Dale Tillotson, a Ward 7 voter who opposed the budget, has asked for a recount, and assistant chief administrative officer, Scott Schrader confirmed today the city will honor his request.
State law lets registered voters request a recount if the vote is within 5 percent. On Tuesday, 6,450 ballots were cast, and the budget passed by 68 votes. That’s a margin of 1 percent.
Neither Tillotson nor Schrader expect the outcome to change.
Schrader said the tabulator machines are reliable, and sensitive enough to register votes even if ballots are filled out sloppily. “The tabulators are programmed to pick up a portion of a mark in an oval so even if someone makes a check mark or a cross, it will still calculate that as a vote and if for some reason, there is a stray mark in both ovals, the ballot would be kicked out as invalid, and the person could vote again.”
Even so, Tillotson said he thinks it’s “a very good opportunity to check out our voting machines, and our methods of counting absentee ballots.” (Absentee ballots are fed through the same tabulator machines.)
And while it means more work, Shrader agrees that there’s value to the exercise. “It allows us to check the system to make sure it’s working as it is supposed to.”
Tuesday’s special election cost approximately $25,000, according to Schrader, but he said the recount won’t bring an additional expense. That’s because city councilors who sit on the Board of Civil Authority are charged with the task of hand-counting the ballots, and they won’t be paid for their work. They must complete the recount within five days of the request, which gives them until Tuesday.
Schrader said the councilors will sit down at a table, divide the ballots into stacks of 50 or 100, sort those stacks into “yes” and “no” piles and then tally them up.
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The real problem is not that ballots may have been miscounted, but that there are no functional checks in place to prevent someone from voting in multiple wards in the same election or to prevent a non-resident from voting in Burlington.
Another problem is for somebody with the numbers like seven days to take the first vote that failed, by ward and put it side by side with the second vote that passed. so we can see where the approx 650 more yes votes came from…. now normally if an non political issue is presented, the percentage of the votes in all wards should be close….. so how can ward four and seven vote no two to one yet the vote fails meaning that the south wards voted close to the same way in reverse. this shows to me that the city of Burlington has a major problem on their hands and its getting worse. this city is split , not the vote. and this school issue being voted down for first time in ten years shows that the people love their schools but also cannot keep on funding such high budgets. whether payroll, pension, programs such as sports, english, and French, and Spanish etc, we have to put our foot down. and I am hoping out new school board members will follow thru with there commintments…. i have lots of faith in the new ones. Can you seven days or somebody else please post these numbers side by side . thanks, Ken Peterson