Fewer than 50 votes separate a winning and losing candidate for Falls Church School Board, meaning a recount could be in the works.
Electoral Board members certified the results Wednesday (Nov. 12). After tabulating provisional ballots and those received by mail by the Nov. 7 deadline, the margin between Kathleen Tysse (3,532) and Sharon Mergler (3,485) tightened from the 56-vote margin reported on Election Night to 47 votes upon certification.
Tysse, an incumbent, finished fourth in the five-candidate race for School Board, with Mergler, a challenger, fifth. The top four vote-getters win four-year terms.
The margin between the two candidates is 0.6698% of the total number of votes cast for both of them. State law allows for a runoff if the margin is less than 1%, although in cases where the margin is between 0.5% and 1%, the candidate seeking the recount must pay the costs of conducting it unless he or she comes out the victor.
With the election certified, Mergler will have until Nov. 22 to decide whether to request a recount. Should she opt to, the process and timing will be overseen by Circuit Court Chief Judge Judith Wheat.
Paul Ferguson, who has served as Clerk of the Circuit Court for Arlington and Falls Church since 2008, told ARLnow there has been no recount for a local office in either jurisdiction during his tenure.
The results of any recount would not impact the three candidates who finished at the top of the School Board vote — challenger MaryKate “MK” Hughes (4,566 votes) and incumbents Anne Sherwood (3,984) and Lori Silverman (3,885).
To trigger the ability to seek a recount, Mergler needed to come within 70 votes of Tysse. Starting out at a 56-vote disadvantage, she made up six votes by receiving support from 49 provisional ballots to 43 for Tysse.
Those votes came from the 117 city voters who cast provisional ballots. At the Nov. 12 Electoral Board meeting, the body’s three members — two Republicans and a Democrat — accepted all of those ballots.
“We’re not rejecting any provisionals. They are all good,” city registrar David Bjerke said at the meeting.
“Most of them were same-day registrations or absentees that were issued but the voter did not receive them, did not return them or lost them,” he said.
Mergler picked up a net of three more by collecting a 17-to-14 margin in mail-in ballots received after the polls closed on Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. but before noon on Nov. 7.
Another 20 ballots arrived after that deadline, election officials told ARLnow, and were not counted.
Neither Tysse nor Mergler nor any representatives of the campaigns attended the Electoral Board meeting where provisional ballots were checked and the final result was certified.
Adding in the provisionals and final mail ballots impacted some of the percentages but did not change the winners of races for City Council or House of Delegates in Falls Church.
In other races, the Democratic statewide ticket swept the vote with large majorities in the city, and three incumbent constitutional officers — sheriff, commissioner or revenue and treasurer — were running unopposed.
At the Electoral Board meeting, it was noted that about 12 voters turned up in person to cast provisional ballots because they said they did not receive absentee ballots in the mail.
“I do plan on doing an after-action [meeting] with the post office,” Bjerke said.
The Nov. 12 meeting also marked the final one for Electoral Board Secretary Renee Bergmann Andrews, who is moving with her husband to Tysons.
Under state law, the Falls Church City Democratic Committee will nominate three potential successors to fill the remainder of the term. The appointment will be made by Judge Judith Wheat.
