Chang-Díaz's signature drive forces recount

City officials said last night they will begin a recount in the Second Suffolk District Senate race on Friday after verifying signatures for a recount submitted by Sonia Chang-Díaz after her dramatic primary loss to 13-year incumbent Dianne Wilkerson.

Chang-Díaz turned in the required 50 signatures to force a recall in eight of the district's 10 wards. Recounts will be held in those wards. Chang-Díaz said her campaign plans to push for more time to gather signatures in the other two wards in a court challenge that could come as soon as today.

``It was a lot of hard work," said Chang-Díaz, a 28-year-old former teacher, who walked into City Hall 13 minutes before the 5 p.m. deadline clutching petitions filled with signatures. ``This recount really touched a nerve with people."

The recount will involve hand tallying most of the 25,000 ballots cast in what was a contentious four-way write-in race for the Second Suffolk District Senate seat.

The Democratic nominee will face Samiyah Diaz, a Republican from the South End, in the general election.

The 10 wards include Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Chinatown, Fenway, Roxbury, the South End, and parts of the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Dorchester, and Mattapan. Chang-Díaz succeeded in all of the wards except those that include Chinatown and the area around Grove Hall and Franklin Field.

William McDermott, a well-known election lawyer hired by Chang-Díaz, said earlier yesterday that he planned to file a lawsuit this week in Superior Court asking for more time to collect signatures in wards where not enough signatures were gathered. Under state law, candidates are given six days after a primary election to compile signatures, but McDermitt said that because results of the election were not known until Thursday, the campaign should have been given several more days.

Wilkerson also filed petitions for a recount yesterday, but only in wards nine and 10, which include Roxbury, Mission Hill, Hyde Square in Jamaica Plain , and the South End. Wilkerson acknowledged that there were ``voting problems all along" but said that she ``did not want to turn this issue into a circus."

``I think we all want resolution," Wilkerson said last night. ``It is my sole expectation that the more they count, the more votes they are going to lose."

Seven city election workers stayed two hours late last night to verify the signers as registered Democrats.

The recount is the latest turn in what has been a long election saga. Initially, Wilkerson found herself in the fight for her political life when she failed earlier in the year to get the 300 signatures needed to get her name on the ballot in the Democratic primary. The oversight forced the write-in campaign in which voters had to write the name and address of their choice or affix a sticker bearing the same information and then mark an oval next to the name.

The morning after the primary, Chang-Díaz trailed Wilkerson by 141 votes when officials discovered more than 2,700 ballots that had been overlooked by election workers. A four-hour public count Thursday at City Hall extended Wilkerson's victory to 692 votes of 12,933 votes cast.

On Friday, Chang-Díaz declined to concede the race and announced that she would seek a recount, because she wanted to expose problems in the write-in campaign that, she said, confused many voters and caused headaches at some polling places. Over the weekend and continuing until late yesterday afternoon, she had volunteers going door to door and searching supermarkets for registered Democrats.

Recounts are fairly common, but often are not heard about beyond the district, according to state officials.

Aside from the Boston race, there are two contested races and possible recounts in the Fourth District in Barnstable and the 12th District in Plymouth.

No recounts in recent memory, though, have led to the results of a race being overturned, according to state officials. Indeed, outside observers have said that Wilkerson's 5 percentage point lead is probably too large for Chang-Díaz to make up in the recount.

Initially, Chang-Díaz focused on exposing problems at the polls, but yesterday she also acknowledged that she also hoped to overturn the results.

``There's nothing that's ever been normal in this election," Chang-Díaz said. ``And in the context of an extraordinary election, you never know."

Donovan Slack of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.