School Board candidate Genevieve Becksted Muske has requested a recount of the results from the November 7, 2023, municipal election. As one of seven candidates in the race, Becksted Muske received 1,573 votes and finished fifth, 70 votes behind fourth place winner David “Leigh” Hudson who received 1,643 votes.
Can anyone get a recount? According to the City Charter the answer is “yes.”
In the November 17, 2023, Seacoastonline, Portsmouth Mayor Deaglan McEachern agreed that “she has the right to do this, but the right comes with consequences for the city of Portsmouth in terms of money and time.”
In the same Seacoastonline article, Councilor Andrew Bagley offered that the request “feels a little wasteful of the city resources.” We think Councilor Bagley’s opinion is gratutuitous.
As a matter of fact, both Mayor McEachern and Councilor Bagley just approved the FY2024 budget that included substantial funds for city elections.
Page 201 of the city’s FY2024 budget book (shown in Table 1) reveals some interesting information.
In FY2022, the election budget was $115,554. This covered the expenses for the November 2021 municipal election. The amount actually spent was only $47,675 which meant there was a surplus of $67,897. Like many of the surpluses, it too disappeared into the vapor and joined the city’s budget surplus.
The FY2023 budgeted amount for two elections was $98,950. The actual numbers have not been released.
For FY2024, the budgeted amount for two elections is back up to $114,457 as shown in Table 1, taken from the City’s budget book. This assumes $57,228 for each election or 20% more than in 2022.
Table 1.
But that is for all the city-wide races. What is the actual cost to do a one-race recount?
Deputy City Clerk Valerie French said in the November 17, Seacoastonline that the recount would be done in one day and require five to six teams of two people. She estimated the cost to be in excess of $10,000 up from $7,500 for the last recount in 2007.
The election budgets confirm that salaries are one of the major costs incurred.
Ms. French said that the clerk’s office employees would be validating the ballots and around ten other individuals would be counting and tabulating the votes.
Table 2 below shows an estimated daily cost based on the annual compensation in the FY 2024 budget for the City Clerk, Deputy City Clerk and Administrative Assistant. We added ten team members to do the counting and tabulating at the admin’s salary level, which results in an additional $3,048 in salary expenses.
Table 2.
| City Clerk | $639.40 |
| Deputy City Clerk | 418.37 |
| Admin. Assistant | 304.82 |
| 10 Team members | 3,048.20 |
| Total | $4,410.79 |
To achieve Deputy City Clerk French’s estimate of over $10,000 in total costs, can the clerk’s office find another $7,000 in expenses? Possibly. But it appears that there is ample room already in the FY2024 elections budget for this recount and the City Council already approved the budgeted amount in June 2023.
And the issue, therefore, is academic.
Source Featured Image: Pew Research Center
