FARMINGTON – District 89 legislative candidate Lance Harvell filed for a recount Monday of the close election between him and Janet Mills.

Incumbent Democrat Mills won by 65 votes, or less than 2 percent of the electorate. Though Harvell doesn’t expect to change the results, he cited several irregularities he would like authorities to investigate.

The district, comprising of Farmington and Industry, registered 1,500 new voters in the past year, 709 of them on Election Day, said Registrar of Voters Leanne Pinkham.

Many of those new voters were University of Maine at Farmington students, and Harvell questions the validity of registering college students as residents.

If 100 college students, typically characterized as part-time or transient residents, came to a town meeting, they could decide the fate of town, he said.

Harvell said he knew of several instances of inaccuracies on Farmington’s and Industry’s voter lists. He saw a friend’s name on Farmington’s list who has lived in Dixfield for about 10 years, and the former wife of an Industry friend who had also moved from town about a decade ago, he said. His own name was on the list twice due to an E-911 address change. He had the incorrect one removed in 2000.

Harvell suggested the state look at the definition of residency and proposed abolishing same-day registration.

According to Doug Dunbar of the Secretary of State’s Board of Elections, the law treats college students the same as any resident, and is stipulated by a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. Anyone registering to vote, including college students, signs a legal document certifying that the town in which they are registering is their “fixed and principal residence,” he said. Any violations of election law can and are prosecuted by his office, he added.

Dunbar said each town’s registrar of voters is required to purge the list once every five years. Also, record-keeping should get easier with the advent of a new centralized, computerized state voter registration system to be developed in 2005. The system is required by the federal Help America Vote Act.

Harvell said it is difficult to challenge ballots on Election Day, saying that a poll watcher who improperly challenges a ballot could be criminally prosecuted. It is also impossible to challenge after the fact, he said. One would need to find the unmarked ballot in question in the piles of thousands of valid ones. Challenged ballots are marked for future investigation, if needed.

Dunbar said he was not sure if one would be criminally prosecuted for incorrectly challenging a ballot. However, he did say that anyone doing so on Election Day is certifying that they have personal knowledge of the voter’s status. That person is sworn under oath when signing the certificate and is doing so “under penalty of law,” he said.

He also said that challenged ballots are not taken into account unless their numbers would make a difference in the outcome of the vote. However, town registrars are required to review every challenged ballot, he said.

Statewide, 12 legislative candidates and two county commission candidates have requested a recount as of Monday afternoon, he said.

Harvell also had concerns about possible illegal actions taken by the university’s College Democrats.

Harvell alleges that the group was running vans from campus to the polls decorated inside and out with signs for their candidates. He also referenced a raffle the group allegedly held, giving anyone who voted a chance to win.

He said he was not clear if either of those actions are illegal, but he questioned the ethics of the practices.

Dunbar said he could not comment on the raffle, having no details.

Pinkham, Farmington town clerk, said Monday morning that she knew little about the raffle, but that the issue would be sent Dunbar’s office for investigation. She had not heard about any recounts at the time of the call.

Representatives for the College Democrats could not be contacted Monday.