Recount for School Board Seat Not Required After All

It looks as if a recount for the third seat on the may not be required after all. 

unofficially took the third seat on school board, with her 3,733 votes edging out by 70 votes on Tuesday.

According to the Ohio Revised Code, an automatic recount is triggered when a candidate’s margin of victory is one half of one percent of the total vote.

Going by that data alone, it appears that a .

Not so fast.

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections does not include the 2010 Secretary of State’s office directive with a detailed formula for calculating races with several candidates.

That formula indicates that the “total votes” doesn’t include the two winners,  and  — who won the first two of the three open seats.

So, with the “total votes” of the remaining candidates, that leaves 29.57 percent of the votes going to Petrie-Barcelona and 29.02 percent of the vote going to — just a hair more than the required .5 percent to trigger an automatic recount.

According to the board of elections website, the board won’t have the official number of provisional ballots until the 11th day after the election. That’s contrary to rumors around town indicating the tally of provisional ballots is already available.

Mike West, spokesman for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said that declaring the official winner could take a couple more weeks.

“We’re going to be looking at provisional ballots to see if there’s enough votes to make a difference,” he said. “That’s the process.”

If the candidate wishes to request a recount, pursuant to R.C. 3515.02, the defeated candidate must file a written application requesting the recount with the appropriate election officials within five days after the board of elections certifies the official canvass of the election results.

But the recount isn’t free. The cost is $55 for each precinct counted, according to the board of elections.