Echo Park election challenge dismissed

Los Angeles City Clerk election officials have dismissed a challenge brought in the wake of the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council election.

The challenge was filed by losing candidates in June, shortly after a largely white slate lost to a largely Latino slate in an election that exposed bitter divisions in Echo Park over gentrification, ethnicity and class. (The dispute was the subject of a recent Out There installment, which can be viewed at latimes.com/outthere.)

The losing candidates alleged a host of problems with the election, including election notices mailed to the wrong addresses and fliers distributed by the winning slate that claimed to be “official” poll guides.

Investigators found that “the remedy seeking to invalidate and postpone this election is unwarranted.” They found, for instance, that faulty election materials were later “mitigated” and that distribution of the “official” poll guides ended once the city clerk stepped in, though they acknowledged possible “voter confusion.”

“We’re intent on moving on,” said Jose Sigala, president of the Echo Park Neighborhood Council.

Resident and neighborhood activist Christine Peters, who lost the election to Sigala and was one of the challengers, called the decision “no surprise.”

“We were promised professionally run elections and instead got worse than we’d ever conducted on our own,” Peters wrote in an e-mail.

 scott.gold@latimes.com