Dear Editor:

Thank you to everyone who voted for me to be the new selectwoman, and thank you to everyone who made phone calls and talked to friends on my behalf. I really appreciate the effort you all put into my campaign. Thank you especially to my mom, Barbara Scorcia.

Thank you, too, to everyone who voted for Chuck Cunningham. Coming out to cast your vote is the essence of our democracy, and it matters that you took the time and energy to do it.

I want to write about the ballot inspection that happened on Friday. I hope no finds it disappointing that I couldn’t personally attend — my primary job is still the assistant director of the Library, and it was too short notice for me to arrange an afternoon off.

Beyond that, my knee-jerk reaction was to have total faith in the computer’s ability to scan and count the bubbles on the paper ballot.

Lastly, Chuck Cunningham, Town Clerk Lynn Maloney, Registrar of Voters Tracey Hyson, Boothbay Register reporter Bill Pearson, and my fiancé Lester Spear were all there, and I had complete faith in the integrity of all five to fairly inspect the ballots.

I was hoping to (and did) write a column about voting machines and possible sources of error, because of course I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do some research. Unfortunately, the details of permissions to write a column are still being worked out. so I’m confined today to 350 words and a letter to the editor. Hopefully, that column will run somewhere soon.

I can say that I found it certainly within the realm of possibility that one kind of error or another had led to an inaccurate election outcome in an election as close as ours. So a big thank you to Chuck for leading the charge on a double-check in a close election, and kudos to the Boothbay voting machine that spit out a 100% accurate vote identification and count.

And let’s all never forget that every vote really does count!

Desiree Scorcia

Boothbay