More than 65,000 Penobscot County voters weighed in on the jail question. It came down to 60 votes and clerks I talked into driving back to their town offices to read me their results.
Voters narrowly rejected moving the county jail out of Bangor. That sends commissioners back to look for a site after years of planning a new jail in Hampden.
Most people don’t think about how a newspaper gets results on election night. Many news outlets rely on The Associated Press, whose reporters collect results from towns and feed them to newsrooms. At the Bangor Daily News, we chase the results ourselves and call high-profile races with our partners at Decision Desk HQ.
Each town counts its ballots. Local clerks share their results with us however they choose: an email, a PDF, a photo of a handwritten tally sheet or a post on the town’s Facebook page. This is how you generally learn the winners; the state compiles official results later.
The jail question was different. On top of our normal election night work, it took two more days of calling clerks.
Penobscot County has 63 voting units. Bangor, the county seat, cast more than 11,000 votes on the question. Drew Plantation cast 11. In between are dozens of small towns, plantations and townships: Seboeis Plantation cast 20 votes, Webster Plantation 25 and Maxfield 57.
Some don’t even report on their own. Argyle Township’s votes are counted with Old Town’s. Springfield, Kingman Township and Prentiss Township report to the state as one precinct, though each filled out its own return on the jail question.
Those three were the last to report. Springfield’s clerk, Lisa Kettle, also works another full-time job. She told me she drove back to the town office twice, a 20-minute trip each way, to get me the results.
When I reached Maxfield’s part-time clerk, Karen Carson, by phone Thursday, she also had to go back to the town office. She couldn’t go until she got out of her full-time job at 5 p.m.
Getting every result wasn’t the end of it. With a margin this close, every number had to be right.
I went back through my inbox and matched each town’s total against the clerk’s return. That covered 49 towns. For the 13 with no documentation, such as those whose clerks called in their results, I called town offices to confirm their numbers.
With every town double-checked, no led by 39 votes. Military and overseas ballots reported by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ office pushed the margin to 60.
Penobscot County officials have their own unofficial results, which differ from ours. They also show the measure failing. County Administrator Blair Tinkham said commissioners are waiting on legal guidance before certifying the vote, and the county has not said whether it will seek a recount.
It’s a reminder that every ballot counts, and that we’ll keep calling until we’ve tracked them all down.
