Franklin town clerk, Teresa Burr has announced her resignation after she forgot to count 3,000 mail in ballots in Massachusetts. The votes were counted in advance but were not added to the final tally. Burr admitted that she merely forgot about them. Franklin was one of three towns that did not count all of their votes. Newton and Wellesley are the other two.
About 750 ballots that were dropped into Newton’s secure ballot drop went uncounted. Wellesley was unable to get to about 100 ballots, between late drop box submissions and absentee ballots. They are struggling with the new format of the elections.
Burr said:
“After the events of the past three months, this election season has been the most challenging election cycle of my career. I fully support our Town Clerk office staff and election workers to take my place and lead this community through future elections.”
“They were in the vault and I forgot them. I thought I had them all. …. It was human error.”
“I want to assure every resident that my performance over the past few months for this election was not intentional, nor have I ever conspired to deprive any voter of their ability to cast a ballot and have that ballot counted as part of an election. Any oversights that I made during this election cycle are due to the many challenges this election cycle has brought upon myself. I believe it is in the best interest of the community to have a new leadership team in place.”
Town Council Chair Tom Mercer thanked Burr for her years of service and said that he fully supports her decision to resign.
From https://franklin.wickedlocal.com
Mercer said that “while the events of the past two weeks have certainly caused some concern in town, I am confident in the ability of the Town Clerk office staff, our election workers, and collective town staff to support them as they work tirelessly toward November.”
A spokeswoman for Secretary of State William Galvin’s office said last week that the office would assist Franklin in November’s general election.