Faulty Maps Lead Council Candidates Astray : Elections: Aspiring officeholders who did not qualify for the April ballot say it’s because the city clerk distributed inaccurate district charts.

The Los Angeles city clerk’s office, which handed out inaccurate district maps to would-be candidates for municipal office, insisted Thursday that it is not to blame for the failure of dozens of hopefuls to qualify for the April ballot.

Among those disqualified was a seasoned politician--Warren Furutani, a school board member who planned to challenge Harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores.

He fell 67 names short of the required 500 signatures of voters living in the 15th Council District.

“I’m just flabbergasted,” said Furutani, who was reviewing every signature again Thursday.

City elections chief Kristin Heffron admitted that her office distributed faulty maps to candidates in every one of the eight City Council races on the April 20 ballot. Candidates use the maps to identify the boundaries of the council district from which they collect signatures.

But Heffron insisted: “None of the candidates should have been disqualified because of an error on our part.” She said the errors were in the boundaries of the precincts within the council districts, not in the district boundaries themselves.

Most of the disqualified candidates collected the required 500 signatures, but many of those were invalidated because they came from people living outside the district in which the candidate had sought to run.

Disqualified candidates have until March 15 to challenge their exclusion.

“What we’ve told candidates is, administratively, we cannot accept those (voters’ signatures) if they are out of district, even though it was our error in providing incorrect maps,” Heffron said.

“The only way they can get signatures accepted is to go to court.”

That’s exactly what one disqualified candidate plans to do.

Mary Lou Holte, a Van Nuys resident who planned to challenge Councilman Marvin Braude, blamed the city clerk for her disqualification and said she will sue to get her name on the ballot.

Heffron said the city clerk’s office sent letters to every council candidate within a few days of the filing deadline notifying them of the discrepancy in the maps.

Holte said she received the letter the day after she turned in her petitions--and after the deadline had passed.

“On deadline day, I turned in 769 signatures, and everything seemed to be fine,” Holte said. “I came home that afternoon and got a letter from the city clerk’s office saying ‘Sorry for the inconvenience.’ ” Of the 769 signatures she turned in, only 342 were deemed valid.

Asked if she has complained to Braude, she said: “No. I’m sure he’s over there laughing.”

Assistant City Atty. Anthony Alperin said that “there is no administrative remedy for the situation. . . . The candidates would have to bring the issues before the courts. We can’t comment on what our response to those lawsuits would be.”

The map foul-up recalls an earlier goof by the city clerk’s elections division.

In the 1989 municipal election, a City Council candidate secured a court order to qualify for the ballot with 493 signatures by claiming the clerk’s office erred by distributing an incorrect map of council district boundaries.

In the current election, Furutani, a past president of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, was the only seasoned politician among the five candidates challenging incumbent Flores.

None of the others--businesswoman Janice Hahn, attorney Diane Middleton, businessman Rudy Svorinich and attorney James Thompson--have held elected office, although Hahn is the daughter of ex-County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

In the mayor’s race, meanwhile, the number of candidates dropped to 24, down from the 52 who had declared their intention to seek the city’s top office. The mayoral field still sets a record, however.

Some candidates got good news from the clerk’s office Thursday.

Election officials reversed themselves and allowed Rose Castaneda to run after all for the City Council seat being vacated by Ernani Bernardi.

Castaneda, a top aide to Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), had been disqualified Tuesday after city officials declared that she had failed to collect enough signatures. Although Castaneda submitted nearly 900 signatures, 434 were invalidated because voters had not dated their signatures, as required by the city elections code. The invalidated names left Castaneda just 38 signatures shy.

But Heffron said Thursday that the city attorney’s office had ruled that 42 of the names should be allowed, even though undated by voters, because Castaneda signature-gatherers had properly dated their forms. The ruling gave Castaneda a new total of 504 signatures--enough to qualify.

Times staff writers Jack Cheevers and Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this story.