Stewart loses drawing, requests recount

After drawing lots, Town Clerk Denise Morrissette declared Dale Dormody the winner over Terry Stewart in their contest for a seat on the Budget Committee, which ended in stalemate when the candidates polled 876 votes apiece on Tuesday. The drawing was the prelude to a recount tentatively scheduled for next Thursday, March 22.

Morrissette explained that according to state law, before a town clerk can entertain a request for a recount in the event of a tie vote, a winner must first be chosen by lot. If the vote were to remain deadlocked after the recount, the winner of the drawing would take the seat. She put two slips of paper, each bearing the name of a candidate, inside a plastic sphere, tossed them in a brown paper shopping bag and drew one out.

Stewart said he was reluctant to put the burden of a recount on Morrissette and her staff, but felt obliged to request a recount to ensure all those who voted for him that their votes were counted. In the meantime, he said, "I congratulate Mr. Dormody on his pending victory." Dormody hastened to say that since the two finished in a dead heat, he would have done the same thing for the same reason had he not won the drawing.

Morrissette said that the voting machine was thoroughly tested before the election and found to be "100 percent accurate." She said that five sets of absentee ballots and 20 sets of official ballots were passed through the machine three times each. However, she said that she counted 678 "blanks" in the voting for the budget committee. That is to say, although voters were instructed to vote for three candidates, some voted for none, others for one and others for two, leaving the "blanks," which were not read and counted by the machine.

In the course of hand counting the ballots, Morrissette said, the moderator would seek to determine whether any voters marked their ballots with the intention of voting for a particular candidate, but in a manner that escaped the eye of the machine. For instance, a voter may have made a mark alongside the name of a candidate, but outside the bounds of the oval read by the machine. "The moderator will seek to determine the intent of the voter," she said.

Morrissette said that the recount must be requested not later than the Friday following the election and the recount held not less than five days or more than ten days after it is requested.