by Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT–Monday’s recount of the votes for RTM members in three contested districts, 1, 2 and 9, changed nothing about the outcome of the vote.  

The vote was closest in D9. After the recount, what had been a three-vote difference was retallied as a two-vote difference between two veteran members: Kristin Schneeman (449 votes) and Sal Liccione (447 votes).  Schneeman retained her seat, while Liccione lost his. 

Newcomer Rachel Precious, whose final vote tally was 347, also did not get enough votes for an RTM seat in District 9. Nancy Kail registered the top number of votes in the district with 499 and another veteran, Jennifer Johnson, kept her seat with 472 votes. A newcomer to the RTM, Addison Moore, a 20-year-old junior at Lafayette College, came in second in the total vote count for the district with 495 votes, rounding out the District 9 delegation. 

District 1 saw no changes in the vote totals. 

In District 2, the recount tallied an additional three votes for Jay Keenan and one each for Louis Mall and Mike Perry.

In the District 9 recount, Schneeman and Johnson each lost one vote while Precious gained a vote.

All of the vote total changes happened with absentee ballots and those cast by voters who registered on Election Day, which the registrars tabulated by hand. None of the votes counted electronically by machines changed.

The three-hour recount, officially known as a “recanvas” of the vote results, took place in Town Hall with some of the candidates in contention present: Schneeman, Liccione, Gail Coykendall and Perry.

The recanvas involved hand-feeding every single ballot cast at the polls into the same tabulator the voter had originally used to submit their ballot on Election Day. Republican Registrar Maria Signore, and Head Election Moderator Francis Furmanek, worked one machine at a time, while Deputy Registrars Fran Signore and Sharon Fiarman, were feeding ballots into another tabulator. 

Town Clerk Jeffrey Dunkerton and Democratic Registrar Deborah Greenberg directed the recount.  Early voting ballots, as well as absentee ballots, were tabulated separately, many of them in a hand count.  The recount had to be carefully completed, Greenberg said, to maintain the integrity of the election. All machines had to be unsealed for use, then resealed, and all the ballots, and ticker tapes with the results carefully labeled and sealed. The state has rigid requirements for the election process, she said, including loading the completed and recounted ballots in fireproof cabinets where they must not be touched for 14 days. Then they can be moved elsewhere for deep storage.

Westport resident John Suggs attended the recount, he said, because he wanted to be sure that the staff doing the work were safe from some of the abuses poll workers have had in past presidential elections.

“They do very important work,” he said. “This was a safe, good recount.”