Another recount scheduled

The ballots for Question 9 will be refed into voting machines after a town councilor questions the state Board of Elections' reasons for using a different recount method.

01:00 AM EST on Thursday, December 2, 2004

BY MICHAEL P. McKINNEY
Providence Journal Staff Writer

TIVERTON The state Board of Elections made a math error that triggered the wrong type of recount Monday of a narrowly defeated Town Charter proposal. So another recount, a re-feeding of the ballots into voting machines, is scheduled for Tuesday in Providence.

On Monday, state elections officials re-read computer memory packs from the voting machines rather than re-feeding every ballot from the Nov. 16 special election. It left Town Councilor Brian Medeiros questioning why such a close margin did not meet the standard for a re-feed. Medeiros made inquiries. Another councilman, Cecil Leonard, last week had requested the original recount.

"There was an error made in determining the percentage, and as a result we will be conducting a re-feeding of the ballots on Tuesday morning," said George Bowen, acting director of the state Board of Elections. The recount is to begin at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Board of Elections office.

The charter proposal, Question 9 on the Nov. 16 special election ballot, called for shifting the appointing of department heads from the town administrator to the Town Council. Election day results showed that voters rejected the question by a two-vote margin. The rest of the 33 charter questions passed by comfortable margins, while an elementary school bond was approved 1,292 votes to 1,219.

Medeiros said it is important that the correct procedure is followed and that he was pleased elections officials responded to the inquiries and acknowledged the mistake. "The process worked the way it was supposed to," Medeiros said.

State law says that if the difference between "approve" and reject" is less than one-half of 1 percent, then it can qualify for a re-feed. A re-read of memory packs from each polling place unlikely to show a different result from the election is undertaken if the difference is less than 2 percent but not enough for the more stringent recount.

Bowen said the formula takes the difference between "approves" and "rejects," which was two in this case, and divides it by total votes cast. Bowen said that apparently Tiverton's result showed up on a spreadsheet as higher than the one-half of 1 percent requirement. That was an error, because the decimal point was moved incorrectly. What was initially thought to be 0.8 percent should have been 0.08 percent.

Bowen said that on Tuesday the votes will be divided into the precincts the same as special election day and re-tallied using the same type of optical scanning machines.

This morning, the town Board of Canvassers is cleared to certify the voting results of 33 other charter changes and the $30.7-million elementary school bond, but has been told to wait on charter Question 9.

Leonard had requested the recount, saying in an interview last week that, historically, when a town administrator offered a department head candidate, the council would refuse to approve it and the matter became mired in politics and delays.

In a large basement room of the state Board of Elections office in Providence on Monday, state elections officials gathered around a computer in a roped-off area. Members of the town Board of Canvassers and Town Administrator David A. Souza were also present.

It looked Monday like the end of a couple of weeks of suspense following the special election. State elections officials had already denied a request for a recount of the vote that approved the elementary school bond because they said it did not meet the required margin. And one state elections official, asked immediately after the recount of Question 9 why it had not qualified for the re-feed of ballots, suggested that a 1-vote margin would have been needed.

But by Medeiros' calculations, any difference between "approves" and "rejects" of less than 12 would have qualified.