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Things That Go Bump in the Night — Provisional Votes Decide Outcome; Fernando Gonzalez Wins Third Seat on Council

Click on photos to enlarge.

PERTH AMBOY – Election Night 11/4/14. Around 10 p.m. City Clerk Elaine Jasko opened the doors to City Hall. She handed printouts of the election results from the machine only to those outside who requested a copy. Jasko reiterated the fact that the count was Unofficial because they were from the machine only.

At that point the Perth Amboy United Team were the unofficial victors with Joel Pabon leading the way with 2066 votes. He was followed by William Petrick with 1885 votes and running for the first time, Sergio Diaz with 1810 votes.

New Direction for Perth Amboy Candidates: top vote-getter was Fernando Gonzalez  with 1596 votes, who at that point had trailed the third place position by 214 votes. Jelmin Caba had 1540 votes. Ana Mascenik had 1528 votes.

Independent Candidate Miguel  Nunez came in 7th with 734 votes.

Before the night was over, there was a huge shift or bump-up in the votes when the Vote-By-Mail ballots came into place. Suddenly Fernando Gonzalez received  633 more votes putting him neck-to-neck with Sergio Diaz and Bill Petrick from the Perth Amboy United Team. Perth Amboy United received 1339 additional votes. (mail-ins). The New Direction For Perth Amboy Team received an additional 1821 mail-ins. There was an outside chance that Caba may place, too.

The Board of Education Results took an even greater shift. The results from the machine had Jose Rodriguez in first place with 1491 votes, Milady Tejada in second with 1300 votes and Anton Massopust third with 1251 votes. Fourth was Dianne Roman with 1235 votes, then Manuel Nunez with 971 votes. Thomas Thor received 771 votes and  Junior Inglesia 748 votes.

After the mail-ins, the tide turned. Tejeda took over first place with 2314 votes. Rodriguez was second with 2301 votes and Nunez was third with 1906 votes. Roman came in fourth with 1620, Massopust had 1512, Inglesia had 1072 and Thor 1049.

Early election results

Early election results — click to enlarge.

On November 10, representatives from all 3 campaigns went to the Board of Elections in New Brunswick to go over the Provisional ballots. Perth Amboy Democratic Chair Leslie Dominguez-Rodriguez traveled there, too. Due to unforeseen circumstances, Republican Chair Sharon Hubberman who originally planned to attend could not.

The results were called in after the Provisional Ballots were looked at and counted.

City Council: The final results for Provisional Ballots were as follows: F. Gonzalez – 67 votes; A. Mascenik – 64 votes; J. Caba – 78 votes; J. Pabon – 55 votes; W. Petrick – 49 votes; S. Diaz – 55 votes; M. Nunez – 36 votes.

Board of Education: J. Rodriguez – 68 votes; A. Massopust – 13 votes; M. Tejeda – 64 votes; M. Nunez – 65 votes; D. Roman – 34 votes; T. Thor – 18 votes; J. Inglesia – 28 votes. There were 2 write-in votes.

The winners for the City Council are: Joel Pabon with 2591 votes; William Petrick with 2382 votes and Fernando Gonzalez with 2296 votes.

The winners for the Board of Education are: Milady Tejeda with 2378 votes; Jose Rodriguez 2369 votes and Manuel Nunez with 1971 votes.

(See chart above for final results.)

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