Politics & Government

Ballot Recount Friday on Narrowly Defeated $4M Land Deal

Ridgefield Registrars have called a recount for the proposed land sale in Tuesday's referendum, which failed by six votes.

With the margin of votes so close in Tuesday’s referendum on the proposed $4 million land deal, the Registrars of Voters, by town charter, have scheduled a recount for Friday morning to verify the machine results.

The recount, which is open to the public, will begin at 8:30 a.m. in the conference room on the lower level of Town Hall.

Voters denied the land deal Tuesday — which would have sold 9.858 acres of town-owned land on Sunset Lane to developers Toll Brothers Inc. — 961-967, a margin of six votes.

By charter, the town must conduct a recount if the margin is less than 0.5 percent of votes cast on that question. The six-vote margin is only 0.31 percent of the 1,928 votes cast on question 8.


Teams of election officials will look at every ballot to determine if any votes might have been miscounted. (They will only be looking at votes on the property sale question, not the seven spending requests.)

If the ballot is clearly marked, it will be run through the machine and counted again. If an oval is not fully filled in or a voter mismarked the ballot and clearly intended to vote one way, the vote will be counted manually.

The entire process should only take a couple hours, according to Democratic Registrar Cynthia Bruno, who based the assessment on previous recounts with similar sized turnout.


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