Roggeveen Uses Recount Petition To Sling Some Mud

In an election that has been, until now, essentially free from dirt, one candidate has decided to use the recount process to let loose some mud.

Within her petition to request a recount, Patty Roggeveen makes some rather serious allegations against several good people. And in doing so she has shown, at least to this concerned citizen, that she is simply unfit to hold elected office on Nantucket.

In her “Signers' Statement,” which is notarized with former selectman, Mike Glowacki, named as a witness, she alleges the following:

1. There were “irregularities in the conduct” of the election and how the votes were counted.
2. That three additional votes were added to the pile of 70 rejected, hand-counted ballots, essentially pushing Catherine’s tally “above the two-vote margin that decided the election.”
3. That Whitey Willauer “interfered with the orderly counting of the rejected ballots.”
4. That Catherine “caused her name to be placed at the top right corner of the ballot.”
5. And that the ballot was altered from previous ballots so as to cause “voter confusion over which oval corresponded with each candidate.”

The statement also says that the undersigned are seeking additional legal review of the election. In other words, they will be suing the town.

None of this verbiage was necessary to bring a recount. It is not necessary to accuse anyone of anything. All a petition needs is ten signatures from registered voters and an innocuous statement like, “there may have been confusion in the hand-counting of some rejected ballots, and due to the close vote count we request another hand count of all ballots.” That's all.

Instead we get a mean-spirited, legally-vetted, statement that accuses good people within our community of malfeasance and promises further legal action.

I do not need to defend Catherine, James, Whitey, the town clerk staff or any of the good people who volunteered their time to run this election. They all have a stellar record of public service. And, as the story comes out, you will see that they have done nothing wrong. Still, they have been smeared and there will always be some people who feel that "somebody must've been up to something."

Apparently someone was. Patty Roggeveen is so Machiavellian that she is willing to throw mud and damage people’s reputations, lives and careers, and plunge the town into a nasty legal morass that it can ill afford, given all of the important work before it. All in an effort to secure a mere four-month seat on the Board of Selectmen.

This is not putting Nantucket First. This is a sorry and petty example of putting one's aspirations, pride and desire for power above the good of the entire island.

The people who signed this statement ought to be called to task for it. And the candidate who orchestrated it ought to know how you feel as well. Please call her, email her or comment on this blog.

In a way, we are fortunate that this happened now and not in April. By taking this action, she has given the voters of this town a valuable look at how she would conduct herself as a selectman. With a mean spirit and an angry heart.

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Click on the images to see the actual petition. The full text of this Signers' Statement is below.

“We petition for a hand recount of the ballots cast in the special election of November 21, 2006 to fill a vacancy on the Nantucket Board of Selectman [sic] on the grounds that irregularities in the conduct of the election and the preliminary and final counting of optical scanner-read and so called rejected ballots caused the record of such balloting to be erroneous and that a recount will effect the results. To preserve the issues for additional legal review of the election, we allege: that the initial hand count of the 70 rejected-as-unreadable ballots resulted in an adjustment to the vote tallies totaling 73, above the two-vote margin that decided the election; that the subsequent count of rejected ballots resulted in a count that was significantly different, statistically, than the voting pattern reflected in the machine read ballots; that an unauthorized person, namely, Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, Whiting Willauer, was present in the secure ballot counting area and interfered with the orderly counting of the rejected ballots; that the Town Clerk, who was a candidate for the office, appears to have certified the ballot and/or caused her name to be placed at the top right corner of the ballot, and that the ballot layout deviated from the standard election ballot layout employed by the Town Clerk previously, and resulted in voter confusion over which oval corresponded with each candidate.”