Clancy supporters favor recount

LYNN – Go for it – that’s the message voters interviewed Friday sent Mayor Edward J. Clancy, Jr. about the merits of a mayoral election recount.”It’s just too close to walk away,” said Kristen Toppi, a Clancy supporter who bemoaned the mayor’s 8,043-8,016 loss to City Councilor at Large Judith Flanagan Kennedy Tuesday night.Kennedy supporter Sandra Jewkes also thinks Clancy should seek another count of votes cast in the final election.”I think he’d be crazy not to because it’s 27 votes. If it were a couple of hundred votes, I’d say no,” Jewkes said.Clancy, for the second day in a row Friday, was “not available” to comment on a possible recount request, according to a mayoral aide. But Sewell-Anderson School parents like Kevin Kolodziej and Roby Warden think a recount makes sense.”Given that he barely lost you’d think they would automatically redo the count,” Warden said, adding, “I think he would file (for a recount) as long as it doesn’t turn into a big fiasco.”Sewell-Anderson parent Debbie Karamolengos disagreed.”I think the election was fair; it showed everybody was interested,” she said.Clancy has 10 days from election night to file for a recount. The recount process involves several steps and at the center of the painstaking review is a careful determination of each voter’s intent when they cast a ballot.Attorney Samuel Vitali said recounts focus on different aspects of the voting process including absentee ballots cast, blank ballots and, in the case of the optical scan voting system used by Lynn, “over votes.”The term refers to minute marks, even specks, found on ballots next to a candidate’s name. For instance, if the voting oval next to Kennedy’s name was filled in by a voter, a recount challenge could claim a mark on the same ballot next to Clancy’s name called into question the voter’s preference.”The Election Commission’s job is to discern what was the intent of the voter,” Vitali said.City Clerk Mary Audley said an initial review of votes cast for mayor indicate no over votes.That finding and the relatively small number of blank votes cast Tuesday night – 216 – prompted Vitali to question Clancy’s success in winning a recount if he decides to file one. The mayor needs a 14-vote shift to prevail.”I’d be surprised if the change was more than a total of 10,” Vitali said.Clancy knows the merits or shortcomings of recounts as well as any local politician: He won a recount of the Sept. 18, 1990 primary election for West Lynn/Nahant state representative by five votes and went on to easily beat a Republican in the final election.