North Stonington to hold a recount of close school referendum vote
North Stonington — The town's registrars of voters and election moderator have set a recount of ballots from the town's school referendum for 9 a.m. May 24 in Town Hall after a meeting Wednesday morning.
The vote on the $38.5 million school project, which will cost the town between $23.5 million and $21.7 million after state reimbursement and a potential space standard waiver, passed by a margin of three votes, 908-905.
The recanvass is triggered when the margin in a referendum is less than 0.5 percent of the total vote.
In the case of the school referendum, it was about 0.16 percent.
A recanvass is a relatively simple process, said Registrar of Voters Gladys Chase.
It will take place publicly, in the same room as the election, and the public is invited to attend.
Like the election, the moderator may set rules about how close the public can get to the ballots, will ensure there is no interference and will expect a civil atmosphere.
The town recieves two "voting tabulator" machines that are set for a particular election.
Ballots are run through only one the night of the election.
In the event of a recanvass, the ballots cast in the referendum — which have been locked away since Monday — will be run through the second machine and the votes tabulated again.
This process was used in the last recanvass the town went through in 2013, when former Selectman Bob Testa won a seat over Brett Mastroianni by one vote.
In that recanvass, the vote came out exactly the same.
"It really should not take that long," Chase said.
Both she and Registrar of Voters Joan Kepler will feed each ballot through the machine, checking to verify the serial number.
Chase noted that all of the ballots, including absentee ones, were fed into the machine rather than counted by hand, making the process quicker and lowering the chances of a discrepency.
The only possibility she said she could think of that would cause a new result is a ballot that had been improperly filled out, containing marks in both answers, that would somehow be read differently by the other machine.
It wasn't immediately clear what would happen in the case of a discrepancy between the recanvass and the original vote.
Chase suggested that a hand vote may take place.
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