« Patriots-Bears game time changed to 4:15 p.m. | Today | Common Cause's Phil West honored tonight »

November 13, 2006

Update: Cranston recount is Thursday; Fung readies suit

CRANSTON -- Lawyers for Republican mayoral candidate Allan W. Fung say they will go to Providence County Superior Court tomorrow to ask a judge to compel the Board of Elections to grant public access to any ballots that do not register a vote in Thursday's recount.

Fung trailed Democrat Michael T. Napolitano by 71 votes after the provisional ballots were tabulated on Friday.

The Board of Elections has declined Fung's request to view all ballots that are rejected as "undervotes" or "overvotes" during the recount. About 500 ballots cast in the election last Tuesday were given those classifications.

The Board of Elections has delayed the recount in the Cranston contest until Thursday. The manual re-feeding of more than 31,000 ballots had been scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9 a.m.

Today, Fung's campaign lawyer, Angel Taveras, said a review of those ballots could reveal the voter's intent. For example, he said, some voters may have circled the name of a candidate instead of connecting the arrows on the ballot.

"We can't even determine that there's a vote if we can't look at the ballot," Taveras said.

Last week's mayoral contest, to replace Republican Stephen P. Laffey, is thought to have been the closest in city history.

-- Journal staff writer Benamin N. Gedan

Posted by Steve Peoples  at 12:35 PM | Permalink

Comments

Post a comment

Please be civil. Vicious comments, personal attacks and profanity won't be published. Name and email are required; email address will not publish.

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)