SAUGUS — A sixth place finisher in the race for five seats on the Board of Selectmen is petitioning for the votes to be counted again on Monday.
Corinne Riley trailed fifth place finisher Mark Mitchell by 16 votes in the Nov. 7 election and filed a petition for a recount Monday.
Debra Panetta finished first with 2,314 votes, followed by Jeff Cicolini with 2,055, Jennifer D’Eon with 1,935, Scott Brazis with 1,905, and Mitchell with 1,662. Riley trailed Mitchell with 1,646 votes. Michael Serino finished with 1,609. Michael Coller secured 995 votes and Assunta Palomba got 984.
“I decided to petition for a recount because of the closeness of the count,” said Riley. “Sixteen votes between sixth and fifth position is not many. I owe it to my supporters who I heard from making sure the process was not flawed seeing these were new machines.”
The recount is scheduled for Monday at the Veteran’s Memorial Elementary School gymnasium at 10 a.m., said Town Clerk Ellen Schena.
Several voters in different precincts told Riley they had trouble feeding the ballot into the machine. One person told her that the machine in their precinct jammed on election night and needed to be rebooted, she said.
“Not witnessing these incidents, I cannot confirm, but I do believe these people’s concerns, there is no reason not to,” said Riley. “As I have stated from the beginning of my campaign, transparency is very important. The fact that there were problems with the process, this is the one way that the voters will know the process was not flawed, and if it was, it will be corrected.”
After the election in 2015, former Town Meeting member in Precinct 8, Thomas Traverse, filed for a recount petition after Coller secured the fifth seat with just one more vote than he had received.
Stephen Horlick, who had originally placed eighth in the race with 142 votes, was bumped into the fifth seat with 148 votes. Meanwhile, Traverse remained at 144 votes and Coller dropped from 145 to 136 votes.
The town spent $55,000 on 11 new voting machines in September to replace tabulators that were more than two decades old.
“I honestly feel the route she is taking for the recount looks poorly on her,” said Mitchell. “If you want a recount do what you need to do and ask for a recount. Don’t speak poorly of Saugus by saying the brand new state-of-the-art voting machines are faulty and start making excuses. She is going to cost the town thousands of dollars to do an unnecessary process for 16 votes. Why is she so desperate to be a Selectman? It’s transparent to me that she cares more about being a Selectman than she does about the progress of the town. Saugus has seen nothing but positives the last 34 months with the great team we have in place. Now she takes it upon herself to try and bring some negativity in the papers. The town is happy, as evidenced by the last three elections. If there was a turnout like the school election, she would have been in the rearview mirror by 600 plus votes. At the end of the day on Monday we will see that the town was forced to spend thousands of dollars and she will still be 16 votes behind.”
