Recount confirms initial selectboard election results in Tilton

TILTON — A recount of the ballots for the Tilton Selectboard has confirmed the initial election results, giving Jonathan Scanlon and Katherine Dawson the win, albeit with a single-vote reduction for Scanlon.

Eric Pyra, an incumbent who lost to Dawson by seven votes, asked for the recount. His and Dawson’s numbers stayed the same in the March 22 recount: 106 for Pyra, 113 for Dawson.

Scanlon, whose initial tally was 140, had 139 votes in the recount. A fourth candidate, Lisa Freeman, remained at 48 votes.

“I appreciate everyone’s efforts,” Pyra said after the results were in. “I wish everyone the best of luck.”

He added, “It was fascinating to see the under-votes; it was 86, and that was surprising. People voted for only one candidate, and that could have swung the race.”

It is not unusual for people to select only the candidates they are familiar with and skip voting for unknowns, but moderator Helen Hanks said she did not know whether 86 under-votes was unusual. The state only recently asked election officials to keep track of under- and over-votes.

“It will be interesting to see what trends develop,” she said.

There was one over-vote in Tilton’s election. An over-vote, Hanks explained, is when too many candidates have been marked. In the selectboard race, there were only two open seats this year, so if three or four circles had been filled in, officials would have no way of determining the voter’s intention and the ballot for that race is not counted.

Going into the recount, some residents were questioning the results because of Hanks’ relationship to Dawson. She is Dawson’s daughter.

At the start of the recount process, Hanks addressed the concerns, which she reiterated afterward.

“As a moderator, and just in my professional awareness of making sure we maintain the laws in the state of New Hampshire, prior to March 14," I spoke with Secretary of State David Scanlan, she said, “and identified that I was a relative of a member on the ballot, and specifically that I was the daughter to a candidate, and asked if there was a reason for recusal. And he said no, not by state law, but just to be cognizant of the public perception. So on voting day, I did not take part in counting individual votes; I only counted the actual total number of ballots and reconciled that with the total number of voters, and left it up to the other elected officials and members of the day to make sure we did what we needed to do.”

She said a member of the public who was not aware she had already consulted Scanlan contacted the Secretary of State’s Office ahead of the recount.

“I thought it would be very appropriate to let the public know that I’d already vetted [the question] and assured them that I was as transparent as the day is long, and the people’s votes matter,” Hanks said. “We live in small communities in New Hampshire. I don’t share a household with my mother, but it’s really about voter integrity and transparency.”

There also was confusion about candidates’ observers. The parties in a recount are able to choose a representative to observe each of the two teams performing the ballot reviews. Hanks said that, if there were three teams doing the recount, the candidate and two representatives could observe the counting of ballots.

“It appeared that one of the candidates was informed by someone improperly,” Hanks said.

Despite the initial confusion, the recount went smoothly, taking just over an hour. Members of the recount board who were not already town officials were sworn in, the sealed ballot box was opened, and the two, three-member teams counted the ballots in stacks of 10, recording and reconciling the numbers until everyone was satisfied that the results were correct.