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Cambridge School Committee preliminary election results changed after test ballots mistakenly counted
Cambridge updated the preliminary, unofficial election results after discovering the ballot-counting error.
Cambridge was forced to walk back the preliminary results of last week’s School Committee race after the vendor overseeing the city’s election system failed to clear more than 2,000 test ballots.
Released hours after the polls closed, the unofficial results included 1,370 extra votes for the School Committee, 632 for the City Council, and 156 for a ballot question, city officials said in a later statement.
“The Cambridge Election Commission conducts rigorous and mandatory prequalified testing for every election,” the city explained, adding that a “proactive auditing process” determined the test ballots hadn’t fully been cleared from the system before the polls opened.
Cambridge news:
When election officials crunched the numbers again, only the School Committee race saw a shakeup; instead of newcomer and former high school teacher Eugenia Schraa Huh, it was incumbent David Weinstein who secured the sixth and final slot. The City Council and ballot question outcomes remained unchanged.
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Schraa Huh learned the news through a phone call from the Election Commission’s executive director at about 6:30 p.m. Friday.
“It was just really shocking news,” she told Boston.com. “Because I actually spent a bunch of time making sure that I understood where I was and looking at the numbers and talking to people who understood our very unique system here in Cambridge of ranked choice voting.”
Schraa Huh is still considering whether to call for a recount and has a meeting with her lawyer scheduled later this week. In the meantime, she’s collected signatures from registered voters across the city just in case.
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“Ideally, if it’s clear what happened and there doesn’t seem a lot of ambiguity, then I will try to avoid a recount,” she explained. “The reason to do it is just because initially, it was very confusing, the information coming out of the election commission.”
In an email, city spokesperson Jeremy Warnick identified LHS Associates as the election services vendor in question.
“Our audit verified the error on Wednesday and the test data was removed before the second set of unofficial results were released on Friday night when auxiliary ballots and mail-in ballots from the drop box pick-up were also accounted for,” Warnick added. “We have been assured by the vendor that steps are being taken to retrain their staff to ensure this mistake does not happen again.”
Boston.com has reached out to LHS Associates for comment.
Regardless of whether she snags a seat on the School Committee, Schraa Huh said the election results sent a clear message that voters were less than satisfied with how the board handled its recent superintendent search.
“One takeaway is that it’s very sad that David Weinstein was elected by less than 100 votes,” she said. “I think if you look at the vote counts, it’s really clear that the voters in Cambridge rejected the incumbents who stood by the fiasco of a superintendent search process.”
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Schraa Huh clarified that she doesn’t want to “waste people’s time, energy, money” on a recount if a deeper dive into the election results proves unnecessary.
“But also,” she added, “if it’s unclear then the recount provides that clarity.”
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