Democrat Latha Mangipudi is the new winner of last week’s special primary election after a recount altered the votes significantly in her favor.

On Monday, the Secretary of State’s Office performed a recount for the state representative race in Nashua’s Ward 8, at the request of Mangipudi, who originally lost by three votes to Democratic opponent Carl Andrade.

However, during Monday’s recount, Mangipudi garnered an additional 24 votes, while Andrade lost 24 votes, according to Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan.

The new tally was Mangipudi, 191, and Andrade, 146. The original count was Mangipudi, 167, and Andrade, 170.

When the box of ballots was opened on Monday, the ballots were organized by candidates, said Scanlan, explaining a bundle of ballots that were in Mangipudi’s favor were incorrectly placed into Andrade’s pile.

“It would appear that this was just human error,” said Scanlan, maintaining it was likely an honest mistake with no intentional wrongdoing.

There will be no inquiry into the matter, and Andrade did not express any interest in contesting the newest figures, according to Scanlan.

“Everything was very straightforward during the recount, and both of the candidates seemed to accept the new results,” he said.

The ballots were hand-counted last week at the Ward 8 polling site since it was a special primary election and the single race was the only item on the ballot.

It is not unusual for recounts to offer slightly different outcomes, but this recount was a larger discrepancy than normal, admitted Scanlan. Human error can occur during hand counts, especially at the end of a long day at the polls in a community where electronic ballot counting is the norm, he said.

“People get rusty, and this was probably just a combination of things,” added Scanlan.

Mangipudi, a former member of the Board of Education in Nashua, was not immediately available for comment on Monday. During last week’s election, she told the New Hampshire Union Leader that she was dedicated to winning the vacant House seat.

“I am in it to win it,” Mangipudi said while holding signs outside of the polling site. “This is still so important to me. My goal was to get more people involved and engaged in this political process.”

Democracy is not a spectator sport, according to Mangipudi, who said democracy starts with voting.

“This is my service to the community,” she said, adding she was disappointed with the low voter turnout last Tuesday, and maintained that many people were not even aware a special election was being held.

She will now face off in the general election against Republican Pete Silva, the former House Majority Leader, on Nov. 5.

The House seat that will be filled by either Silva or Mangipudi was left vacant in February when Roland LaPlante resigned because of health reasons.

Source: Union Leader

An apparent counting error by local election workers delivered a stunning, primary recount victory for Nashua Ward 8 Democrat Latha Mangipudi on Monday.

Last Tuesday, former Aldermanic President Carl Andrade had scored a narrow, three-point win over Mangipudi for the right to face former House Majority Leader Peter Silva, R-Nashua, in a special election this fall.

That primary outcome was Andrade with 170 votes to 167 for Mangipudi.

But after the one-hour recount in Secretary of State Bill Gardner’s office, Mangipudi came out the winner with 191 votes to 146 for Andrade.

“This proves to me once again that democracy works, the process works, and I think it’s wonderful that both Carl and I ran an energizing, positive campaign. I really thank him for that,” Mangipudi said.

Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said upon opening the box of ballots on Monday, it became clear local election workers had sorted the ballots into two stacks while they were counting, one with votes for Andrade and the other votes for Mangipudi.

The problem was during the recount state officials found one bundle of votes put into the “Andrade” stack were votes for Mangipudi.

They were bundled in packs of 25 votes each.

“Once I saw that, I could only hope that one of my stacks of votes had been put into her pile but no such luck,” Andrade said.

The recount confirmed a 24-vote change from one candidate to the other, as the same misplaced bundle contained a single write-in vote for Silva.

“It was pretty straightforward once we started going through them that this became a counting error on the night of the primary,” said Deputy Secretary of State Scanlan.

Andrade said both candidates realized a simple mistake had occurred and accepted the outcome.

“There was no question about the intent of every voter’s ballot. What happened here was a bundle of ballots got put in the wrong pile,” Andrade said.

Mangipudi faces Silva Nov. 5, the same day voters will decide municipal offices. The winner will succeed Democratic state Rep. Roland LaPlante, who resigned in February because of health issues.

“I am obviously glad I asked for the recount because it was human error,” Mangipudi said. “Otherwise, we would never had known this happened.”

Andrade was an experienced figure in city politics, serving on the city’s aldermanic board for numerous terms and running twice for mayor.

Mangipudi served on the Nashua Board of Education more than a decade ago though she also worked in 2005-06 to form a state political action committee focused on US-India relations.

“We both committed to support the other whoever won the primary,” Andrade said. “Latha and her family worked very hard in this campaign will make a great addition to the House from Nashua.

“It was gratifying to see Latha attracted a lot of new voters who don’t typically show up in an election like this. I think that’s great for the future health of the Democratic Party at the local level.”

Mangipudi said through this contest, the two candidates got to know each other very well.

“This became a real friendly competition between us,” she said. “I knocked on 800 doors in the ward, and I think we both were surprised that more than 500 in total showed up to vote.”

Roughly 525, or just under 9 percent, of Ward 8’s 5,981 registered voters turned out Tuesday.

Initially, Mangipudi said she probably wouldn’t bother with a recount since the turnout was so small and election workers had totaled up the ballots three times. She eventually asked for a recount and paid a $10 fee.

“I wasn’t surprised when she decided to seek the recount,” Andrade said. “When it’s that close, your supporters are always going to encourage you to make extra sure.”

State Rep. Ken Gidge, D-Nashua, was among more than 20 friends and supporters of both candidates who turned out to watch the recount.

“This shows you once again why in any close race like this one, you always want to see the ballots,” Gidge said. “It’s hard to believe there could be a swing of 24 votes, but mistakes happen.”

Andrade said these paper ballots were folded over by local election workers and a rubber band was stretched over each bundle.

“It looked like they counted them three times to make sure each stack contained 25 ballots but they must never have unfolded the bundles to make sure that my votes were all in one pile and hers were all in the other,” Andrade said. “You would think they would have looked in and checked to make sure what they were counting.”

Source: Nashua Telegraph

Democrat Latha Mangipudi has won the Sept. 17 special primary election following a recount Monday, beating opponent Carl Andrade in the final analysis by a sizable margin – 191 to 146.

“There was a whole pile of 25 ballots that were misplaced on Carl’s side instead of mine,” Mangipudi said Monday by phone, following the official word from the Secretary of State’s office.
The original count had Andrade winning over Mangipudi, 170 to 167. Mangipudi immediately requested a recount.

She said Andrade, who was in attendance at the recount, is not contesting the official result.

“I congratulated him for a wonderful run – this is a democratic process at work, and I’m so glad I did the recount – it’s an education for all of us, and reinforces that every vote counts,” Mangipudi said.

Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said it appears to be a straightforward case of human error.

“It’s pretty clear what happened – human error,” Scanlan said. “It appears a bundle of 25 ballots for one candidate was in the sorted pile of the other candidate, so when they did the election and sorted the ballots out and came up with piles for each candidate and put the ballots into piles of 25, what appears to have happened is a pile of 25 ballots for Mrs. Mangipudi got put into Mr. Andrade’s pile,” Scanlan said.

He added while it’s not unusual for an election separated by three votes to flip during a recount, it is unusual to have such a large discrepancy during a recount. The lesson, for candidates, is “never give up.”

“That would also be true for those counting ballots – you can never double-check enough,” Scanlan said.
Mangipudi will now go up against Republican Peter Silva in the November 5 general election for the win – and a State Rep seat in Concord.

Source: Nashua Patch

An acclaimed Indian-American pianist, composer, and musicologist is among the recipients of so-called ”Genius Grant” for 2013, formally known as the MacArthur fellowship, that comes with $625,000 (approx Rs 4 crore) pocket money to recognize the brilliance of its winners.

Announced to much fanfare in September each year just before the Nobel season, the awards increasingly features Indian-Americans (the economist Raj Chetty is a 2012 awardee and computer scientist Shwetak Patel was recognized in 2011). But even by that token, this year’s fellow, Vijay Iyer, strikes a unique note.

He not only composes and collaborates across multiple genres and disciplines, but his scholarly research centers on the act of listening. Much of this goes back to his undergraduate degree (maths and physics at Yale) and graduate work (an interdisciplinary PhD program in Technology and the Arts, focusing on music cognition) that resulted in a 1998 dissertation titled Microstructures of Feel, Macrostructures of Sound: Embodied Cognition in West African and African-American Music.

Outside academia though, he is better known as a Grammy-nominated jazz pianist who has had a long-standing collaboration with the saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa (both have played at the Indian Embassy in Washington DC) and South Asian chamber trio Tirtha, featuring guitarist Prasanna and tabla player Nitin Mitta. Iyer is embarking on a new job as Professor of Arts and Music at Harvard University when news came about the Genius Grant, which does not in any way interfere with the plans of its recipients or how they choose to spend the money.

Among the 24 MacArthur Fellows for 2013 is Kyle Abraham, a dancer-choreographer who was living on food stamps just three years ago.

Source: The Times of India

Indian American television producer Akash Goyal won an Emmy Award in Los Angeles Sept. 15 at a gala celebrating the 65th Annual Creative Arts Emmy Awards. The event took place one week before the Prime Time Emmy Awards, which were presented Sept. 22 and aired on CBS.

Goyal was part of a team that took the prize for Outstanding Interactive Program as senior producer for “Night of Too Many Stars: America Comes Together for Autism Programs” for ComedyCentral.com.

The show was a fundraiser that aired in October of 2012 and raised $3.7 million.

Goyal has also worked on the Web team for Village Voice Media and for WPIX-TV.

Source: IndiaWest