Recounts Monday: Norwalk-wide & for District E [Update]

Update, 3:27 p.m., Friday:

Emily Wilson, head moderator for the 2011 Norwalk municipal elections, issued this news release at 3:16 p.m.:

"The city of Norwalk will be conducting a city wide recanvass of the Council-At-Large 2011 electoral race and a District E recanvass for the Board of Education 2011 electoral race. The recanvass will be held Monday November 14, 2011 in City Hall at 125 East Avenue in the Council Chambers, and will begin at 9:00 am.

"The process is expected to take 12 hours or more, based upon the city wide recanvass conducted in 2009.

"In accordance with state law, poll workers will examine each of the over 14,000 ballots cast in the election held on November 8, 2011, run those ballots which can be accurately read and counted through the tabulators, and hand count the remaining ballots.

"Once the results have been tabulated and recorded, they will be posted on norwalkct.org [the Norwalk city government website] as well as ct.gov/sots. [the website of the Connecticut secretary of the state's office]."

Update 8:47 p.m., Thursday:

Norwalk registrars of voters are hiring about two dozen temporary election workers to conduct a recount on Monday for the Norwalk Common Council at-large race and the District E Board of Education race.

In the council race, Democratic candidate Sharon Stewart has indicated she will not waive a recount. Under state law, recounts are automatic unless a waiver is sent to the Town Clerk's office by each candidate whose votes come within half a percentage point of the winner.

In the case of the at-large race, all the other candidates communicated to the clerk's office that they did not desire a recount: Republican John E. Tobin, who came in a single vote short; and Kate Tepper, who came in behind Stewart, but who also came within half a percentage of the winner, according to Norwalk Democratic Registar Stuart Wells.

Geoff Kieburtz wants a recount in the District E race for Board of Education, in which he was beat by Mike Barbis, according to the official tally, but only by four votes.

Nora King has indicated she will waive a recount in the District E Common Council race that she lost by 11 votes to fellow Democrat John Igneri, Wells said.

Wells said he expects the recounts will last all day and possibly into the early evening, when he hopes Head Moderator Emily Wilson will declare winners.

The recount will start in Common Council Chambers on Monday morning, with sealed blue metal boxes brought up from the City Hal basement.

After the boxes are opened and the ballots taken out, the paper ballots will each be examined and separated into two groups: ones where the machine can clearly count the ballot and those that the machine might not be able to properly count.

With those ballots, oftentimes the intent of the voter can be figured out—for instance, the voter may have circled all the candidates rather than filled in the ovals, Wells said.

The ballots that are clear will be run through a counting machine, and total amounts will be recorded. Those less-clear ballots will be examined by teams of two counters, one hired by the Democrats, the other by the Republicans.

If there is a disagreement between the Democratic and Republican partners, then Emily Wilson (a Republican) and Deputy Registrar Robert Sodaro (a Democrat) will examine them. In the last recount, in 2009, Wilson said, that happened a couple of times.

Update 10:01 a.m., Thursday:

Sharon Stewart, an at-large candidate for Norwalk Common Council, will allow a recount to take place for the race she barely lost in Tuesday's election, and Geoff Kieburtz will allow a similar recount to take place for District E, according to officials of both major political parties in the city.

In the election, Stewart came 26 votes short of getting an at-large Common Council seat, with 6,447 votes to Romano's 6,473. Romano's fellow Repulican, John E. Tobin, came just one vote short, with 6,472 votes. Only four votes separate Mike Barbis from Kieburtz in District E's race for Board of Education, with 1,699 for Barbis and 1,695 for Kieburtz.

Norwalk GOP Chairman Art Scialabba confirmed that Kieburtz would not take the option of declining a recount, which takes place automatically when candidates lose by less than 1/2 of 1 percent under Connecticut law. The only way to stop a recount is for the losing candidate to officially notify the local registrar of voters office that the recount is not wanted.

Marc Bradley, the Norwalk Democratic chairman, said Stewart has a chance of getting a seat on the council, replacing Joanne Romano, who was declared the winner with just one vote more than incumbent John E. Tobin, a fellow Republican. The recount in the at-large race will affect Tobin's chance of being declared winner, as well, since all ballots in the race will be counted again.

Several years ago, Anna Duleep asked for a recount and got 19 votes closer to being elected under the revised results, although she still fell eight votes short, so Stewart still has a chance of taking office, Bradley said.

Update 4:19 p.m., Wednesday:

Any recount of close elections in Norwalk can be declined by the candidates who lost by a hairsbreadth, but they must decline formally, according to Karen Doyle Lyons, Norwalk Republican registrar.

Under state law, candidates who lose by less than half a percent receive summonses from their municipal registrars to inform them that if they want to decline a recount they must send in official notification to their town clerk. If not, a recount automatically takes place.

In addition to this election's one-vote margin between Joanne T. Romano and John E. Tobin, Republicans who ran for at-large seats on the Common Council, there are at least two other Norwalk races where the margin was less than half a percent.

One is the District E Common Council race in which Nora King came in 11 votes behind fellow Democrat John Igneri. The other is the Board of Education race in the same district, where Democrat Mike Barbis is four votes ahead of Republican Geoff Kieburtz.

Registrars were working on summonses for the candidates in those races. If there is a recount in the citywide race, the recount will start Monday in City Council Chambers, Lyons said. If Tobin formally notifies the town clerk that he doesn't want a recount, recounts for other races could take place in the City Hall basement, she said.

At mid-afternoon, Lyons said no candidates had yet notified the clerks, even informally, that they don't want a recount.

Update and revision, 2:10 p.m.:

The official Norwalk election returns, counted late last night, show Joanne T. Romano retaining her at-large seat on the Common Council by just one vote—with 6,473 votes compared with sixth-place candidate John E. Tobin's 6,472.

If the vote holds after an automatic recount, Romano would retain her seat with the smallest possible margin, and Tobin, a fellow Republican incumbent on the Council, would have lost it by the smallest possible margin—one vote.

Late Tuesday evening, Tobin was thought to have kept his seat, while Romano lost hers.

In another change from , Warren Pena won a seat as an at-large member of the Norwalk Common Council in Tuesday's election, not Sharon Stewart. Both Stewart and Tobin appeared to have seats on the Common Council, based on those unofficial returns.

Some initial returns on Tuesday had Stewart and Tobin ahead of Pena and Romano. Tobin was reported to have 6,467 votes, and Stewart was reported to have 6,436 votes to Pena's 6,291, and Romano's purported total of 6,268 votes.

But in the official tally released overnight, voting totals for both Pena and Romano were higher than Stewart's and Tobins vote totals.

The official election form sent to the Secretary of the State's office had Pena at 6,551 votes, Romano at 6,473, Tobin in 6th place at 6,472 and Stewart in 7th place at 6,447.

Only the top five vote-getters among the 10 candidates for the at-large council seats can win, and both Democrats and Republicans put up five candidates. Since Pena and Stewart are both Democrats, and Romano and Tobin both Republicans, the different results make no difference in the party lineup on the incoming Common Council: Democrats still have an 8-7 edge in the 15-member body.

The unofficial vote counts from Tuesday evening and the official count (shown below) often varied by more than 100 votes for various candidates, partly because absentee ballots were not included in many of the vote counts and perhaps because write-in ballots were not included.

Pena received 6,060 votes on the Democratic line of the ballot and 491 on the Working Families Party line. Stewart received 5,964 votes as a Democrat and 483 from the Working Families Party line.

Vote counting

Before the election was over on Tuesday, Stuart Wells, the Norwalk Democratic registrar of voters, explained that election results from each polling place are recorded in triplicate, with one record sealed with the ballots, a second posted on walls at polling places (where party officials take them and call them in for unofficial tallies) and with a third record handed by the polling-place moderator directly to the head moderator for the municipality—in this case, Emily Wilson.

The absentee-ballot count held in the Community Room of City Hall is one factor that can change vote totals in various races, occasionally leading to a different result from the reports that go from polling stations to party officials on election night, Wells said.

Wells and Karen Lyons were deep in a discussion of voting recounts late Wednesday morning. The two said they would be able to talk more about the election on Wednesday afternoon.

In other races

The closest race in Norwalk is the District E race for Board of Education, with Democrat Mike Barbis edging out Republican Geoff Kieburtz by only four votes (not the three votes reported Tuesday evening): Barbis received 1,699 against 1,695 for Kieburtz, according to the official Tuesday tally. Democrats and Republicans have said they expect an automatic recount in that race.

The District E race for Common Council also was tight between two Democrats, with John Igneri getting 1697 votes, compared with incumbent Nora King's 1,686 votes—an 11-vote difference.

Mayor Moccia won re-election over Andrew S. Garfunkel by 735 votes, according to the official tally. Of the 14,345 total votes both candidates received, Moccia had 53 percent to Garfunkel's 47 percent.

In the town clerk race, three candidates received a total of 13,861 votes, with winner Republican Rick McQuaid receiving 50.6 percent, a bare majority, to Democrat David Jaeger's 44.4 percent and Peter Bondi's 5 percent. Bondi ran under the name of a party of his own devising, A Better Choice.

Barring a recount which might change the results, the at-large Common Council members are Douglas E. Hempstead (R), Anna Duleep (D), Fred Bondi (R), John E. Tobin (R) and Warren Pena (D).

Common Council members representing districts (barring a results-changing recount) will be Mathew Miklave (D) and David Watts (D) in District A; Carvin J. Hilliard (D) and Michael K. Geake in District B; Nicholas Kydes (R) and Michelle K. Maggio (R) in District C; Bruce I. Kimmel (D) and Jerry Petrini (R) in District D; and David T. McCarthy (R) and John Igneri (D) in District E. That totals eight Democrats and seven Republicans, giving Democrats control of that body.

In the following tables, apparent winners are designated by boldface type. Incumbents are designated by an asterisk ("*"). For Democrats with Working Families Party votes, the number is the combined total, with Working Families Party votes in parentheses. The addition of Democratic- and WFP-line votes into total vote counts was done by Norwalk Patch.

Mayor

Town Clerk

 At-large Common Council

(The five winners are in boldface; listed in order of number of votes.)

Council Districts

District A (Common Council):

District B (Common Council):

No Republican candidates were nominated for District B.

District C (Common Council):

District D (Common Council):

District E (Common Council):

Board of Education

District A (Board of Education):

District B (Board of Education):

No Republican candidate was nominated for District B.

District C (Board of Education):

District D (Board of Education):

District E (Board of Education):

Both Democrats and Republicans expect an automatic recount in this race, with Barbis ahead by only four votes.

City Treasurer

City Sheriff

Selectmen

Correction: This article originally stated that John E. Tobin had won re-election as an at-large candidate to the Common Council and Joanne T. Romano had not, according to the official vote count.

Correction: Emily Wilson, the Norwalk head moderator for this election, was originally identified as Emily Watts. Her name is now corrected.

Editor's note: This article was rewritten in minor ways at 2:22 p.m.