OLD TOWN — A candidate for the School Board decided Wednesday to request a recount of the ballots that left her three votes short of being elected last week.

In fact, it was Sandra Pinkham’s opponent, board Chairman Robert Fiske, who notorized her written request for the recount which was penned after Pinkham spent the afternoon reviewing the ballots.

After studying the printouts from the generally accurate scanning machines, the vote tally remained the same — 1,615 votes for Fiske and 1,612 votes for Pinkham.

The only real questions about the voting involve those ballots which were rejected by the machines for various reasons, such as improper markings and other mistakes.

On average, about 10 percent of the ballots were kicked out by the machines and then counted by hand, although that number jumped to about 20 percent for the returns from one ward.

The recount will be held sometime Monday. Then, city officials, including members of the Town Council, will gather and wait as more than 4,000 green cardboard ballots are once again slipped through the scanning machines and the votes are counted.