The recount for a race in the Massachusetts State House of Representatives resulted in the Democratic challenger being placed ahead of the Republican incumbent by a single solitary vote.
As the GOP state legislator running for a newly altered north shore district, Lenny Mirra states that he will be going to court, highlighting a series of concerns about a number of spoiled ballots and the possibility of signatures on mail-in votes not matching their envelopes.
“It’ll absolutely be a legal challenge,” stated Mirra, as reported by the State House News Service.
Kristin Kassner, the Democratic rival, submitted a petition calling for a recount in the wake of trailing Mirra by over 10 votes out of well over 23,000 cast in the first round of certified results.
In data sets released by the office of William Galvin, the Massachusetts Secretary of State, as reported by a local news outlet, reported that Kassner managed to gain 19 additional votes from somewhere due to the recount, all while Mirra only added nine across a number of towns and lost a single vote in Rowley.
“We are not suspicious of anything that ever happened. [The recount] was just really just to ensure that, between humans and machines, we really caught every vote that was counted,” stated Kassner, as explained in the report.
As reported in the recount, which was finalized this past Thursday and has not yet been given the seal of certification from the governor’s council, highlights Kassner with 11,763 votes and Mirra with 11,762.
A legislator for over five terms, Mirra stated that he was “totally screwed” in this recent redistricting process. “I lost five of my seven towns. Usually, a rep district changes by maybe five percent or 10 percent,” stated Mirra. “It’s an unheard-of amount of change for my district. It was devastating because it’s like starting all over. There was no benefit to being the incumbent because we were a complete unknown in these new towns.”
In the state’s First Middlesex District, another recount could also result in a battle in state courts, as reported by Politico. In that particular instance, Republican Andrew Shepherd sounded the call for another recount in the wake of the initial count sitting Democrat Margaret Scarsdale ahead by 17 votes. The total deadline for communities in that particular district to finish their count is Saturday.
Without regard to the outcome of either race, Democrats should keep their majority in both the Senate and the House for the state, along with being able to secure control over the governor’s office for the this cycle.