Colasante Files for Recount

By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA

November 14th 2024

CRANSTON – At a meeting Thursday, members of the Rhode Island Board of Elections granted a request from Michael Colasante for a re-reading of the memory packs of the machines that recorded the general election votes in Richmond.

Colasante, a Republican who was running for reelection to the Town Council, came in sixth behind Jeffrey Dinsmore, with 1,910 votes to Dinsmore’s 1,989, a margin of 79 votes.

Board of Elections Executive Director Miguel Nunez explained the re-read decision.

“Based on the staff’s calculation Mr. Colasante qualifies for a re-reading of the electronic media,” he said. “I did notify Mr. Colasante of his eligibility for that. He did indicate that he would let me know whether or not he would rescind that before the re-read tomorrow. It would be tomorrow afternoon.”

Colasante did not attend Thursday’s meeting.

Nunez explained why the Board had decided on a re-reading rather than a manual re-feeding of the voting machines.

“Under the statute, in a contest where the votes cast, and in these types of votes, for more than one [candidate], the vote cast is all of the write-in votes, and all of the under and over votes,” he said. “Then, you divide that by the number of candidates. When that’s done, the total votes cast in this contest is 4,944, so that puts him in the category of ‘votes cast is less or equal to 5,000 votes,’ so he’s right on the cusp of the next category. A candidate must trail the winning candidate by 2% or 50 votes, whichever is less. In this case, he’s trailing by 79 votes and he would have to be trailing by 49 votes in order to qualify [for a re-feed].”

A full explanation of the calculations can be found on the Board of Elections website.

School Committee Re-Count Denied

The board “disqualified” or denied Colasante’s second request for a recount of the votes for Chariho School Committee. Incumbent Democrats Jessica Purcell and Karen Reynolds came first and second in that race for two seats. Republican candidate Louise Dinsmore was third with 27 fewer votes than Reynolds. 

Nunez said because Colasante was not a school committee candidate, he did not have standing to request a recount. Nunez also noted that Colasante had emailed the Board of Elections on Thursday morning, asserting that he did have standing in the school committee case because he chairs the Republican Town Committee and Louise Dinsmore was a Republican candidate.

“He did send me an email this morning, which I did provide to you before the meeting, regarding his request for the other contest, which was Chariho School Committee, and as I said, Mr. Colasante is not a candidate for the School Committee in Richmond. He’s a candidate for the Town Council, and so it  would appear that he is not qualified to request a recount,” he said.

History Repeating

Colasante has been down this road at least once before. A story in the Providence Journal, published on Nov. 12, 1992, describes incumbent Richmond Town Council member Colasante disputing his loss to fellow Republican Ralph Murphy. After the mail-in ballots had been counted, Murphy was still the victor, with a 23-vote lead over Colasante.

Colasante was quoted at the time as stating that he did not care whether he won a council seat and predicted that he would try again when he was older.

The paper also described Colasante as critic of the Chariho School Committee and included a quote that, 32 years later, seems to have been prophetic.

“I’m not the type of person that goes away,” he said.