Behind the eight ball
Council at-large seat heads for recount as margin razor-thin
The recount is on, with just eight votes separating Julia Mejia and Alejandra St. Guillen for the City Council’s final at-large seat.
St. Guillen, who’s trailing, submitted 2,000 signatures from around Boston on Friday, sending the city toward a recount.
Election officials said the city now will review the signatures to make sure the requisite number were submitted, and then next week the city will schedule dates for a recount, which is likely weeks away from finishing up.
Election officials, members of the two campaigns, other City Hall staffers and the media on Friday night watched as the election’s final 68 votes were tallied in the razor-thin race between the two challengers. Ultimately, Mejia received 23 more votes and St. Guillen picked up 20, extending the margin from five to eight as elections staff read the provisional ballots out loud one by one for the better part of two hours in the bowels of City Hall.
The final count — still technically unofficial, as the city won’t certify the results before the votes are counted again — before the recount sits at 22,500 votes for Mejia and 22,492 for St. Guillen of a total 67,011 ballots cast.
“We’re confident in a robust process,” St. Guillen adviser Gina Christo told the Herald after the elections meeting wrapped up.
St. Guillen, a former City Hall aide, conceded on election night, before calling for a recount after a revised vote total a couple hours later showed just a 10-vote deficit rather than a 200-vote difference, as earlier data had shown the various candidates. On Wednesday the margin narrowed even further after the Elections Department found hand-counted ballots from some precincts that were “inadvertently” not added to the vote tally sheets for the unofficial results released on election night, per a memo.
Mejia, a former MTV reporter, had jubilantly declared victory on election night, then had to collect signatures this week in case the new votes added Friday flipped the margin for her opponent. Mejia couldn’t be reached for comment Friday night.
At-large incumbents Michelle Wu, Annissa Essaibi-George and Michael Flaherty all cruised to reelection in the eight-way race for the 13member council’s four atlarge seats. At-large incumbent Althea Garrison, who finished seventh, will be replaced with the winner of the recount.
In other elections news, Mayor Martin Walsh announced that the ballot initiative to rename Dudley Square as Nubian Square passed in the surrounding areas. The law requires that all ballot questions be citywide, so Walsh’s office had said the city would focus on the precincts near the square, where the proposed change garnered 1,990 “yes” votes to 958 against, despite failing citywide.
The petition may now be considered by the Public Improvement Commission at the body’s next hearing, which is scheduled for Nov. 21.