Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

Smithfield Democrats and Republicans are watching closely this morning to see if a counting of the ballots will tip the balance of the town council.

Official results have not been returned from Smithfield because of a printing error on the ballots.

Members of the town's Republican and Democrat committees are gathered at the state Board of Elections headquarters in Providence, where the ballots are to be fed into voting machines and counted this morning.

Thirteen candidates are vying for five seats on the town council.

Representatives of both sides say they've gotten unofficial results from runners at the precincts. The tallies include about two-thirds of the votes. Based on those results, the incumbents would return to the five-member council, and the Democrats would keep their 3-2 majority.

But, according to both sides, if the candidate currently in sixth place moves up, the balance would tip to the Republicans.

Both sides now have Maxine Cavanagh in sixth place, but they disagree on how close she is to cracking the top five.

According to those unofficial results, the top five vote getters so far are Democrats Stephen R. Archambault, Bernard A. Hawkins and S. Jean Cerroni; and Republicans Michael J. Flynn and Ronald F. Manni.

The Republicans say Cavanagh is within 20 votes of Hawkins for the fifth spot, while the Democrats say she is 52 votes behind.

-- Reported by projo.com staff writer Kate Bramson

 Tags  election Smithfield

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