The final results are in and Steven Wolfe has been elected as the next Marysville City Council member for Ward 1.
“It is nice to have it officially official and to be ready to move forward,” Wolfe said Friday.
Following a recount Thursday, the Union County Board of Elections has confirmed that Wolfe, a write-in candidate, earned 1,018 votes, 48.8% of the vote while incumbent council member Aaron J. Carpenter has 1,009 votes, 48.4%.
The recount numbers are the same as the Board of Elections reported Nov. 20 after all in-person, early, absentee and provisional ballots were counted. Under Ohio election law, any election closer than half of a percentage point goes to an automatic recount.
Brandon Clay, director of the Union County Board of Elections, said the board hand-counted ballots then ran an electronic report for all the voting machines.
“We compared all those numbers and they came out 100% matching,” Clay said, explaining that they identically matched the Nov. 20 reports.
Clay said the board audited three other races to comply with state requirements and had identical numbers for those races as well.
After election day but before all mail-in and provisional ballots were counted, Wolfe had 1,013 write-in votes. Carpenter received 998 votes.
Wolfe said he has already met with city officials and has other meetings planned so he is ready to take office Jan. 1.
Wolfe has said he knows there is “a lot of important stuff, a lot of stuff that will have an impact on the future of Marysville” that will come before council in his first weeks in office.
“It is not always enviable as there will be difficult decisions, but it’s what the people that ran for office signed up for,” Wolfe said.
Carpenter has said he was expecting the result and has reached out to Wolfe to offer any help he can to make the transition smooth.
Ward 1 includes the area of the city north of U.S. 33 and west of Route 4, which includes Mill Valley.