Close win may become close loss Vote recount scheduled in District 42

WINTERPORT – Even though former legislator Joe Brooks was declared the winner by nine votes in his campaign against Donna Gilbert for the Democratic nomination for House District 42, he said Thursday he is convinced the final outcome will be different.

That is because when he reviewed tally sheets recorded by ballot clerks in Winterport on election night, he found to his dismay that it appeared that he may have actually lost the race.

“I think they made some errors in transcription,” Brooks said Thursday. “I feel confident that the new result is probably going to show her winning the race by some 40 votes.”

Whether Brooks is correct or not, he will have to wait until next week’s recount in Augusta to learn the official result.

The Secretary of State’s Office is scheduled to recount all ballots cast in House District 42, which is made up of Winterport, Monroe, Swanville, Jackson, Waldo and Brooks, beginning at 9 a.m. Thursday, June 22.

Winterport Town Clerk Kathy Selfridge confirmed Thursday that discrepancies in the vote tallies from her town left it unclear who actually won the primary election.

Selfridge said the town recorded that 239 voters cast ballots in Tuesday’s election when the actual number of ballots distributed was 227. Somehow, an additional 12 votes were added to the total which had Brooks appearing to win the town by a vote of 123-116 over Gilbert. His overall vote in the election was 224-215.

Selfridge also said some numbers may have been transposed from one column to another.

Selfridge said ballot clerks record the votes in lots of 50 ballots and list the total for each candidate on an accompanying tally sheet. She said that when Brooks reviewed the tally sheets Wednesday night, he discovered that the sheet on one block of 50 recorded the vote as 32 for him and 33 for Gilbert, a total of 65 votes in a 50-vote block of ballots.

“That is an impossibility,” Selfridge said.

Selfridge said that because the ballots were sealed after the count, “we can’t get in [the ballot box] to find out what went wrong.” She said the Office of Secretary of State advised her that it would have to perform a ballot inspection to determine the outcome of the election.

“There definitely will be a recount because of the discrepancy I brought to their attention,” she said. The recount will take place Thursday in Augusta.

Brooks is no stranger to recounts. Two years ago he was denied victory by four votes when a recount gave the election to the same House seat to incumbent Jeff Kaelin, R-Winterport. In that race, the tally on election night had Kaelin the winner by a six-vote margin – 2,299 votes to 2,293 for Brooks.

Brooks picked up two votes in the recount.

On Wednesday, when Brooks read of his slim victory over Gilbert, he thought “deja vu all over again.” He said he never contacted Gilbert but assumed that she might ask for a recount.

Brooks said he was at the town office that afternoon on another matter when he picked up a tally sheet of the election results.

He took the sheet home, and when he discovered the packet of 50 adding up to 65, he immediately notified Selfridge. Selfridge and a town election warden went to the town office later that evening and began reviewing tally sheets.

That’s when Brooks was informed that votes for Gilbert may have been transposed inadvertently into his column.

“I don’t know if those numbers are accurate, but I immediately got in my truck and drove up to Donna’s house and told her what I learned,” Brooks said. “My heart was in my throat, but the only thing you can really do is go tell her.”

Gilbert said she already had decided to ask for a recount before word of the discrepancy reached her.

She said she first learned of the mix-up when Brooks and his wife, Mary, arrived at her home Wednesday night to tell her what he had discovered.

“He is a very, very, honorable man,” Gilbert said Thursday. “I don’t know how this will all play out. We’ll see what happens. This script is just unbelievable.”

Brooks represented District 42 from 1996 to 2002 before stepping down for an unsuccessful run for the state Senate.

When he ran for re-election after his first term, a newspaper in Belfast transposed the returns from Winterport and published a banner headline reading “Tufts Upsets Brooks,” referring to Brooks and his opponent.

That error was reported nationwide and, like the famous Chicago Tribune headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” in 1948, photographs of a grinning Brooks holding the newspaper were widely distributed.

This week’s papers also declared Brooks the winner. But this time the outcome could be reversed.

“In politics you throw your hat in the ring and never know what comes back. I don’t know how this happened, but it will all be clarified when they have the recount and we get the official results,” Brooks said.