by Gretchen Webster
A vote recount for three Representative Town Meeting district races, where at least one candidate was within 20 votes of another, will be held on Monday beginning at 1 p.m. in Town Hall Room 201, according to Registrar Deborah Greenberg. The votes to be recounted are for RTM candidates in Districts 1, 2, and 9.
The recount procedure begins whenever the vote difference between candidates is less than one half of one percent or 20 votes, “pursuant to state statues,” Town Clerk Jeffrey Dunkerton said in a message to the affected candidates, referring to CGS 148 9-311a “Recanvass on close vote.” The next step is to reach out to the candidates with fewer votes and ask them if they want a recount. Each of the candidates in the three RTM district races eligible for a recount accepted the recounts, according to Greenberg.
Also eligible for recount is the Board of Education race. The two non-endorsed Democrats, Stephen Shackleford and Jodi Harris, were separated by only eleven votes. However, when Greenberg asked Harris if she wanted the BoE votes to be recounted, Harris declined. As a result, Shackleford’s progress to the Nov. 17 swearing-in ceremony will be unimpeded.
Monday’s recount will take several hours, the registrar added, since there are several types of votes to be recounted. They include not only ballots cast in person on Election Day, but also early voting and absentee ballots, the ballots of those who registered to vote on Election Day, and ballots which had been rejected by the ballot tabulators at each voting district because they had not been completed properly. All of the recounting will be done by machine on Monday, according to Dunkerton.
The recanvassing project will be aided by a large central calculating machine in Town Hall, which was provided this year by the state.
Gretchen Webster
Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, has reported for the daily Greenwich Time and Norwalk Hour, the weekly Westport News, Fairfield Citizen and Weston Forum. She was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman for ten years. She has won numerous journalism awards over the years, and taught journalism at New York University and Southern Connecticut State University.
I hope and pray that Sal Liccione will be victorious in the important recount tomorrow in district 9. Sal was directly involved in opposing the disastrous parking plan to eliminate 40 parking spaces in Parker Harding and was in contact with the merchants to help them. Sal is there for his constituents and opposed another disastrous plan to turn Jesup Green into a parking lot and cut down the ancient trees there. Sal is one of the most conscientious members of the RTM who needs to be re-elected to protect the downtown district.