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.”

Recount a Go Go

Here are some interesting statistics given the impending recount of the special election to fill Mike Glowoacki’s seat. You will recall that Catherine Stover beat Patty Roggeveen for the seat by two whole votes.

It would seem like a statistical piece of cake for Ms. Roggeveen to pick up three votes and beat Catherine in a recount. But of the close races on Nantucket over the past eleven years [click on the table on the right to see a larger version] no loser in an election has ever won in a re count. The closest was in 1995 when Killen beat Vacca by a scant four votes. Vacca picked up .21 percent of the votes and Killen lost .10 percent but she still won by by a single vote.

The largest gain for a loser in a BOS recount goes to Brian Chadwick with an increase of a whopping .32% of the vote. Almost a third of a percentage point, or four wwhole votes. Unfortunately for Brian, Our old pal Doug Bennett picked up nine votes in the recount or nearly 3/4ths of a percentage point.

Patty Roggeveen needs to move the needle by .37% of the vote without Catherine gaining ground to win. That does not seem like a lot. But history has shown that bit’s quite a mountain to climb. Even Bud Clute who lost to Richard Bretschneider in 1998’s sheriff race could not win in a recount despite improving by .68%.

The most interesting statistic of all also comes from 1998 when Georgia Snell beat Peter Wilson by just seven votes, but Mr. Wilson decided, in the end, that a recount would not be in the best interests of anyone, and he conceded.

My feeling is that Patty Roggeveen would be smart to do the same. A recount will cost the taxpayers between $2,500 and $3,000 and will require the time of up to 70 volunteers. That’s a lot of fuss for what would, if overturned, amount to only around three months in office.