By MAUREEN DOHERTY
NORTH READING — Michael J. Scarlata of Martins Landing, North Reading, apparently will maintain his seat as the Republican State Committee Man for the First Essex and Middlesex District following a recount challenge last week.
In the three-way race to represent the sprawling district that stretches from North Reading all the way up to Gloucester and encompasses 17 towns and two cities, Scarlata originally was declared the winner by a 28-vote margin to challenger Clayton R. Sova of Gloucester, 6,426 to 6,398.
The third candidate was another North Reading resident, Jeffrey R. Yull, a former two-term Select Board member and the current president of the town’s Republican Town Committee. He received 5,756 votes in the original balloting.
Each community had to conduct the recount by hand and was required to submit their results to the office of Secretary of State Bill Galvin in Boston by 5 p.m. last Friday, March 23.
As the Transcript was going to press on yesterday afternoon, Galvin’s office still had not posted the new results on his website and his office had not notified the office of the Town Clerk in North Reading of the results.
Town Clerk Susan Duplin informed the Transcript on Tuesday afternoon that she had emailed the Elections Division of Galvin’s office seeking a new grand total for the entire district and she would notify the newspaper once the data is received.
Duplin has updated the results of North Reading’s recount to reflect the town’s official results in which over 2,300 ballots were cast and recounted by hand. “In a nutshell, Scarlata and Sova stayed the same, Yull decreased by 1, blanks increased by 1, ‘all others’ decreased by 1,” she said. A total of 23,293 ballots were originally cast district-wide, with 18,690 votes cast, 6,603 blanks, and 110 vote in the “all others” category.
Duplin added that this was the first ever recount that either she or Assistant Town Clerk Stephanie Connolly had ever overseen. The recount was set up inside the town’s centralized polling location at St. Theresa’s Parish Hall on March 20. It was a posted meeting and the public was able to observe. “Everyone did a great job, everything ran smoothly,” Duplin said.
Earlier in the week, Scarlata submitted a letter to the editor of the Transcript stating that “the Secretary of State certified the recount results and declared me the winner for the second time.” The district-wide results, he said, reduced his margin of victory over Sova by two voters, to 26 votes.
Scarlata said the entire process went smoothly and he was impressed by it, stating in his letter: “Some might be skeptical on the accuracy of the voting machines but with roughly 25,000 votes cast I would say these voting machines in the First Essex and Middlesex District worked with great accuracy and precision.”
Scarlata offered his thanks to the town and city clerks and their staffs in each community, and thanked his opponents for running for the office, stating “I look forward to working with them.”
