Record-Journal
11-14-2007, 12:27 AM
By Adam Wittenberg, Record-Journal staff
WALLINGFORD — Recounting votes is an imperfect system, but Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz and local registrars are content with the results.
The Democratic and Republican registrars and the election moderator certified the results of the recount Sunday, which took place to determine the winner of the ninth and final Town Council seat.
Democrat Michael T. Spiteri edged Republican Dawn Sarro by 38 votes, according to the recount.
Spiteri had won by 21 votes based on the original tally from the optical scan voting machines, which were rolled out statewide for the first time Nov. 6.
Although the council’s makeup did not change, the vote totals for all 17 candidates did, after the hand recount.
Per state rules, at least two people examined each of the town’s 11,624 ballots to look for irregularities. If the paper ballots were marked improperly, the workers would then do their best to determine the voter’s intent.
Bysiewicz, a Democrat, and Democratic Registrar Barbara Kapi accept that there could be mistakes in the recount, which was performed by 59 paid workers over six hours. The process is more tedious than recounting with the old lever voting machines, but the new system’s paper trail allows for a more open process, Bysiewicz said Tuesday.
“It should give the people of our state confidence in the integrity of the process to do a hand count and a machine count,” she said. “Is there human error sometimes? Yes, there is. But we think the best determination of voter intent is to be made by looking at the hand count.”
Workers discarded votes the machine had counted because voters had tried to signal their intentions in other ways. For instance, voters made mistakes such as filling in an oval for a candidate and then placing an ‘X’ through it, Kapi said. The machine would still have counted the vote, even though the person likely was trying to cancel it.
Another problem was that some polling stations used pencils on the ballots, Kapi said, despite instructions from her office not to do so. The machine picked up some markings that voters had attempted to erase.
Kapi called the recount process “flawed from the start,” largely because of the stress it caused and the potential for human error when examining thousands of ballots. She would have favored using the machine to recount all of the ballots that were properly marked and having workers determine the status of the irregular ones.
“That would cut down the number of eyes, the human factor,” Kapi said.
But Bysiewicz said hand recounts, while not perfect, are the best way she knows to ensure fairness.
All but two council candidates lost votes after the recount. Vote changes were as low as a loss of one for Bob Parisi, a Republican, and as high as a loss of 81 for Democrat Nick Economopoulos. Both men were elected last week.
Unaffiliated candidate John J. Long Jr. gained 6 votes, although 15 of the candidates saw their totals drop. Long was unsuccessful.
Bysiewicz said she urged Kapi and Republican Registrar Chester Miller to do another recount to figure out why so many votes were dropped, but they declined.
The new totals didn’t change who was elected, although Economopoulos shifted from being the fourth- to the fifth-highest vote-getter.
No candidates have objected to the results, Miller told Bysiewicz. The town spent about $3,500 on the recount, another reason not to do the process over if the council’s makeup wasn’t going to change.
But some of the victorious candidates still had questions about the results, including Jerry Farrell Jr., a Republican who is also commissioner of the state Department of Consumer Protection.
“I don’t know what the bottom line is,” Farrell said. “I don’t know if people have quite the sense of security in the process maybe that they did the day after the election.
“The election process in our country needs to be absolutely foolproof. It should be 100 percent on target, but apparently it isn’t.”
Farrell said Bysiewicz and the legislature should examine the process to look at any issues that need to be addressed.
Bysiewicz said she will confer with registrars and election moderators from around the state to solicit feedback once the election is complete. Her office is expected to monitor a second audit of ballots in East Haven today, where the first recount turned up 114 more ballots than voters who had visited the polls.
Bysiewicz said it’s possible a batch of ballots was counted twice, leading to the surplus.
Democrat Michael Brodinsky, who will become council chairman, drew his own conclusion from Wallingford’s recount.
If a race is decided by less than one-half of 1 percent, a recount is required. With Economopoulos and two others showing more than that amount of change after the recount, Brodinsky said this might affect future elections.
“Maybe it’s not over till the recount,” he said. “And you’ve got to win by a good margin to avoid a recount. Maybe that’s the moral to the story.”
awittenberg@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2231
WALLINGFORD — Recounting votes is an imperfect system, but Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz and local registrars are content with the results.
The Democratic and Republican registrars and the election moderator certified the results of the recount Sunday, which took place to determine the winner of the ninth and final Town Council seat.
Democrat Michael T. Spiteri edged Republican Dawn Sarro by 38 votes, according to the recount.
Spiteri had won by 21 votes based on the original tally from the optical scan voting machines, which were rolled out statewide for the first time Nov. 6.
Although the council’s makeup did not change, the vote totals for all 17 candidates did, after the hand recount.
Per state rules, at least two people examined each of the town’s 11,624 ballots to look for irregularities. If the paper ballots were marked improperly, the workers would then do their best to determine the voter’s intent.
Bysiewicz, a Democrat, and Democratic Registrar Barbara Kapi accept that there could be mistakes in the recount, which was performed by 59 paid workers over six hours. The process is more tedious than recounting with the old lever voting machines, but the new system’s paper trail allows for a more open process, Bysiewicz said Tuesday.
“It should give the people of our state confidence in the integrity of the process to do a hand count and a machine count,” she said. “Is there human error sometimes? Yes, there is. But we think the best determination of voter intent is to be made by looking at the hand count.”
Workers discarded votes the machine had counted because voters had tried to signal their intentions in other ways. For instance, voters made mistakes such as filling in an oval for a candidate and then placing an ‘X’ through it, Kapi said. The machine would still have counted the vote, even though the person likely was trying to cancel it.
Another problem was that some polling stations used pencils on the ballots, Kapi said, despite instructions from her office not to do so. The machine picked up some markings that voters had attempted to erase.
Kapi called the recount process “flawed from the start,” largely because of the stress it caused and the potential for human error when examining thousands of ballots. She would have favored using the machine to recount all of the ballots that were properly marked and having workers determine the status of the irregular ones.
“That would cut down the number of eyes, the human factor,” Kapi said.
But Bysiewicz said hand recounts, while not perfect, are the best way she knows to ensure fairness.
All but two council candidates lost votes after the recount. Vote changes were as low as a loss of one for Bob Parisi, a Republican, and as high as a loss of 81 for Democrat Nick Economopoulos. Both men were elected last week.
Unaffiliated candidate John J. Long Jr. gained 6 votes, although 15 of the candidates saw their totals drop. Long was unsuccessful.
Bysiewicz said she urged Kapi and Republican Registrar Chester Miller to do another recount to figure out why so many votes were dropped, but they declined.
The new totals didn’t change who was elected, although Economopoulos shifted from being the fourth- to the fifth-highest vote-getter.
No candidates have objected to the results, Miller told Bysiewicz. The town spent about $3,500 on the recount, another reason not to do the process over if the council’s makeup wasn’t going to change.
But some of the victorious candidates still had questions about the results, including Jerry Farrell Jr., a Republican who is also commissioner of the state Department of Consumer Protection.
“I don’t know what the bottom line is,” Farrell said. “I don’t know if people have quite the sense of security in the process maybe that they did the day after the election.
“The election process in our country needs to be absolutely foolproof. It should be 100 percent on target, but apparently it isn’t.”
Farrell said Bysiewicz and the legislature should examine the process to look at any issues that need to be addressed.
Bysiewicz said she will confer with registrars and election moderators from around the state to solicit feedback once the election is complete. Her office is expected to monitor a second audit of ballots in East Haven today, where the first recount turned up 114 more ballots than voters who had visited the polls.
Bysiewicz said it’s possible a batch of ballots was counted twice, leading to the surplus.
Democrat Michael Brodinsky, who will become council chairman, drew his own conclusion from Wallingford’s recount.
If a race is decided by less than one-half of 1 percent, a recount is required. With Economopoulos and two others showing more than that amount of change after the recount, Brodinsky said this might affect future elections.
“Maybe it’s not over till the recount,” he said. “And you’ve got to win by a good margin to avoid a recount. Maybe that’s the moral to the story.”
awittenberg@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2231