Candidate canvasses for a recount

The bewildered woman furrowed her brows as Sonia Chang-Díaz patiently explained in Spanish why she needed her to sign her name on the clipboard.

Finally, Ana Colon , 61, agreed to sign the petition, which asked for a recount of more than 25,000 votes cast in Tuesday's Democratic primary for the Second Suffolk State Senate seat.

``She said we need to try to help her," Colon said with a shrug when asked why she had signed. ``I didn't even know there was an election on Tuesday."

Chang-Díaz spent an hour yesterday on a small street in Mission Hill, trying to find as many Democrats as she could to sign the petition. In an hour, she managed to reach about a half-dozen.

By 5 p.m. today , she will need 500 valid signatures of registered Democrats to fulfill the state's requirement for a recount in a write-in campaign that pit her against Dianne Wilkerson , a 13-year incumbent. Yesterday, about two dozen of Chang-Díaz's volunteers blanketed the district searching for voters to fill out the petitions that the challenger hopes will lead to a recount.

``Today is our real engine day," Chang-Díaz said.

Last Thursday, after city election officials counted more than 2,700 ballots that had been overlooked Tuesday night, Wilkerson was declared the winner by 692 votes. Chang-Díaz refused to concede, though Wilkerson said she was now focused on the November general election.

In that vote, the Democratic nominee will face a Republican, Samiyah Diaz, of the South End.

On Friday, Chang-Díaz, a 28-year-old former schoolteacher, announced that she would seek a recount, saying she wanted to expose problems in the write-in campaign that, she said, confused many voters and caused headaches at some polling places.

Wilkerson failed to get the 300 signatures needed to get her name on the ballot, forcing a write-in campaign, in which voters had to write the name and address of their preferred candidate or affix a sticker bearing the same information.

The failure to record write-in ballots of eight precincts in the Second Suffolk district led Secretary of State William F. Galvin to launch an investigation of the city's handling of the primary election. Galvin plans to look at the training of poll workers, ballot-counting procedures, and other elements of the election process.

Chang-Díaz said she is also hopeful that a recount will tip the vote majority in her favor, despite some political observers' belief that she is unlikely to overcome Wilkerson's 10 percent margin.

To qualify for a recount, Chang-Díaz must collect 50 signatures in each of the 10 wards in the district, which includes Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Chinatown, Fenway, Roxbury, the South End, and parts of the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Dorchester and Mattapan.

As she walked through Mission Hill, Chang-Díaz found people sympathetic to her efforts.

At the Reyes residence, Chang-Díaz was invited to come in and was peppered with questions about stickers that fell off ballots and poll workers who did not seem to know how to help voters.

``There was no one there to help you," lamented Felipe Reyes , 74, who said he had voted for Chang-Díaz on Tuesday. He said he used to believe in the process.

``Not anymore," he said. ``Not after this."

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.