Recount Friday to determine winner of Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors election

MASON CITY — The recount for the Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors District 3 election will take place tomorrow.

After over 6200 ballots were counted, Republican challenger Carl Ginapp holds a two-vote lead currently over incumbent Democrat Lori Meacham Ginapp. Meacham Ginapp requested a recount last week.

County Auditor Adam Wedmore says the recount can be done three different ways — a hand recount, using the election machines to do the recount, or a hybrid of both. A three member panel has decided to go with the machine recount.   “With the process with the machine recount, what will happen is the machines will review every single ballot, just as it did on election day, and if that ballot is not able to be read for any reason, the recount board will review that ballot and determine if it needs to be duplicated onto a new ballot and then subsequently determine how that voter’s intent was of that mark.”

Wedmore says there’s different reasons why a ballot may not have been scanned by a ballot machine.  “Any differences or discrepancies we can see when the voter made a very light mark, or what we call a hesitation mark, where maybe they rested the pen on that target, or maybe did a very light diagonal cross versus completely filling in the target like the instructions said, those would be the ballots that could potentially be read differently from one situation to the next because the calibration on the machines is very sensitive and it could be the difference between being read one way on a certain day and being read a different way on a different day.”

Two years ago, this same race was decided by five votes, and Wedmore says while it’s rare for a race with this many votes being this close, it’s exceptionally rare for back-to-back elections like this to be decided by the narrowest of margins.  “It’s very rare to see a race of that many ballots cast to be that close, and very-very rare to have that happen two election cycles in a row. This is very unique and anytime there’s a race that close, we certainly want to be involved in a recount just to validate that the equipment worked correctly and that the results that were tabulated were the correct results.”

The three-person recount board consists of one person chosen by each candidate as well as an independent third party that both sides agree on. Lori Meacham Ginapp has chosen Timothy Lapointe, who lost to incumbent Chris Watts in the District 1 supervisors election. Carl Ginapp has chosen Don O’Connor, who lost by five votes to Meacham Ginapp in this same race two years ago. The third party will be Colleen Frein, the president and CEO of the Mason City Chamber of Commerce.

The recount starts at 8:00 AM in the election annex next to the Cerro Gordo County Courthouse. The recount is open to the public.