Engineer Bill McGlinn and defeated candidate Joe Magliocco look on as new Board member Ted Czech signs paperwork.

A full day of voting at the Portsmouth Water and Fire District saw two newcomers narrowly edge out incumbents by razor thin margins in a race where only 284 votes were cast.

The race for Tax Collector was never in doubt, as long-serving (and unopposed) incumbent Guy Polselli racked up an impressive 198 votes.

But in the Tax Assessors' race, two new faces, Ted Czech and Jeff Richard, were challenging the incumbents George Crockett and Joe Magliocco for the two seats. The first run of numbers from the machine were close enough to trigger a machine recount, and then a hand sort which took over two hours. In the end, the numbers were in a pretty tight grouping, with the final count giving Czech 147, Richard at 140, and Magliocco just one vote behind at 139.

Everyone shook hands and called it shortly after 11pm, and they finally unlocked the Water Board office and let everyone go home.

Prior updates:
Update 3 hand count result matches first tape--Richard back in lead Richard 140 | Magliocco 139

Update 2: hand count underway for tax asessor Richard v Magliocco

Update: machine recount now has tie for second position
Top 2: Czech 144 | Richard 137 | Magliocco 137 | Crockett 116
Unopposed Poliselli 198

[Originally posted and updated live onsite with iBlogger from my iPhone]