YOUNGSTOWN — After a long wait, Mahoning County Commissioner Carol Limedio Righetti emerged victorious from the recount, beating Republican Geno DiFabio by 0.14, 1%.
The Elections Commission certified the results on Tuesday after running all county ballots through three electronic voting machines for three days to formally tally the ballots. That came after his December 7 hand count of 20 in the county’s 212 precincts.
In the final tally, Democrat Rimedio Righetti won a fourth term with 42,563 votes to DiFabio’s 42,433.
Rimedio Righetti said, “It’s over and I’m very happy to win. I want to thank the Electoral Commission for the wonderful recount. I also want to thank the voters of Mahoning County.”
Rimedio-Righetti said he was not surprised by the close elections.
“I actually thought it was close,” she said. No. They voted for a ticket and I won.”
The 130-vote win is the closest countywide election since Republican R. Scott Crickbaum defeated Democrat Beth Smith in 1992, said Board Chairman Tom McCabe.
With each count, DiFabio got closer.
On Election Day, he trailed by 204 votes, or 0.24 votes of 1%.
When the outstanding absentee ballot and provisional ballot were added on November 28, DiFabio trailed by 137 votes. This gave Rimedio-Righetti his 1% lead of his 0.16.
If your win rate is between 0.5% and 1%, there will be an automatic recount.
After detailing all the votes, Rimedio-Righetti lost 6 votes and DiFabio won 1 vote to win by 130 votes.
According to McCabe, this was primarily due to votes by both candidates’ names filling the oval with dots. However, the board considered those votes for both candidates and did not count them, he said.
DiFabio picked up a vote where one person filled out both ovals and wrote “yes” next to DiFabio’s name and “no” next to Rimedio Righetti’s name.
“If I had been around longer, I would have gotten more votes,” DiFabio said. “I fought the (long-time) incumbent and lost heavily by 130 votes. I also learned a lot in this election. It turns out higher.I’m leaving this fight.I’ll be out again in two years.”
“The whole point of the recount was to do it perfectly, and we did that,” McCabe said. I have.”
