Recount Overturns Vermont Auditor Race

[mod mom]

Posted on Thu, Dec. 21, 2006
Recount overturns Vermont auditor race

ROSS SNEYD

Associated Press

MONTPELIER, Vt. - A judge overturned the state auditor's election Thursday after a recount showed the Democratic challenger had actually beaten the Republican incumbent by 102 votes.

It was the first time in Vermont that a statewide election was overturned in a recount, the state archivist said.

Washington Superior Court Judge Mary Miles Teachout declared Democrat Thomas M. Salmon the winner over Auditor Randy Brock after reviewing the results of a hand recount conducted by county clerks after the November election.

"It's a great honor. I'm humbled," Salmon, the son of a former governor, said after the judge ruled.

-snip
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/16291794.htm

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

1. When Votes Are Counted Correctly, Democrats Win

That's the moral of the story.

[mod mom]

2. Spreadsheet showing recount results by county and town (FYI):

Vermont appears to have a mixture of voting systems, with some towns using hand-counted paper ballots and others using optical-scan ballots counted by Accuvote tabulating software.

A spreadsheet showing recount results by county and town can be downloaded from
http://vermont-elections.org/elections1/2006RecountAuditorResults12.19.06.xls

Inspection of that spreadsheet shows 15 towns with double-digit changes in votes for the Democratic challenger. Nearly all those changes involved transfers from the Liberty Union candidate, and together they accounted for 296 of the 392 votes picked up by the Democrat. There was one town with a triple-digit and three towns with double-digit changes for the Republican incumbent. Two of the double-digit changes were negative, and together the four changes added up to 89 of the 151 votes picked up by the Republican in the recount for auditor.