Recount reaffirms mayors’ races

COUNCIL BLUFFS — Recounts conducted Friday at the Pottawattamie County Courthouse for two mayoral races reaffirmed the Election Night results.

In Oakland, challenger Michael O’Brien defeated incumbent Mayor Tim White. Carter Lake Mayor Russ Kramer won over challenger Fritz Dahlheimer.

After the recount, the Oakland victory margin narrowed from two votes to one. The results remained unchanged in Carter Lake; Kramer won by 11 votes.

On Election Night, Dahlheimer was not interested in a recount.

“I didn’t think it’d make a difference,” he said before Friday’s recount. “I still don’t, but about 95 percent of my supporters I talked to after the results asked for one.”

The recount should put people at ease about the results, he said.

Two three-member recount boards convened for Friday’s process, one for each race. Each candidate had a representative, as did the community.

Three citizens also came to watch the proceedings. “It was interesting, very educational,” said Anna D’Angelo of Oakland.

“It shows how accurate the voting process is,” said Hausner, who represented Kramer on the Carter Lake recount board.

Hausner said this was his third recount. Eight years ago, Hausner and Waltrip were involved in a recount for the mayor’s race; Hausner won.

Both boards hand-counted the ballots to compare against the machine total. Then, the boards counted the votes for each candidate. Machine and absentee ballots were counted, and the board also looked at any disputed ballots.

In Oakland, the final vote was White 181, O’Brien 182. The extra vote for White was a vote the machine had missed.

The Carter Lake board double-checked its hand count with the machine count, and the results remained Kramer 485, Dahlheimer 474.