Town waits for decision
By Sara Withee / Milford Daily News Staff
Thursday, May 26, 2005UXBRIDGE As residents await a decision about a second recount, Town Clerk Holly Gallerani yesterday explained the close man's race at Tuesday's election and praised election workers.

     The election saw James Dwyer beat Robert Finnegan by just two votes in the man's race, just a year after Finnegan lost his man seat to a recount bid by Selectman Donald Sawyer.

     It was also the first election since poll workers and the Board of Registrars have undergone specialized training by Secretary of State William Galvin's office, in response to residents' complaints about several issues.

     "I don't really consider this a problem," Gallerani said about the close finish. "The numbers are what they are. We're just waiting on Mr. Finnegan."

     Finnegan hasn't made a public announcement yet about his intentions.

     Finnegan initially won last year's man race by three votes, then lost it to Donald Sawyer by five votes at a recount that turned up six new ballots and ended in court.

     Now, he has 10 days until the end of next week to decide whether to petition his own recount of this week's election, Gallerani said.

     Gallerani said 1,636 of the town's 8,505 registered voters turned out at Uxbridge High School Tuesday night. The town has four voter precincts and residents from all four vote at the high school.

     Trying to open up the election process to the public, Gallerani opened the high school gymnasium after voting closed Tuesday night and allowed the public to watch the tabulating process from a distance.

     "They did excellent," she said of the workers. "It went really well, no problems."

     Gallerani announced "unofficial" results about an hour after polls closed when election workers finished tabulating results from the Accu-Vote machines. These put Finnegan and Dwyer in a deadlock, a 778-778 tie.

     These votes came from ballots that were properly read by the machines, Gallerani said.

     Before the official results were announced, write-in votes and other ballots the machine didn't read because of problems like improper markings still had to be tallied, Gallerani said.

     Dwyer gained two votes from these ballots, one in Precinct 2 and one in Precinct 4, Gallerani said.

     This process took some time because some races had a significant number of write-ins and other ballots that needed to be reviewed and hand-checked, Gallerani said.

     For example, while Town Moderator Harold Klei had no opponent and sailed to an easy victory, nearly two dozen people received write-in votes that had to be hand-checked.

     Former Town Moderator Jane Keegan garnered the most write-in votes with 40.

     "They're recording each one," Gallerani said. "That takes time."