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Dayton winners finally named

DAYTON — This town’s hotly contested elections are finally complete. The certification of the numbers is all that’s left now for the beleaguered volunteers at the Cattaraugus County Board of Elections.

The unofficial results show the winners as Angie Mardino-Miller for supervisor, Ruth Bennett for town clerk, Linda Frost for town justice with Jake Hansen-Ivett and Paul Luce winning council seats. Thomas Chupa won by two votes for town highway superintendent.

What’s interesting to note in this election was the number of write-ins and scattered votes, particularly among the races for town supervisor and highway superintendent. Mardino-Miller received 270 party votes while other candidates, including David Kohler, received 241 write-ins while Chupa received 256 party votes and 254 write-ins were received by incumbent Brian Taber.

“Thank you to everyone who exercised their right to vote,” Mardino-Miller told the OBSERVER. “Thank you to those who voted for me and to all the volunteers who worked on my re-election team. I am grateful and humbled to serve the town of Dayton as supervisor for another two years.”

Both Hansen-Ivett and Luce shared their sentiments as first time councilmen as well.

“I would like to thank everyone who voted for me in the recent Dayton election,” Hansen-Ivett stated. “I am happy to say that as a new town councilman I will try to make the best decisions for the future of our town.”

“I am humbled and thankful for your confidence in me to represent you as town councilman,” Luce added. “You have put your faith in someone new to public service and fairly new to the town. I appreciate that faith and will not take it for granted.”

The highway superintendent position came down to the wire with Chupa allegedly winning by only two votes, while write-in opponent Taber, lost seven votes to voids. According to the board of elections the reason was that only a last name was given and there were two Tabers on the ballot this election cycle.

“I question the absentee ballots,” Taber told the OBSERVER. “How do we know those are legit, that they weren’t people in the nursing home who don’t know if they’re coming or going? There were 41 absentee ballots, that’s a lot for a little town like Dayton.”

Certification was expected to take place Wednesday making all these figures official.

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