Breaking: Chang-Diaz asks for recount

Chang-Diaz Calls for Recount

Cites Wide-Spread Confusion and Vote Counting Irregularities

ROXBURY – State Senate Candidate Sonia Chang-Diaz announced this afternoon that she will be seeking a recount of the vote from last Tuesday's Democratic Primary in the Second Suffolk State Senate race. Citing the lack of a consistent, across the board standard for counting votes in questionable situations, numerous complaints of irregularities raised by poll watchers, and the strong potential for human error in an election night hand-count, Chang-Diaz began taking the necessary steps to request an official recount of the vote.

"It is widely reported by this time that there were a disturbing number of problems with the Election Day count, ranging from serious discrepancies in the standards used to count the ballots at the precinct level to precincts not counted at all.   The Elections Division has made every pro-active and corrective effort to ensure that this process ran smoothly, and I genuinely thank the staff at City Hall and the Secretary of State's Office for their level of professionalism and diligence throughout this election.

"It is clear, however, that there are sufficient remaining questions about the consistency and accuracy of the Election Day count to merit a district wide recount.  Today I am beginning the process of collecting signatures across the district to call for a complete recount of all ballots cast. To do otherwise, I believe, would be to abandon the principles upon which this campaign was based.

"This campaign, from the outset, has been about principles of good government and helping people have confidence in our political system again.   We of course recognize that changing the result of who the Democratic nominee is in this race is unlikely with a margin of 702 votes.  But nothing about this race has ever been usual.   As an all write-in election—and the first in Boston since our switch the new voting and tallying systems—it is open to an extraordinary level of confusion among both voters and poll workers.   Ensuring peoples' faith in our voting systems is something worth fighting for, no matter who the winner is in the end.

"We will make every effort to move quickly and decisively through this process to reach a closure that reflects the standards of accuracy and accountability to which all elections ought to be held, and which the voters of Boston deserve."