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School
Committee Recount 2001 Dec 9, 5:40am: The Election
Commission voted to continue the redistribution of ballots
Saturday night until all six winners were decided. The final
round where defeated candidate Marla Erlien's ballots were
redistributed to the four continuing candidates didn't get
underway until 3am. The results were not known until after
5am. The formal redistribution of Susana Segat's ballots will
take place on Monday, but this will affect only the order of
election of the six winners as the three continuing candidates
reach the election quota. |
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| Baker +4 | Delaney -2 | Erlien -5 | Fantini +21 | ||
| Grassi +9 | Harding +7 | Price -1 | Segat -1 | ||
| Turkel +11 | Walser -7 | Write-in -8 | Invalid -11 | ||
| Total ballots +17 | |||||
| The revised totals at the end of the first round were: | |||||
| Baker 328 | Delaney 238 | Erlien 1188 | Fantini 2875 | ||
| Grassi 2144 | Harding 1696 | Price 1872 | Segat 1589 | ||
| Turkel 2873 | Walser 1670 | Write-in 44 | Invalid 1149 | ||
|
Total ballots =
17666, Total valid ballots = 16517, Quota = 2360 (up 4) |
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In
the deciding round (the 7th Count), the photo finish was as
follows:
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Dec 6: The never-ending School Committee Recount has now reached the point where the #1 votes for 16 of the 42 precincts have been officially determined. Four precincts were completed on Wed, Dec 5 and another twelve on Thurs, Dec 6. There are 26 more precincts to go, so this phase of the process may not be done until Sat, Dec 8. Then the transfers will commence. The random element of the surplus transfer from Alice Turkel and Fred Fantini exceeds the eventual margin of victory and since the relocation of even one ballot will alter which ballots are transferred, all the candidates and their supporters can do at this point is to get as good a relative standing as they can "before the dice are rolled."
At the end of the day, Fred Fantini's #1 votes had increased by 11 votes due, in part, to voter intent being determined from ballots previously registered as overvotes. Alice Turkel had also picked up 4 extra #1 votes leaving these two ticket-toppers in a virtual tie for the most #1 votes. This is significant because the person with the most #1 votes will be the first to have his or her surplus ballots transferred to other candidates. Since Joe Grassi will ultimately be elected on Fantini's surplus, if Fantini ends up ahead of Turkel, the 30 votes originally transferred from Turkel to Grassi would instead go to other candidates (assuming the ballots distributed are similar in nature and number to the original count) and fewer Fantini surplus ballots will be available for candidates other than Grassi. On the other hand, Grassi had also picked up an additional 8 votes as of Thursday, so he'll need fewer surplus votes to get elected.
Richard Harding and Susana Segat inspect ballots
| Dec 14: The City Manager has reported the following costs for the recent School Committee Recount: | |
| Counters $26,890 Auditor (62 hours @ $27.50/hr) $1,705 Choice Plus Pro Consultant (81.5 hours @ $25/hr) $2,038 Constable (3 Summons @ $32 per Summons) $96 Lunches for Staff $4,965 Rental of tables and chairs $560 Rental of stanchions for guard rail $525 Printing ballot replicas $1,000 Supplies for recount $730 Sub-total $38,509 |
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| Counters (22) worked 2069 regular hours @ $10.75/hour=$22,241.75 and 288 overtime hours @ 16.13=$4,645.44. | |
Nancy Walser and Richard Harding after 5am
at the
end of the Long Night of the Transfers
Richard and Tiny - new friends
Mokie Harding can finally relax
Observer's Note
(Dec 9): One of the
most extraordinary aspects of this recount was the dedication of all
the volunteers who came out to inspect (and occasionally
protest) ballots for each of the affected candidates. Richard
Freierman and Tom Stohlman were the ever-present stalwarts of
the Walser team, but they have been assisted by dozens of other
people. The Harding campaign was very well represented by
Elie Yardin, Will Luzier, Jonathan Ginsberg, uncle Don Harding (one
of the nicest guys I've ever met in Cambridge) and a remarkable mix
of other people. The interests of the Segat camp were largely
borne by former School Committee member David Holway, ably assisted
by several members of the Clinton family (the Cambridge Clintons,
not the Arkansas Clintons) and others.
Any hard feelings that may have developed
during the recount appear to have melted away by the end of the long
night of the transfers. In the end there were handshakes and hugs
all around and everyone came away with a cast of new friends and acquaintances.
Nancy Walser and Susana Segat
Ballots being inspected, protested,
........ and ultimately counted.
Director of the Recount - Teresa Neighbor
Joe Kaplan and Elaine Marchant
Nov 29: The School Committee recount continues. As of Thursday at closing time, staff had finished matching ballots and ballot replicas from the electronic data for all 42 precincts, though there were still many ballots that could not be matched. Presumably, the Election Commission will determine the fate of these ballots and start sequencing all the ballots first thing Friday morning. The sequencing of ballots is only important for the ballots for candidates Alice Turkel and Fred Fantini since they are the only ones who have a surplus of ballots and for whom the choice of ballots to be redistributed to other candidates matters. It would appear that an old-fashioned hand count is what will commence on Saturday and hopefully end by day's end, though the Election Commission anticipates the process continuing into Monday or Tuesday.
For what it's worth: During an examination of a bin of precinct materials on Tuesday, a pair of black lace women's panties was discovered (thong style). It was learned from the precinct warden that the item had been discovered under the check-in table at the Peabody School at the end of election evening. Could this be an issue for the newly (if ever) elected School Committee to investigate? Or is it an undercover matter for our Election Officials? Should we get to the bottom of this, or put it behind us?
Workers matching ballots and replicas
The Recount began at 9am on Monday, Nov 26 at 362 Green St., 3rd floor, the former offices of the Cambridge Election Commission and was expected to take at least six days to complete. This is the first recount since computer tabulation was introduced in 1997. Workers are initially sorting ballots according to their apparent #1 choices, but this is proving to be anything but simple. Though the Election Commission had decided to delay judgment on questionable ballots until Wed, Nov 28, the decision to initially sort according to #1 choice requires that this judgment be ongoing. Consequently, candidates and their representatives have felt the need to be ever-present even during this initial phase of the recount.
After the initial precinct-by-precinct sorting of candidates by apparent #1 choice, the next phase will be the matching of the original ballots and replicas produced from the electronic data. The process of deciding the fate of any and all disputed ballots was scheduled to commence at 10am on Wed, Nov 28, but this is starting to look too optimistic.
Election Commissioners Darlene Bonislawsky, Artis
Spears,
Rusty Drugan, and Lynne Molnar examine a questionable
ballot. (Nov 26)
The Director of the Recount is Cambridge Election Commission Executive Director Teresa Neighbor. The Auditor of the Recount is George Goverman. Due to the quasi-random nature of surplus distribution under the Cambridge rules (Cincinnati Method), the eventual winners of the remaining seats will be determined as much by luck as by accuracy in this re-rolling of the dice. There is even a very remote possibility that candidate Alan Price could have his victory turned into defeat in the recount.
Election recount workers (that's Gerry Bergmann on the right) at their stations sorting ballots. (Nov 26)