When last week's election results showed Nicholas F. Testa coming within two percentage points of winning the Republican primary for Bergen County sheriff, plenty of people couldn't believe how well he'd done -- including Testa.

"Can't we call for a recount?" he joked at the time.

It turns out he was right: The numbers were wrong.

Joel G. Trella, the GOP's endorsed candidate for sheriff, won the June 26 primary election with 16,825 votes -- 4,265 more than Testa received. An earlier printout from the County Clerk's Office showed Trella winning by only 770 votes.

"We've never, ever had this happen," said Clerk Kathleen A. Donovan. "It's a nightmare that every election official worries about."

The error was the result of a computer glitch in the unofficial results printed last week, Donovan said. Those sheets took the results from two Republican candidates for freeholder and listed them as totals for Trella and Testa.

Election officials rechecked the numbers from every voting district in the county before the final results were certified Tuesday afternoon, she said.

"The election results were always correct," Donovan said. "The unofficial printout the next day included some wrong numbers."

Testa, who owns a towing company, has no law enforcement experience and no real desire to be sheriff, so he was as surprised as anyone to see the erroneous election results. Told of the counting glitch Thursday, Testa said he wasn't itching to run for office again.

"My business and my family are my No. 1 priorities," he said. "Any thoughts of leaving this would be premature."

Testa ran for sheriff as a ballot maneuver. He was one of several non-candidates for various county offices who ran on a slate with Bret Schundler, their pick for governor, so Schundler could get a better position on the Bergen County ballot.

Testa's showing was still respectable, though: He and the other Schundler candidates received about 11,000 votes each.

The Democratic candidate, Charles "Ken" Zisa, said the corrected numbers should still be enough to spell trouble for Trella.

"The Republican Party needs to examine why 43 percent of Republicans went off the line in their primary," said Zisa, the Hackensack police chief and a 37th District assemblyman. "It cannot be solely explained by Bret Schundler."

Trella, a former chief of the Bergen County Police Department and a former Saddle Brook councilman, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The Bergen Record

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001