WESTFIELD – Firmer City Councilor John J. Beltrandi, III said Monday afternoon that he will submit a petition to initiate a recount of the At-large race in which he finished just behind Steve Dondley, who secured the seventh At-large seat in the municipal election last Tuesday.
Dondley narrowly led Beltrandi after the unofficial result showed that just three votes separated the two candidates. The number between the two candidates increased to seven ballots after the Board of Registrars examined provisional and auxiliary ballots Friday.
“Some of my campaign volunteers are out collecting signatures right now,” Beltrandi said. ”Seven votes out of nearly 8,000 ballots, there might still be something out there.
“We’ll give it a shot. The way I look at it is that I can only go up,” Beltrandi, a two term At-large City Council member, said. “Seven out of nearly 8,000 ballots is not that bad.”
The City’s Biannual Election, which included several ward contests, as well as a mayoral race and the At-large race, which saw five candidates seeking reelection; two former members of the City Council, Beltrandi and Daniel M. Knapik seeking to regain a seat and seven candidates seeking their first elective office in the city.
Voters turned out in strong numbers as 34.14 percent, 7,976 of the 23,365 registered voters participated in the election.
Candidates are required to submit a petition for each ward with the valid signatures of 10 registered voters required to initiate a recount process. The city currently has six wards.
Beltrandi said that he plans to submit the six petitions with more signatures that required, avoiding a situation where the petition is rejected on a technicality. Two candidates were ejected from the 2015 election because of technical errors, such as not having a sufficient number of signatures and not properly signing the nomination papers.
City Clerk Karen Fanion said the recount process will be very demanding. There was a recount two years ago when incumbent Christopher Keefe defeated challenger Mary Ann Babinski in the Ward one race. Keefe initially won by a margin of 11 votes. Babinski petitioned for a recount and closed that distance to nine votes, still an insufficient number to take Keefe’s seat in that election.
“The last recount two years ago took 2 ½ hours to do, but it was only one ward,” Fanion said. Fanion Said that every votes cast in the at-large race will be recounted.
“This will be a lot slower count, a lot harder,” Fanion said.
Beltrandi has 10 days to submit his recount petition papers.
