'No' Wins School Referendum Question, All Incumbents Reelected
The official numbers will come out later today. However, unofficial counts made by the parties in town would seem to show two main results from Tuesday's election: a win for 'No' on the school referendum question, and the reelection of all the incumbents in the state delegation: Sampson, Poulos, Mastrofrancesco, Martinez, and Veach.
Sources in both parties estimate that 'No' beat 'Yes' on the referendum question by around 1,000 votes. That would mean the school system and the town will have to go back to the drawing board to decide how to deal with the aging facilities at Flanders, Kelley, and Derynoski.
Jack Perry appears to have fallen a few hundred votes short in his effort to unseat incumbent State Senator Rob Sampson. Sampson has claimed victory while Perry is still waiting for confirmation of the final numbers.
In the case of the four State House districts that cover Southington, voters seem to have returned the incumbents to office, with Rep. Chris Poulos fending off a challenge from Tim Wilk, Rep. Gale Mastrofranceso winning her race against Cheryl Hilton, Rep. Rebecca Martinez emerging victorious over Rich Mette, and Linda Pierce coming up short on her challenge of Rep. Donna Veach.
The Southington Town Clerk's office is expected to have official numbers for all of yesterday's votes around midday today. The Southington Outsider will bring you those results early this afternoon.
If you are wondering how the parties can know the election results before the Town Clerk's office has released its official tallies, the answer is this: when the vote ends, and election workers pull the results from the various voting machines, representatives from the parties are allowed to look at the numbers. The parties then collate these results, which include both early and day-of voting, to get a sense of the final counts. The only vote tallies they do not have access to are for provisional and absentees ballots; however these tallies are typically too small to affect the final result, unless a contest is especially tight.
