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Missed Ballots Counted, Election Results Unchanged

A manual count of 116 missed ballots from April’s Town Election took place Tuesday, with Town Clerks from neighboring towns tabulating the ballots by hand and onlookers from political campaigns, the police department and the Board of Registrars keeping watch. 

With margins of victory in some races smaller than the total number of missed ballots, it was possible that the School Committee race could have been overturned, and different people could have won in Precinct 1 and Precinct 5’s Town Meeting races. But according to results read aloud after the count, no results were changed due to the count. 

The new results for races where different outcomes were possible are as follows: 

 

School Committee

  • Meghan Nawoichik: 1871 
  • Martha Simon: 1782

Precinct 1 (seven candidates for six available seats) 

  • Bill Boivin: 466
  • Michael Hardy: 460
  • Adam Senesi: 358
  • David Woodilla: 429
  • Peter Abaskharoun: 415
  • Jaimee Greitzer: 367
  • Sunniya Saleem: 322

Precinct 5 (eight candidates for six available seats)

  • Patricia Angelo: 379
  • Thomas Carlson: 370
  • Christine Conceison: 465
  • Mark Paul Donahue: 322
  • Christopher Murphy: 349
  • Carl Foss: 322
  • Domenic Grossi: 279
  • Frank O’Brien: 249

 

Updated results for all town-wide races are available here.

On Tuesday afternoon, Town Clerk Amy Warfield unsealed the ballot boxes from April’s elections only for Precincts 1 and 5, which had been impacted, and four current and retired Town Clerks from Lexington, Stoneham, Reading and North Reading identified 116 early voting envelopes that still had ballots inside them. Then the clerks worked in two teams of two to read each ballot and mark the results on a tally sheet. 

Candidates or their representatives were permitted inside a marked-off tabulation area to oversee the counting. 

“It’s a very interesting process,” said Select Board Member Sarah Cawley, whose race was not liable to be impacted but who attended the tabulation out of interest. “I know Amy does a really great job, and I’m happy she’s doing it the right way, and it’s clear that she is.” 

Warfield said to the best of her knowledge, two separate issues had occurred in the two precincts on Election Day leading to the missed ballots. 

She said when early voting ballots are returned to her office, they’re bundled into stacks of about 50 and taken to the polls to be checked in and counted on Election Day. In Precinct 1, Warfield said about 49 ballots were checked in but never inserted into the tabulation machine. In Precinct 5, Warfield said the 67 missed ballots had not been checked in or tabulated. 

“We did a thorough search of the clerk’s office,” Warfield said. “No ballots were found. We had taken everything to the polls. But then at the polls, they were put into bins without the ballots being read.” 

Warfield said the clerk’s office has put in place new procedures to make sure this issue doesn’t happen again. 

“Amy’s running a really tight ship,” Said Sunniya Saleem, a candidate for Town Meeting Precinct 1 whose results were impacted by the missed votes, but who still did not earn a seat on the legislative body. “It’s nice to know that our town does right by its people.”