WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — As expected, watchers of the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee election will need a little patience to find out who won. But the unofficial totals have been released with a tie occurring in Lanesborough that will likely change. 

 

Williamstown posted on its website Wednesday that it will be at least Friday before the larger of the two towns in the regional school district announces any vote totals from Tuesday's election.

 

"The School Committee race was decided by write-in votes and tallying them takes time," the town posted. "Election workers review each write-in ballot by hand and record every vote individually. Accuracy is our priority.

 

"Mail-in ballots [postmarked by Election Day] have until Friday, November 6, to arrive, and those ballots will also be counted. A final count will not be available before then."

 

Two seats for Lanesborough residents and two seats for Williamstown residents are up for grabs on the seven-person committee this year. Residents in both towns elect all seven members, meaning residents in Lanesborough vote for both the Lanesborough and Williamstown seats and vice versa.

 

It took much longer than usual to get  results of the local races on election night due to the fact that all six qualified candidates' names were left off the printed ballot, requiring voters to do write-ins for all four seats.

 

At about 1 a.m. Wednesday, Williamstown Town Clerk Nicole Beverly told iBerkshires.com that she would not have results she felt comfortable releasing until after she got some sleep and could review the data with fresh eyes.

 

Adding to the strain on vote counters in both towns was the high turnout for the mid-term election.

 

In Lanesborough, 1,420 of 2,632 registered voters cast ballots, a 54 percent turnout. In Williamstown, a whopping 64 percent of voters cast ballots: 2,922 out of 4,600 on the voter roll.

 

Lanesborough Town Clerk Ruth Knysh emailed the town's unofficial results to local media just after 1 a.m. Beverly did likewise with Williamstown's unoffical tallies on Wednesday afternoon.

 

The preliminary results from Lanesborough indicate that town's voters favored returning all three incumbents seeking re-eleciton to the committee.

 

As of early Wednesday morning, Lanesborough residents Jodi Szczepaniak-Locke and Curtis Elfenbein, an incumbent, were the leading vote-getters with 379 votes and 347 votes, respectively. Melissa Zuroff was in the third place in the race for the two Lanesborough seats with 307 votes.

 

Fewer Lanesborough voters cast votes in the race for the two Williamstown seats on the ballot, but, the unofficial numbers show that incumbents Carolyn Greene (256 votes) and Steven Miller (246) led challenger Laurel Bifano (182) in that town.

 

Williamstown showed a similar pattern of fewer votes for the candidates from the district's other member town. But Williamstown voters also favored a challenger from their own town in the early results.

 

As of mid-afternoon Wednesday, the results in Williamstown stood at, in order:

 

• For Lanesborough seats, Elfenbein (445), Zuroff (435) and Szczepaniak-Locke (363).

 

• For Williamstown seats, Greene (677), Bifano (625) and Miller (475).

 

In an email to the media, Beverly stressed that the unofficial results, "can and will likely change."

 

But if the counting ended on Wednesday, based on the unofficial results for both towns, Elfenbein, Greene and Bifano would be seated when the School Committee meets for its November meeting with the fourth seat in a dead heat.

 

Based on the preliminary numbers reported by both towns, the vote totals on Wednesday afternoon were:

 

Elfenbein 792, Szczepaniak-Locke 742, Zuroff 742.

Greene 933, Bifano 807, Miller 721.