2d District recount to include all 10 wards
A Suffolk Superior Court Judge ruled that all 10 wards be included in today's recount of ballots in the Second Suffolk District Senate race, even though the challenger did not initially gather enough signatures to force a recount in two wards.
Sonia Chang-Diaz, who placed second behind state Senator Dianne Wilkerson in last week's Democratic primary, turned in the last of the required 50 signatures in each ward yesterday. She had turned in the necessary signatures for eight of the district's wards by a Monday deadline. State law says that candidates are given six days after a primary election to gather signatures. But Judge Mitchell J. Sikora Jr. said Chang-Diaz's case was ``a terribly unusual situation" and an issue of ``public confidence in the accuracy of the election."
The morning after the Sept. 19 primary, Chang-Diaz 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 Sept. 21 at City Hall extended Wilkerson's victory to 692 votes of 12,933 votes cast.
William McDermott, a lawyer hired by Chang-Diaz, argued yesterday that because the results of the election were not known until last Thursday, the campaign should have been given several more days. Chang-Diaz has said she does not expect to win in a recount but wants to highlight deficiencies so that they can be fixed.
``The whole point of asking for the recount was to make sure that the system was one that people could have confidence in going forward," said Chang-Diaz, a 28-year-old former teacher.
The recount will involve hand tallying most of the 25,000 ballots cast in the primary . The Democratic Senate nominee will face Samiyah Diaz, a South End Republican, in the general election. The 10 wards consist of Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Chinatown, Fenway, Roxbury, the South End, and parts of the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Dorchester, and Mattapan. 