Vote Recount in Special Election Affirms Win for Sommer

A recount of the ballots cast in the Nov. 8 special election for House District 15 affirmed that Republican Chrissy Sommer was the winner.

In fact, she had two more votes than the original countand 40 more than Democrat Paul Woody.

Secretary of State Robin Carnahan announced the certified results on Tuesday. Sommer had 1,875 votes while Woody had 1,835 votes.

St. Charles County Director of Election Authority Rich Chrismer said the recount was conducted Dec. 14.

The cost of the recount–which includes pay for staff and election judges–would be paid by St. Chalres County. Chrismer said he would have an estimated cost by next week.

Sommer said on her Facebook page that she's glad to get started as a State Representative in two weeks.

"I am just so excited to finally be getting to do something I have wanted to do most of my life," she wrote.

Sommer also declared that she plans to run in the the newly created House District 106. The redrawn map for the Missouri House of Representatives will take effect in 2013.

House District 106 differs from District 15 in that it does not include Heritage Landing or Riverbend neighborhoods, but does include more homes near Lindenwood University.

Woody said in an email to his supporters Tuesday that the people of St. Charles need to have confidence their vote will count.

"This recount gave my allies and I an opportunity to take a close look at the procedures used to collect and count ballots," he wrote in an email. "These efforts included the unprecedented counting of the number of voters who signed the precinct registers and comparison of those signatures with the number of ballots counted from each precinct. They included requests for information that allowed us to study information about absentee ballots that were either not
returned or not counted in the final vote totals.

This work was done so that at the end of the day I could confidently
say to the voters of the 15th District that the outcome reflected the
will of the people who voted on November 8, or who submitted timely
absentee ballots."