Environmentalist Annette Smith says she’ll do “what’s necessary” to get an accurate vote count in the aftermath of her official loss to Progressive Party chairwoman Martha Abbott.
The Secretary of State released official results on Tuesday. Smith lost by 17 votes, or 2.25 percent of the 735 ballots cast by Progressives in the primary.
Smith originally said she would demand that Secretary of State Jim Condos call for a recount. Then she learned that only a losing candidate, under state law, can request a recount, if so eligible.
It turns out Smith isn’t. Recounts may be requested by candidates when the difference between the winning and losing candidates is 2 percent or less of the total ballots cast. In Smith’s case, the cutoff was 15 votes.
Her second option? Taking the matter up with the Washington Superior Court.
“If it justifies going to court for a recount that’s what I’ll do,” Smith said.
Smith says her supporters in several towns tell her that they cast write-in ballots that were never counted. She questions the accuracy of the tally and she blames Condos for issuing instructions that are both unclear to voters and town clerks.
“This is Condos’ mess to fix,” Smith said. “It’s up to the state of Vermont to ensure an accurate election. I will do everything I can to get an accurate count. The question is, is the Secretary of State going to take responsibility?”
Smith says voters who wanted to support her may have written her in without marking a bubble next to the write-in name, and town clerks may have ignored those votes.
Condos says that claim is a “red herring.” Town clerks, he said, are trained to read voter intent. Any write-in candidate is supposed to be counted — whether the bubble is marked or not — as required under state law, he said. If, on the other hand, a voter fills out an oval and there is no name assigned it, clerks have no way of knowing what a voter’s intent was.
The bubbles on the ballot form are designed to allow clerks who use tabulators to easily identify write-ins, according to Kathy Schele, the director of Vermont Elections. The instructions on the ballot have been in place since 1999, she said.
“Election officials know they have to go through every ballot,” Schele said.
A candidate, or not?
The Danby resident did not campaign or in any way solicit support for her candidacy. She didn’t send out any mass emails. Nor did she talk to reporters about her candidacy. That’s because Smith was drafted into the campaign by supporters. She said in an interview that she cannot seek political office because she is the executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, a 501(c)3 organization that under IRS rules may not attempt to influence an election.
As a result, Smith continues to dance around whether she is a candidate. “I don’t want to make any mistakes because the backlash is guaranteed,” Smith said. “I’m not in favor with powers that be and there are costs with that.” She says, however, “right now I have a limited space (to be a candidate) and I will fight to have a fair and accurate count. That’s not influencing an election.”
She has “no confidence in the numbers” and her decision to engage in a court battle about whether the electoral process was abridged is not about this primary, but about fairness for all Vermonters.
The idea of debating Gov. Peter Shumlin on a statewide platform issues like industrial wind, however, has been a lure for Smith. Still, she says the stakes are low for her and high for Vermonters as a whole. “For me it’s just five debates, for the state it’s a lot more,” Smith said.
“Should there be a recount in my favor then I’d have a whole separate set of issues to grapple with. Can I stay in my job how can I be the executive director of VCE and be a candidate?”
If she had run, Smith says, the outcome would have been different. “I didn’t do anything,” she said. “I could get 1,000 tomorrow if I wanted to.”
