Hon. Jason Bedrick, Windham comments:
What the reporter failed to mention was that the errors in Windham were known election night by Windham officials. Apparently, at today’s recount, Democrat Carolyn Webber (who defeated Marilinda Garcia by 151 votes) told newly-elected representative David Bates that she and the town clerk knew on election night that his numbers were off by about 100 votes, but decided not to report anything since it didn’t change the outcome of the election. A few months ago, Windham undercounted DJ Bettencourt’s total by over 200 votes!
Eagle Tribune – District 4 recount uphold’s election results, but exposes problems
A stack of several hundred ballots sitting in the Salem town clerk’s closet went missing in action during Monday’s recount for the District 4 state representative race.
After a phone call from the secretary of state’s office to the Salem clerk, the ballots in question were found under a pile of unused ballots in the closet.
Windham didn’t fare too much better with accounting for all its ballots. A counting error by a Windham election worker on Election Day earlier this month temporarily robbed Republican hopeful David Bates of 105 votes.
The election recount, which has been going on since Thursday, came to a close at the Legislative Office Building in Concord yesterday.
The results didn’t change enough to unseat any of the 13 people who won Nov. 4. But counting gaffes prompted two outgoing state representatives to question whether the state should look into vote-counting practices by the two towns.
For Windham, it’s the second time in recent months that a recount caught human errors. During the state primary, about 200 votes were miscounted by an election worker.
Rep. Marilinda Garcia, R-Salem, said she called for the recount because she lost her seat by more than 100 votes, just weeks after Windham missed counting 200 votes in the primary. Garcia said despite losing her seat, she believes the recount was worth it if it exposed problems with vote counting.
“My concern is in elections when things are changed by 100 votes or five votes. The fact that it could be so sloppy is just a huge deal,” she said. “It’s disrespectful to people in a way because people assume their vote will be accounted for.”
Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said yesterday that the gaps in election results were not surprising given the size and scope of the races.
The state conducted 18 recounts — 16 for races involving state representatives. The race in District 4, which includes Salem and Windham, was one of the largest in the state, with 26 candidates vying for 13 seats. Roughly 20,000 ballots were cast in the District 4 election, Scanlan said.
“In our opinion, all of the ballots are accounted for,” he said yesterday. “There were a handful of candidates where there was a discrepancy of anywhere from 50 to 100 votes. Those seemed to be at the top of the election ticket, but they were in a position where it didn’t affect the outcome.”
Garcia was still defeated by Democrat Carolyn Webber by about 150 votes, Scanlan said.
Rep. Jason Bedrick, R-Windham, who observed some of the recount, including yesterday, said discrepancies in vote tallies should be taken more seriously by state officials.
“I’ve been involved personally with four recounts, and usually it changes by three to five votes, so to have several people off, it’s highly unusual,” Bedrick said. “It’s incredibly unfortunate in Windham that they made the same mistake twice. … I think the secretary of state’s office should look into their procedures and see what happened. I don’t think it was corruption, but there may have been some level of incompetence.”
Windham Town Clerk Joan Tuck said yesterday the counting errors during the primary and general election were made by two different people. Usually, Tuck is the person to tally the final count from the voting machines, but she left that to two other election workers on both the nights errors were made.
Tuck said she takes full responsibility for short counts and will resume tabulating the results herself.
“In all the years I’ve been here, I have never had a situation like this one,” said Tuck, who has been in office for 41 years. “I have had situations where candidates picked up one, two, maybe five votes, but never, ever something like this.”
The ballots found in Salem on Monday were actually counted in the general election. Someone placed a stack of unused ballots on top of those ballots when they were stored in a closet at Town Hall after the election, Salem Town Clerk Susan Wall said.
When it came time to gather the ballots for the recount, those ballots were overlooked because they were under a pile of unused ballots.
“They weren’t lost. They were here in our closet,” Wall said.
She said those ballots were found as soon as the state called Monday.
“Everything else went fine,” she said about the election. “Unfortunately, someone put some uncast ballots on top of them by mistake.”
Scanlan said when state workers went through the Salem ballots, it was obvious several hundred were missing. Each of the top Republican candidates was short about 161 votes from election night. Workers discovered the gap by comparing their hand count of ballots with tally sheets tabulated on election night, he said.
Scanlan said his office has not yet spoken to Windham officials about their recent miscounts, but it plans to in the near future. All votes recounted in Concord were done by hand.
“We try to explain those (discrepancies) the best we can, but sometimes there is no explanation,” he said.