Peabody to hold Ward 4 recount

PEABODY – Peabody will hold a vote recount on Saturday after the Ward 4 City Council election was decided by just one vote.Incumbent Bob Driscoll and challenger Jeff Grayson both filed recount petitions last week after Driscoll, a 22-year council member, received 1,150 votes and Grayson, a first-time public office candidate, received 1,149. It is the first time that a Peabody election has had a one-vote margin in 69 years.”We had looked up some past history because there was some inquiry and the 1940 mayoral race was the last time it came down to a one-vote difference,” city clerk Tim Spanos said.Spanos said the hand recount, held at 10 a.m. in the Wiggin Auditorium, will be overseen by the Board of Registrars, whose normal duties include organizing the yearly census and updating the current voter and jury lists. The city has not held a recount since 1999, when a recount was required for a councilor-at-large seat.”I don’t think it’s going to take more than a couple of hours since we only have 2,436 ballots, or 50 blocks,” Spanos said. “It’s just one race that we’re looking at and just two names, so we’re hoping that it goes fairly quickly.”Ward 4 had no provisional ballots in the Nov. 3 election and all absentee ballots submitted by 8 p.m. were counted. 132 ballots cast in Ward 4 were read blank by the voting machine for the city councilor position, but it isn’t clear if they were read incorrectly or if some chose not to vote for either candidate.”It could just be that people didn’t vote for that particular race, since there were mayor and councilor-at-large races and a bunch of other races,” Spanos said.In the event that the recount results in a tie for Ward 4 councilor, the city will hold a special election for the seat as outlined in the city charter.