Athens County Board of Elections officials are busy preparing their office for the automatic recount required after Pat Lang’s narrow victory over Todd Grace for Athens County Common Pleas Court judge.
The election, which took place earlier this month and officially tallied May 23, resulted in a four-vote difference between the candidates in the Democratic primary, 1614-1610. The third candidate, William Biddlestone, trailed the Grace and Lang at 575 votes. No Republica
n ran for that party's nomination.
County
law requires that votes be recounted if an election results in a one-half of one-percent difference between candidates.
Debbie Quivey, Director of the Board of Elections spent most of last week attending to the details of the recount, which will take place Monday, June 2 beginning at 10 a.m. It will not be a light undertaking, she said.
The recount was originally scheduled to take place at 1 p.m., Quivey said, but it had to be rescheduled to allow enough time to count up all of the ballots. The Board of Elections will not only have to count the votes cast in the election for judge seat, but for all of the votes cast on election day
.
Quivey said that it is uncommon for an election to be so close and that it would be hard to predict the result of the recount.
“Every election is different,” she said. “You just don’t know what might happen.”
But Grace said he does not expect the recount to make a difference in the race results.
“The expectation needs to be that the final answer will be the same,” he said. Grace said he trusts the election results, suggesting
the recount was more a formality than anything else.
“I would have preferred to have had more votes, but I was pleased by the participation of the community,” he also said.
He said that he may run for a judge seat the next time there is an election, but for now he is happy serving in his private practice and as a magistrate in Athens County Juvenile Court.
Lang was unavailable for comment.
