The Lake County Board of Elections certified the recounts for the November 4 General Election, which finally determined the winners of two very close races in Mentor: one for the school board and the other for council at large.
In a race to decide the three individuals who will represent the Board of Education Mentor Exempted Village as members, the results were decided by less than a dozen voters.
The first two candidates weren't in question — Maggie Cook came out on top with 7,915 votes, and Robert Haag was second with 7,400 votes. But the third seat was a toss-up between Daniel Hardesty and Robert Izzo, with only a single vote separating them in the unofficial results.
On Tuesday morning, the board of elections finalized its results, which showed that Hardesty won the race by 11 votes — 7,188 to Izzo's 7,177.
The other race that was too close to call initially was the sole Mentor council at-large position. Unofficial results showed Annie Payne had the edge over Brian Cook by only a handful of votes, but the official results showed that had changed.
According to the final results, Brian Cook had 5,554 votes, winning by one over Payne's 5,553 votes.
Previously, we spoke to a Case Western Reserve University Law School professor who told us races like these show why every vote matters.
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