St. Croix certifies vote; no change
Published: November 22, 2012
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ST. CROIX - Finally.
More than two weeks after the election - following day after day after day of counting votes cast on paper ballots - the St. Croix Board of Elections on Wednesday certified the results from the Nov. 6 General Election.
When it was all said and done, there were no surprises.
The final tallying of votes cast on paper did not change the outcome of the election or displace any of the winners, who first claimed their leads when electronic votes were totaled on the evening of Nov. 6, just after the polls closed.
This was the first General Election after a new law passed that allowed voters to request a paper ballot at the polls on Election Day.
On St. Croix, 2,812 voters chose that option, casting their votes by paper ballot at the polls, compared with 11,224 who voted by machine.
There were an additional 592 absentee ballots, either walk-in or mail-in, to count, along with 13 provisional ballots.
With assistance from poll workers, the board sorted, batched and counted ballots for 12 days straight before taking a day off.
"We knew it would be challenging from Day One," board chairman Rupert Ross Jr. said of counting the ballots by hand. "It wasn't something we were excited about; it was a job we had to do. I think at the end of the day, we did it well. We accomplished the task."
The statistics indicate that voter turn-out on the island for the General Election was 60 percent, with 14,641 of the 24,379 registered voters participating in the election.
The board voted Wednesday afternoon to certify the election results, with Ross and members Lisa Harris Moorhead, Dodson James, Carmen Golden and Raymond Williams voting yes. The remaining members, Ana Davila and Adelbert Bryan, were not present on Wednesday.
The election results are now official and are forwarded to Supervisor of Elections John Abramson Jr.
- Contact Joy Blackburn at 714-9145 or email jblackburn@dailynews.vi.
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