On Tuesday morning, May 21, in Room 204 of Town Hall, Acton Town staff and volunteers gathered to recount the votes of the April 30 Town Election, specifically for question 1 about the tax levy override, as the results of the original balloting were close (3191 yeses (49.94%), 3154 nos (49.36%), 45 blanks, 6390 ballots). The wording of question 1 was: “Shall the Town of Acton be allowed to assess an additional $6.6 Million in real estate and personal property taxes for the purposes of funding the operating budget of the Public Schools and the Municipal Government for the fiscal year beginning July first 2024?”
Recount day began at 9 am with instructions from Town Counsel, Kristen Gagalis. “The reader’s sole job is to determine the intent of the voter. When the ballot is brought up to the Board of Registrars [for a disputed interpretation of a ballot], that is when it is decided what the intent of the voter was.”
The course of the day included: retrieval of the sealed boxes of ballots from the locked first floor closet where they had been stored; division of the ballots into blocks of fifty (a three hour task); a thirty-five minute lunch break; and reading and recording every one of the 6,390 ballots (another three hours). At the request of the petitioners, the recount was done by hand.
Room 204 was divided into sections: An audience section held about twenty chairs. A set of six tables, each of which accommodated a reader and a recorder – town staff or poll workers – plus observers standing by. The Board of Registrars was stationed at the presentation tables where the Select Board usually sits. Members of the Board of Registrars are: Eva K. Szkaradek – Town Clerk; Deena Ferrara; J. Timothy Shea; and James D. Conboy.
In an email afterward, Conboy described the experience as “like watching paint dry” and shared this response he wrote to a query from an Acton resident: “The Board had a rather boring experience for most of the day, broken up only by having to discern the intent of a voter on one contested ballot, and, when the counting was done, to decide, precinct by precinct, which of the “spoiled” mail-in ballots to accept or reject, with legal counsel to advise us. Some ballots were rejected for missing a signature, or an inside envelope, but the vast majority, several hundred, I’d say, were rejected-unopened-for having a May datestamp from Town Hall. The deadline was April 30…the day went smoothly…after seven hours in the room, the Yes contingent gained seven net votes, increasing their winning margin to 44.”
Police Detective Nate Meuse said he was there “to keep the peace, and ‘security’, if you will.” Meuse said he accompanied the staff and observers to the small first floor room where the sealed boxes of ballots had been stored, to confirm that the boxes were indeed sealed, and to watch them brought up to Room 204. Observer Sam Sullivan-Fieldman mentioned that there was some discussion of zippers, zip ties, and the boxes of backup materials. Examination of the inside of those boxes confirmed that nothing had been added, and the issue was laid to rest.
Town Manager John Mangiaratti and various interested staff and residents stopped by throughout the day. Many of the staff were put to work on the count, including some from the nursing service and the engineering department.
Volunteer observers wore name tags labeled “DL” for Keep Acton Affordable member David Lunger, who led the petition for the recount, and “Together for Acton” for the proponents of the override. Together for Acton (TFA) had only four or five observers in the room; the DL group had around fifteen. Some of the DL observers have experience in volunteering at recounts.
Questioned about the few observers from TFA, Mike Balulescu, who helped organize the TFA campaign said, “It’s a reflection of our campaign; it’s a lot of parents and people who work full time. I used a personal day [to be here]. Anecdotally, it looks like the other side brought a lot of people from other towns. An inference I am making is that many might be retired. The chair of the School Committee is not here because he works full time. There are other members of the School Committee who are very involved who are not here because they work full time.”
School Committee Member Leela Ramachandran had another take on the reason for the small number of TFA observers. “We’re not concerned about the integrity of our election workers.”
DL observer Katrina Buck estimated that the anti-override crew had about fifteen volunteers helping out. “Most are from Acton. We have a few people who are from Carlisle, Leominster, Boxborough, so we could have two observers at each table. I notice that the TFA people don’t have two observers at the table…they aren’t watching as intently, either. They are not concerned about it which is fine; everybody’s got their right to exercise their participation in the democratic process. I think it’s important. I think it’s important for our children to see, too, everything is not a slam dunk.”
The Acton Exchange asked observers why they felt the vote should be recounted. Buck said, “Because the vote was so close…There were a number of blank ballots as well, so we just wanted to eyeball those ballots with human eyes and say machines have been known to make mistakes. And I think it’s a good exercise in the American voting process. It’s more than just sticking the ballot in the machine, it’s a long process and there’s a lot of thought put behind it. So, that’s what we’re doing today. Thanks for asking.”
Dave Lunger and Kathy Lynch (a Westford resident) explained their participation in the process. Both stressed that their volunteerism that day was unrelated to the Republican party state committee roles they hold. “We are here as citizens helping to get an accurate vote,” Lynch said. “I am here to help Acton in a recount. I have done a number of them already and I can offer my experience to the work today.” Lunger said, “The machine is only concerned about ovals. Ink…today we care about discerning intent,” referring to ballots where the ink marks are unclear and require interpretation that a machine cannot do.
Over the course of the day, there was only one ballot which required close examination and interpretation. The voter had filled in both the yes and the no oval and had written a clarifying note. After hearing arguments about how to interpret the intent of the voter, the Board of Registrars unanimously approved calling the vote a “yes”. The board’s vote is the final decision. The ballot was flagged when it was returned to the box to make any future review easier.
Lunenberg resident Lorraine Rudd said she loves helping with recounts and has done five. She had a quick fix in mind that would have precluded an override. “Do the math. If you divide the $6,600,000 by the 3191 people who voted yes, if those 3191 people send a check for $2,068 to the town, this whole business would have gone away. Those people must have been able to afford it.” Rudd was most concerned about checking for any machine error.
Resident Erika Chin commented after the recount, “I do think that if people have questions about the process, it is important to honor them and put them to bed. And ultimately I think the election process is sound, and I salute all the good people who are election workers, of which my husband was one for many years.”
Another voter, who asked not to be named, said they felt that requesting a recount creates fear and disbelief in our electoral system. “What they did was create more work for town employees already stretched thin.”
Affordability was a refrain heard from several Acton residents in town, including Linda Mustoe, who said her parents had moved from Newton years ago to find a town with lower taxes; her family is now at risk of being priced out due to the increase. Bonnie Lobel said she is worried about taxpayers who will be shocked when their $9,500 bill goes up by close to $1,000.
State law dictates that the recount’s tally is the final one. Including some seventeen extra ballots found from precinct 6a, presumably not run through the machines, four of the 45 former blanks being interpreted by the hand counters as yes’s or no’s, and a one-vote transcription error corrected by the town clerk at the end of the day (explained by her in an email to the Acton Exchange) the final tally was 6406 votes, of which 3205 were yes (50.03% ) and 3160 were no (49.33%), plus 41 blank.
As a group of observers exited Town Hall, the Acton Exchange reporter, returning from a break, called to them, “Did they finish?”
“Yes.”
“How did it go?”
“Terrible,” one person replied as they walked away.
“Did the vote come out the same?”
“Almost the same. They prevailed.”
Franny Osman, Acton Exchange Editor-in-Chief, would rather be editing your writing than covering stories like this. Please step in an write about what you care about in Acton. info@actonexchange.org