BETHEL – Although municipal referendum voting ended June 10, Question 2 remains to be resolved: whether voters approved or shot down a request to expand the town’s ambulance station.

Referendum Question 2 asked voters to approve the design, construction and equipping of the town’s ambulance station to improve existing facilities by borrowing up to $150,000. It was defeated by a tie vote of 314-314.

However, on June 11, Bethel Rescue Director Arlene Greenleaf requested a recount.

Town Clerk Christen Mason said that on Friday Greenleaf filed her recount request petition, which contained the required signatures of 64 people from the June 10 ballot list.

A recount in Bethel can only be done if the applicant files with the town signatures from 10 percent of the people who were checked off on the voter registration list.

At Monday night’s Board of Selectmen meeting, the board agreed to supervise Town Clerk Christen Mason’s recount of 639 ballots, starting at 5 p.m. Wednesday, June 18, in the town office.

With the vote tied at 314, that leaves 11 ballots unaccounted for.

However, Mason believes “they may be blank instead of marked clearly yes or clearly no,” which would explain why the town’s Optech IIIP voting tabulation machine didn’t count them.

“I could put them through the machine again but I decided to count them by hand,” Mason said Tuesday.

That could take up to three hours or more because once the ballots are counted, Mason said, she would count them again for accuracy.

All ballot containers have been sealed since the initial count on the June 10 election night. That means Mason will remove the seals and open the ballot boxes one at a time and remove the ballots under the watchful eyes of selectmen.

“When I feel assured we have all municipal referendum ballots removed, I shall proceed,” she said, noting that she has to separate the candidate ballots.

Referendum ballots will be separated into four piles: “clearly yes,” “clearly no,” “blank” and “marked but questionable.”

“I will then review all questionable ballots more closely and attempt to discern voter intent. Those ballots which have been determined to indicate voter intent will be placed in either the ‘clearly yes’ or ‘clearly no’ piles. All other ballots which are ‘marked but questionable’ will be removed from further consideration and placed alongside ballots that are ‘blank.’

“If there are remaining ballots in the questionable pile, and voter intent is not clear, the ballots will not be counted,” Mason said.

Once the ballots have been counted twice, Mason will announce the count and have selectmen sign the Municipal Officers’ certificate of count, before making copies available for all interested parties.


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.