Celeste Fernandez and Frank X. Balles
Gov. Gavin Newsom joined supporters in San Francisco Friday urging Californians to “vote no” in the recall election challenging his effort to stay in office.
The recount is over for the at-large 2020 Atlantic County commissioners race, just in time for the 2021 race.
And Democrat Celeste Fernandez, who didn’t gain enough votes in the recount to emerge the winner in last year’s race, is running again in 2021.
Her opponent this year, Republican former Atlantic County Sheriff Frank X. Balles, is calling on Fernandez to reimburse county taxpayers for the cost of the recount — which is yet unknown but Balles estimates at more than $15,000. Balles called it a waste of taxpayers’ money since a partial recount had already confirmed the victory of incumbent Republican John Risley.
Fernandez sued to get a full recount.
But Fernandez said the recount proved that thousands of voters were disenfranchised in the 2020 election because the recount identified almost 1,200 legitimate votes the machine scanner could not read.
Fernandez gained 613 votes, giving her a total of 66,659, according to the county Board of Elections. Her 2020 opponent remained one of two winners in the race, gaining 564 votes for a total of 66,991.
MAYS LANDING — Unofficial results of a total recount in the 2020 at-large Atlantic County co…
Board of Elections Chair Lynn Caterson, a Republican, had said the voters were at fault in every case in which the votes had been rejected, either because they didn’t properly fill in the bubbles next to the candidates’ names, wrote on the ballot or otherwise caused the machine to spit out about 20,000 as undervotes and about 800 as overvotes.
