Vote Recount Overturns EMS Service Victory

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EMS tax in Stow loses in recount

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Published Thursday, December 14, 2000,

in the Akron Beacon Journal.

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EMS tax in Stow loses in recount

New machine tally of punch-card ballots adds 2 `no' votes to create

tie

BY STEVE HOFFMAN

Beacon Journal politics writer

If Al Gore had been there, he would have insisted on a hand recount

of all ballots.

And if W. Bush had been there, he would have said that

recounts without clear standards would bring less certainty to the process, not

more.

As it was yesterday at the Summit County Board of Elections, the

Stow emergency medical services levy lost when a recount done partly by hand and

partly by machine resulted in a shocker -- a tie vote.

Under Ohio law, issues don't pass without a majority vote.

The recount of punch-card ballots here, it seemed, turned out to be

plagued by the same sort of problems that made determining the results of the

presidential vote in Florida so difficult. Rather than plunge ahead with a full

hand recount, however, board members let their recount stand.

And that capped a rollercoaster ride for Stow officials, who were on

hand to witness democracy in action.

On Election Day, the levy was down by 30 votes, according to final,

unofficial results. But when all absentee and walk-in ballots were included in

an official canvass, the levy was up by two votes, 6,850 to 6,848.

But that was so close that an automatic recount was triggered. When

the recount was completed shortly before 10:30 a.m. yesterday, the results

showed a net gain of two ``no'' votes, making the final outcome 6,850 to 6,850.

Mayor Lee Ann Schaffer called it unbelievable and said the 2.3-mill

property tax levy will be back on the ballot in a special election.

``We'll have a busy February,'' she said, referring to the Feb. 6

special election, the next opportunity to appeal to voters. Fire Chief

Groves was also a witness.

Following procedures outlined in a directive from the Ohio secretary

of state's office, a hand recount of one of Stow's 39 precincts was done, then

compared to a machine recount of the same ballots. The results for Precinct 1B

didn't change: coincidentally, a 173-173 tie, the same as in the official

canvass.

If the two methods had produced conflicting results, a full manual

recount would have been triggered. But because the results in 1B matched, Ohio's

secretary of state permits a machine recount of all remaining ballots, a far

less tedious and time-consuming process than recounting by hand.

Board members did briefly discuss the possibility of hand recounts

in four precincts where results had changed in the machine recount, but that

would have gone beyond their past practice.

Finally, it was decided to stay within the secretary of state's

guidelines.

``It's a chad problem,'' sighed board member ph Hutchinson,

referring to the tiny cardboard squares on punch-card ballots.

The Stow recount showed the possibilities of chads that fall out in

a recount or even, if partially punched, flip open and then closed when run

repeatedly through machines.

In the final machine recount, the Stow levy picked up one ``yes''

vote in one precinct, lost a ``yes'' vote in another, and, in two other

precincts, picked up one more ``no'' vote.

The only recourse left to Stow would be to file a contest of

elections in county Common Pleas Court, said Tom Wagner, the county's elections

director. He said there is no way to know whether a hand recount of the four

precincts where the machine recount made a change would help or hurt the levy.

Mayor Schaffer has said uncertainty over the results has already

crimped the city's year-end planning efforts. The city can't pass a final budget

until it knows whether it can begin collecting the $1.47 million a year the levy

would generate.

Fire Chief Groves said the tax is needed to keep up with a growing

demand for EMS runs.

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