Portsmouth Primary Voting Results Delayed

Portsmouth residents who wanted to know Tuesday night how they voted for Ovide Lamontagne or Maggie Hassan and who won three key House races may not have any primary election results until sometime on Wednesday morning.

For reasons that were not clear, the City Clerk's office was still counting ballots cast in some of the city's five wards shortly before midnight and city officials could not provide an estimated time when the results would be ready.

Democratic House District 30 candidate Chris Serlin stayed up as late as he could on Tuesday night hoping the city's primary election results would be reported.

"Its frustrating. I wish that if the counts are going on so long they could at least release some information about why that is going on," said Serlin, an incumbent House member who is running against incumbent Jackie Cali-Pitts in one of the city's new floterial districts that covers wards 1 and 2 and 4 and 5.

Serlin said he has experience working at the some of the city's wards on election nights and understands the type of issues that can bog down results which can range from absentee ballots to write-ins. But even when those issues come into play, Serlin said it shouldn't take this long, especially when one considers the overall turnout for the primary election was pretty light.

"So much of the work is being done by the machine," he said.

Republican House District 30 candidate Kevin Kervick said he was surprised it was taking the City Clerk's office so long to finalize the results. He said he had a pretty good idea how he did in wards 1, 4 and 5, but not Ward 2. Kervick is running against Wayne Doherty to see who would earn the right to face either Serlin or Cali-Pitts.