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Devaney wins recount by 6; 30+ "new" votes discovered
At this writing, At-Large Councillor Marilyn Devaney has pulled ahead of At-Large Councillor John Donahue in today's recount. Going into this morning's recount, Donahue led by six votes; at the end, he trailed Devaney by six.
However, the recount saw vote totals fluctuate dramatically, discovering over thirty "new" votes in a race where only X people voted.
But where did these "new" votes come from? Were they missed in the original election, passed through the new voting machines but never made it to the computer memory cards that are fed into the tabulator? Or was there a mishap in the controlled tumult of the recount, where ballots are protested, stacked, piled, and recounted?
Right now election officials are comparing the new total number of votes from those gotten from the check-in sheets used at polling places. If the total number of votes is greater than the number of voters, the new count may be invalid. If the number of votes is less than or equal to the number of voters that checked in at polling places on election day, then we may have a case of votes cast that were never counted.
Someone here remarked to H2otown that this process is called "counting the ins and outs," a reference to the check-in and check out sheets at polling places. "Sounds vaguely sexual, doesn't it?" Sure -- except in this case they're there to make sure the voters don't get screwed.
Well, as someone who's fascinated by the gritty details — the "ins and outs," if you will — of local, day-to-day politics, I guess I picked the right time to move to Watertown!
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down
--Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"
Despite the cold weather, we're begining to look like Florida. No hanging chads, pehaps, but "new" votes three weeks after the election?! Give me a break. This is an utter disgrace to the town. Let's either get a count that matches the number of people who actually voted, or hold a run-off. We deserve no less.
Honestly, a runoff may be the only way to settle this keeping everyone happy. The only problem with this is you're only going to get three types of people to vote: The anti-Devaney crowd, the pro-Devaney crowd, and the pro-JD crowd. The casual voter just isn't going to care enough to vote twice (Unless there's free donuts and coffee at all the precincts - you hear me, election officials?).
While the recount may have helped Devany, I think a runoff would actually stand a better chance of hurting her.
Speaking of helping/hurting - I wonder how many votes that could have gone to JD actually went to the "protest" candidate? Karl '07 = Nader '00?!? ;-)
If this were South Boston, I would say that the votes from St. Augustine's (Cemetary) had finally come in.....
Cemetery is the correct spelling. It looks like for some reason 50 ballots from Pct 5 were transferred to Pct 4 and
8 late AV were added.
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