposed to become their second choice for an office. Because of the misconfiguration, votes were not advanced in that way.

"No vote was registered for those ballots in the first round of counting because those voters did not identify a valid candidate in a particular rank on the ballot," the news release said.

Officials at the county registrar's office did not immediately respond to a request for more information about the issue.

Sean Dugar with the California Ranked Choice Voting Coalition helped identify the error.

"We know it works - it's just we need to ensure that the voters are trusting the system and the systems in place, and that our registrar is utilizing the best practices, and that we're making sure that every vote is counted," Dugar said.

NBC Bay Area reached out to Nick Resnick, who was the original certified winner, but did not hear back on Thursday.

No other outcome in the election will change, according to the registrar's office, which says it is working with its vendor to be sure the same problem does not occur in future elections.

NBC Bay Area's Christie Smith contributed to this report.