Recount for final at-large seat on Boston City Council enters 3rd day

As the recount to decide which candidate will take the fourth at-large seat on the City Council heads into Day 3 on Monday, candidates Julia Mejia and Alejandra St. Guillen both said they were ready for a resolution.

“Both teams have been respectful and cordial as we make sure every vote is counted,” St. Guillen said. “It’s not contentious. We have very similar platforms and either one of us will make a great city councilor.”

St. Guillen, a former City Hall aid, requested a recount following the Nov. 6 citywide election, where unofficial election results had her trailing Mejia by just 8 votes.

The recount — the city’s first in nearly 20 years — kicked off on Saturday, with dozens of election workers putting in 10-hour days over the weekend as they manually tallied more than 67,000 ballots.

Mejia said the “dramatic” ending to the close race has helped to underscore her campaign message that every vote counts.

“We set out with a very specific message … to help people understand how important it is to vote. The fact that it came down to a recount really helps our message,” Mejia said, a former MTV reporter.

The recount teams will start again Monday at 9 a.m.

Whoever wins will go on to be the City Council’s first Latina member.

St. Guillen initially conceded on election night thinking she would be more than 200 votes behind Mejia, but reversed course and called for a recount within hours as the unofficial results revealed a razor-thin 10-vote deficit.

The next week, the margin narrowed even further after the Elections Department found hand-counted ballots from some precincts that were “inadvertently” not added to the vote tally sheets for the unofficial results released on election night, per a memo.

Before the recount, Mejia had 22,500 votes to St. Guillen’s 22,492 for a total 67,011 ballots cast.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/343aeVa